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The Truman and Eisenhower Blues: African-American Blues and Gospel Songs, 1945-1960, by Guido van Rijn
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The Truman and Eisenhower Blues is a fascinating and exhaustive account of the gospel and blues music of the post-war period (1945-1960). Guido van Rijn studies over 300 songs, many of them rare recordings, from artists including Fats Domino, John Lee Hooker and B. B. King, and usefully transcribes 123 of them in their entirety. Tapping sources which have previously been neglected by historians, musicologists and sociologists, he provides an illuminating examination of the themes at the heart of this Cold War music: the reconversion, the atomic bomb, the Korean War, civil rights, Presidential elections, the economy and the space race. This is a companion volume to the author's award-winning book Roosevelt's Blues (1997).
- Sales Rank: #3221055 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Continuum
- Published on: 2006-06-07
- Released on: 2006-06-07
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.07" h x .69" w x 6.36" l, 1.16 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 240 pages
Features
- Used Book in Good Condition
Review
'Van Rijn has spread his net wide and has clearly listened to almost every blues and gospel record that has any political content. His method is to sketch in the political context of an issue and then illustrate black responses by quoting (usually complete) blues and gospel lyrics, followed by his own analysis. The method works well and has the additional advantage of providing an important source book for lyrics of the period. The book is generously illustrated with 78 and EP roundels. The Truman Eisenhower Blues comes with a full scholarly apparatus but it is also highly readable and is a model of what blues research should be.' û Juke Blues Magazine, June 2004
'Compiler Guido van Rijn has done a superb job, with assistance from Dr. David Evans, Gerry Robs, and experts who provided rare 78s and 45s for transfer.' û Blues Revue Magazine, June/July 2004
'There are only 11 documented blues and gospel recordings from the Truman period that deal with civil rights, and Van Rijn has tracked them all down. The bookÆs second labour is the authorÆs painstaking materialist focus on transcribing the lyrics and tracking down the exact references in these highly elusive song forms.' û The Wire, January 2004
'[M]any of the lyrics are startling in their poetical insight and dramaàSharply original and inspiringùhistory through the blues and it makes for an exciting and provocative way to learn it.' û Morning Star, May 2004
'Van RijnÆs treatment is so comprehensive that, at the end of every chapter, he lists every song he has not considered in detail û and then the songs he has not been able to track down, only about two per chapterà[T]here are plenty of lyrics that provide fascination commentaries on America politics.' û Jazz Rag, 2004
'The bookÆs strength lies in giving the fully transcribed lyrics center stage in an academic analysis that falls short of being an exhaustive studyà[F]or the serious scholar, this well-researched book will shed new light on treasured original material.' û Record Collector, 2004
'One gets the sense that Van Rijn had a ball writing the book, or maybe heÆs one of those rare good writers obsessed by detailà. This is a book much larger than its ostensible subject matter, though that is so very enjoyable. As such, it rates shelf space in the libraries of readers fascinated by American and African American history, civil rights, and even topical songwriting! Definitely recommended.' û Sing Out! Winter 2005
'Copious footnotes, photographs, and political cartoons enhance this slim, yet remarkable sequel. Highly recommended.' û Choice, January 2005
'Van Rijn has spread his net wide and has clearly listened to almost every blues and gospel record that has any political content. His method is to sketch in the political context of an issue and then illustrate black responses by quoting (usually complete) blues and gospel lyrics, followed by his own analysis. The method works well and has the additional advantage of providing an important source book for lyrics of the period. The book is generously illustrated with 78 and EP roundels. The Truman Eisenhower Blues comes with a full scholarly apparatus but it is also highly readable and is a model of what blues research should be.' û Juke Blues Magazine, June 2004
'Compiler Guido van Rijn has done a superb job, with assistance from Dr. David Evans, Gerry Robs, and experts who provided rare 78s and 45s for transfer.' û Blues Revue Magazine, June/July 2004
'There are only 11 documented blues and gospel recordings from the Truman period that deal with civil rights, and Van Rijn has tracked them all down. The bookÆs second labour is the authorÆs painstaking materialist focus on transcribing the lyrics and tracking down the exact references in these highly elusive song forms.' û The Wire, January 2004
'[M]any of the lyrics are startling in their poetical insight and dramaàSharply original and inspiringùhistory through the blues and it makes for an exciting and provocative way to learn it.' û Morning Star, May 2004
'Van RijnÆs treatment is so comprehensive that, at the end of every chapter, he lists every song he has not considered in detail û and then the songs he has not been able to track down, only about two per chapterà[T]here are plenty of lyrics that provide fascination commentaries on America politics.' û Jazz Rag, 2004
'The bookÆs strength lies in giving the fully transcribed lyrics center stage in an academic analysis that falls short of being an exhaustive studyà[F]or the serious scholar, this well-researched book will shed new light on treasured original material.' û Record Collector, 2004
'One gets the sense that Van Rijn had a ball writing the book, or maybe heÆs one of those rare good writers obsessed by detailà. This is a book much larger than its ostensible subject matter, though that is so very enjoyable. As such, it rates shelf space in the libraries of readers fascinated by American and African American history, civil rights, and even topical songwriting! Definitely recommended.' û Sing Out! Winter 2005
'Copious footnotes, photographs, and political cartoons enhance this slim, yet remarkable sequel. Highly recommended.' û Choice, January 2005
From the Publisher
"... an invaluable key to understanding this group which otherwise seems inarticulate, inscrutable, or threatening. These songs not only provide insight into another social world, but they entertain and please the ear with their artistry. Unitentionally perhaps, they bridge some of the great social and racial divides that America has created, as well as providing spiritual and artistic nourishment for the victims of these divides". --David Evans, University of Memphis, from the Foreword.
About the Author
Guido van Rijn teaches English at Kennemer Lyceum in Overveen, the Netherlands. He is a widely published writer and music journalist, has run his own record label, Agram Blues, and is co-founder of the Netherlands Blues and Boogie Organisation.
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
PRESIDENT BLUES
By A Customer
Ever since the Negro spirituals first reached a broader public consciousness in the years during and immediately following the Civil War, African American folksongs and their popular extensions in blues and gospel song have been viewed by listeners, critics, collectors, and scholars as expressions of an entire race within America, or at least of a vast portion of that race, one that had few other outlets of expression that left any lasting record. With few exceptions, the singers and composers of these songs were not the writers of poems, books, articles, and letters to the editors of newspapers. They were not leaders in politics, the church, and business. Many, particularly those involved mainly in secular music, were not even members of churches, labor unions, or other organizations. Yet they had opinions about the world around them, they served as organizers of the opinions of others and, with the help of mass media such as phonograph records, as spokespersons for millions of people from similar backgrounds. While their songs were created and intended almost entirely for hearing and circulation within their own social group, many curious and sympathetic listeners of a more formally educated and literate class have found these songs to be an invaluable key to understanding this group which otherwise often seems inarticulate, inscrutable, or threatening. These songs not only provide insight into another social world, but they entertain and please the ear with their artistry. Unintentionally perhaps, they bridge some of the great social and racial divides that America has created, as well as providing spiritual and artistic nourishment for the victims of these divides.
Writers and scholars have concentrated on three major domains in the study of the lyrics of African American folk, blues, and gospel songs. They have seen them as examples of literary expression, as reflections of daily life and living conditions, and as expressions of opinion and psychological states. Even when concentrating on one of these domains, most writers have shown some awareness of the others. In searching for literary expression, one can hardly avoid the social content of these songs, and with opinion and description of daily life often comes great artistry.
Early twentieth century writers and collectors, such as Howard Odum, Guy Johnson, Newman White, Dorothy Scarborough and John A. Lomax, saw the song lyrics as examples of the "folk poetry" or "folk psychology" of "the Negro." Although some indicated that they were struck by the power and artistry of particular performances and the personalities of some of their informants, for the most part they treated the songs as anonymous collective expression. Odum, however, felt compelled to create a composite character, a Black Ulysses, to be the voice for many of the songs he had collected in the South, and Scarborough consulted black songwriter W. C. Handy as an expert on the meaning of the blues. Lomax did provide the names of his informants along with occasional bits of biographical information. In 1934 he displayed his star informant, Huddie Ledbetter ("Leadbelly"), an ex-convict no less, as a living representative of the black folksong tradition, taking him around to concerts at universities. Little did Lomax realize at the time that he had unleashed a creative musical force with a mind of his own and a desire to build a professional career as a performing artist, a man who would, in fact, become an important voice on a variety of political and social issues, including the fight against Jim Crow.
It was the twin forces of musical professionalism and commercialism that forced writers and scholars away from the simplistic interpretation of these songs as expressions of "the Negro" and toward a more multi-faceted approach that would take into consideration the personalities and varieties of life experience and opinion of individual singers and composers. W. C. Handy himself served as a bridge to this new understanding. In his 1926 collection Blues: An Anthology and his 1941 autobiography Father of the Blues, Handy discussed the specific circumstances of his encounters with folksongs and his transformations of this material into his own popular compositions. In the former book he also included the works of several other blues songwriters. Handy viewed his source material as exploitable common property for musically literate composers like himself and his own compositions as works deserving the protection of copyright. Nevertheless, in dipping so deeply into the common well of African American folksong, he set himself up as a spokesperson for his entire race and his life as an example of progress from the status of anonymous "Negro" to that of an American household name.
Concerts by performers like Leadbelly, compositions by songwriters like Handy, and especially phonograph records by countless blues and gospel artists brought these songs to the attention of millions of Americans and interested listeners overseas. By 1960 enough records had been issued and enough large private collections built that a British record collector and scholar, Paul Oliver, could publish a book called The Meaning of the Blues. In this and several subsequent publications, Oliver examined the variety of themes and opinion in a large sampling of commercial recordings made between 1920 and 1943, showing how these songs reflected a black American working class culture with rural and urban, sacred and secular, dimensions, exhibiting change and variety over space and time, and studded with individual personalities.
The early folksong scholars and collectors had not ignored songs that dealt with themes of politics, economic conditions, wars, and race relations. Particularly noteworthy were John J. Niles' Singing Soldiers (1927) and Howard W. Odum's Wings on My Feet (1929), both of which discussed the songs and experiences of black American soldiers during World War One. But all of these studies were weakened by their authors' insistence on revealing the mood and expression of "the Negro." By the 1940s and 1950s the overwhelming number of blues songs on themes of love, romance, and sex, and gospel songs on themes of sin and salvation made it appear that there were few, if any, African-American songs on these broader sociopolitical topics. To remedy this apparent lack, left wing ideologues encouraged singers like Josh White and Leadbelly to create and record new "folksongs" of protest against fascism, racism, and economic exploitation. Some scholars, like Miles Mark Fisher in his Negro Slave Songs in the United States (1953), examined folksongs of earlier eras, claiming to detect coded references to historical events and messages of black resistance. While Fisher could not substantiate most of his interpretations with clear evidence and while Josh White and Leadbelly sometimes seemed like isolated voices of protest directed at sympathetic ears mostly outside their own communities, the need for new sociopolitical songs was eventually met in the early 1960s by the civil rights movement's adaptation of spiritual and gospel songs in support of its cause. In the arena of scholarship Paul Oliver's The Meaning of the Blues revealed a rich vein of sociopolitical commentary, including protest, in blues on "race records" that had been recorded and intended for sale almost entirely within the American black community.
Oliver and other scholars who examined these records in the 1960s and following years were hampered somewhat by an inability to acquire and listen to all of the known and possibly relevant recordings and by fragmentary background information on the singers and the historical events and social conditions underlying the songs. Not until the mid-1990s were all of the factors in place that would allow a more sophisticated and detailed analysis of the lyric content of this material. These factors were the reissue on LPs and CDs of virtually all of the African-American blues, gospel, and folk material recorded up to 1943 and a great amount recorded after that date; a worldwide network of research-oriented record collectors ready and willing to fill in gaps where reissue albums were lacking; comprehensive blues and gospel discographies running up to 1970; and an enormous new body of literature about singers, composers, and record companies and about African-American history and culture.
Exploiting these resources (and having helped to build many of them over the years), Guido van Rijn undertook to examine all of the recorded African American songs containing overt commentary on political events and issues during the years 1933-1945. His Roosevelt's Blues: African-American Blues and Gospel Songs on FDR (1997), with a foreword by Paul Oliver, arranges these songs thematically and chronologically, relating them to specific historical events, personalities, issues, and programs. Information about individual singers, songwriters, record companies, and recording sessions is all brought to bear, when appropriate, to explain particular song texts, and the latter are transcribed with great accuracy. Only a very small percentage of the total number of songs recorded during this period dealt with political topics, but van Rijn shows that such songs were recorded by a representative range of blues and gospel singers. Although they often mixed political opinion with humor, sexual themes, religious doctrine, and other highly personal concerns, and tended to view President Roosevelt as a benevolent and powerful patron or "bossman" able to protect and intervene directly in their lives, the singers nevertheless displayed an incipient political consciousness. That is impressive when one considers that these singers were almost totally shut out from the political process during this period except as recipients of government relief during the Depression and soldiers during World War Two. Roosevelt's willingness to listen to African-American voices and to take action on their behalf led singer Otis Jackson to memorialize him with the following lines:
Only two presidents that I ever felt:
Abraham Lincoln and Roosevelt.
In the present study Guido van Rijn has tackled the somewhat more problematical task of examining the blues and gospel songs dealing with political topics during the presidencies of Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower (1945-1960). Once again attempting to survey all of the known material, the author shows that these songs do not present a view of nearly total approbation as they did for President Roosevelt. Truman was seen as a sometimes fallible leader who, despite his actions and directives in support of equal rights, was not able to control fluctuations in the economy, could not hasten racial progress fast enough, and got America into an unwinnable war in Korea. Eisenhower, after an initial burst of enthusiasm for his arranging of the Korean armistice, came to be seen as unresponsive to the economic plight of black people as well as their growing demands for equal rights. By the time of his second term of office, singers were virtually ignoring him and his administration altogether, just as they had ignored the unresponsive presidents before Roosevelt. Having gained a hold on the development of political thought and an incipient sense of involvement during the Roosevelt era, blues and gospel singers, as van Rijn shows, displayed a greater awareness of abstract political issues during the Truman and Eisenhower years and less concentration on the personalities and deeds of the presidents themselves. His masterful study is one of the few lengthy examinations of any body of commercially recorded blues and gospel lyrics after World War Two. It prepares us for the momentous era of the 1960s. Let us hope that Guido van Rijn will examine the songs of that period with the same thoroughness that he displays here and in his previous work.
David Evans
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
great documentation
By J. Hennephof
Quite an interesting study, a nice mix of history, sociology and musicology.
The transcription of the countless blues texts must have been a hell of a job: all honour to the author. Don't forget to buy the interesting cd that accompanies this book.
Koos Hennephof, Holland
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