Topic: Samuel Charters & "The Country Blues"

[doctorpep]

Samuel Charters was the first to write an entire book about Blues. It was my understanding that the term, Country Blues, was coined by Samuel Charters, too. Is this correct?

In the Lightnin' Hopkins book by Govenar, I found an interesting quote about a radio deejay and comments he made before 1959:

"Deejay Moohah Williams...hosted a down-home blues show called "Wheelin' on Beale" and held a mock election for the title of 'President of the Blues, commander in chief of the Royal Amalgamated Association of Chitterling Eaters of America, Inc. for the Preservation of Good Country Blues.'"

Williams is quoted as saying, "President Hopkins is campaigning on a platform which says the pure country blues field is being invaded by modernists..."

Does this mean that the term was in usage before it was the title of Charters' book?

[Bunker Hill]

Yes, at least as early as August 1941 when it was used as a title for Muddy Waters' first song for the Library of Congress which some have suggested may have been provided by Lomax.

[Bunker Hill]

Having got my interest I've just been revisiting a blues magazine discussion of this topic from 1965 and in there it's noted that Dock Boggs recorded a song in the late 20s with the title 'Country Blues'. I wonder if the lyric makes use of the phrase, which Muddy's doesn't.

[Pan]

I wonder if the lyric makes use of the phrase.

As far as I can tell, they do not:



A little bit better sound on this one:



Cheers

Pan

[banjochris]

No, they don't. And Dock said quite often that the real name of that song was "Hustling Gamblers." I got the impression either he or the record company thought that a "blues" title would sell better.

[doctorpep]

Thanks for the responses, guys. I should have been much more clear. I am wondering if "Country Blues" was used to refer to a genre of music before Charters used the term. So, that would mean that song titles don't count (example: Muddy song from Stovall, Dock Boggs song, etc.)

[Lyle Lofgren]

I don't know who first used the term "country blues" for a genre definition, either, but it would have to have been a city person, either an academic like Charters or a record marketing guy. The people who sang the material would not have thought much about  classification, even if they knew how to pronounce "genre." They're either songs you like to play or ones that you don't.

"Hillbilly" and "old-time tunes," for example, were record marketing terms targeted at a presumed audience, all of whom could play extras in "Deliverance."  And "country blues" is a useful term for making distinctions, because "city blues" sounds quite different (with overlapping, of course, since the musicians don't think in terms of genre).

Lyle

[Bunker Hill]

"Hillbilly" and "old-time tunes," for example, were record marketing terms targeted at a presumed audience, all of whom could play extras in "Deliverance."  And "country blues" is a useful term for making distinctions, because "city blues" sounds quite different (with overlapping, of course, since the musicians don't think in terms of genre).
Lyle

Quite so. Another example which comes to mind is the term 'Folk-Blues' - the blame for that used to be laid at the doorstep of Jerry Silverman's 1958 instructional of that name.

[Mr.OMuck]

I recently visited with an African American woman of around seventy who said she loved blues. When I asked her what kind she listed BB King, Bobbie Bland, Etta James and then added "not that old Hillbilly Blues like lightnin' Hopkins!"

[Stuart]

Probably the best we can do is to find its earliest attested occurrence in print where it refers to song(s) in the blues genre that had their origin in a rural environment, or the performer was from the country, or sounded "country" (in the ear of the beholder, of course), etc.--maybe in contrast with "urban" or "city" and with all of their associations.

Charters put together a couple of Folkways LPs back in the day with the title:

http://www.folkways.si.edu/albumdetails.aspx?itemid=280

http://media.smithsonianfolkways.org/liner_notes/folkways/FW00RF1.pdf

http://www.folkways.si.edu/albumdetails.aspx?itemid=301

http://media.smithsonianfolkways.org/liner_notes/folkways/FW0RBF9.pdf


Whether or not the earliest attested usage went on to define a genre and carve it in stone or was just a general descriptive with a fair amount of wiggle room, is another matter, IMHO. Perhaps for some, but for others, well, probably not so much.

Cf. Charter's choice of tracks.

[Parlor Picker]

I prefer Jeff Todd Titon's categorisation of the music we all love: downhome blues. I think it neatly distinguishes it from the more sophisticated urban blues and avoids confusion with straight country-and-western music.

[HankD]

Hi all, interesting discussion! I spoke to Samuel Charters and he will reply to this thread.
I had some problems for over a day trying to register on the site and so had Sam, don't know what was
wrong - anyway now I succeeded and I'll check with Sam also. Best/Henry

[Slack]

Hank, I've gone ahead and activated Sam Charters- sorry for the troubles.

[Sam Charters]

I don't know if I'm getting this onto the forum about the term Country Blues -
     I don't remember using any other term in the 1950s.  I was already working with the country blues when I met Fred Ramsey, who was the person behind the classic jazz study Jazzmen, in New Orleans in the summer of 1954.  I'd recorded the Mobile Strugglers and Blind Dave Ross.  Fred and I stayed in touch when he went back to New Jersey and I stayed in NO to finish Jazz: New Orleans and he edited the tapes of the 6 & 7/8 string band I'd recorded and passed them on to Folkways.  I recorded Gus Cannon and two veterans of the old Memphis Jug Band in 1956 and did the search for Blind Willie Johnson in Texas that Folkways put out as a documentary that I edited from my tapes.  When I moved to New York in the spring of 1958 Annie and I spent long weekends with Fred and Amelia in New Jersey and we talked and listened to old records and talked and talked.  He'd already done th?t great series of jazz reissue albums for Folkways, and of course he'd done Leadbelly's last sessions.  I wouldn't be surprised if he used the term country blues somewhere in the notes to the first albums or in one of his magazine pieces.  Like him I'd grown up in  the '30s with the classic blues, and what we were listening to was something else, and country blues was how we always talked about it..
     After I did a radio interview about the New Orleans book in the fall of 1958 I got the contract to write The Country Blues, and that was the title on the book contract.  I went back to the south and did most of the searching that went into the book, and found Lightning Hopkins.  The book was written in April, 1959 when I was back in Brooklyn and I put The Country Blues album together in the summer so Moe Asch could bring it out in connection with the book.  Once the book came out I had a lot of calls from newspaper and magazine people and what they wanted to know was, What did I mean by the Country Blues.  I thought I'd explained it in the book, but I tried over and over again to get it all straight.  The word blues mixed up the older writers who called with Bessie Smith, and the hipper ones thought that since someone was sitting there with a guitar it had to be folk music - like Josh White.  I had so many calls that was maybe the reason why I titled the double LP I did the next year The Rural Blues,  but I think the Country Blues is still a lot of help.  I've never liked the term Down Home Blues, as one of your contributors wrote, since I don't think of anything down home about those first recordings of Blind Willie McTell and the others of that first generation to get on record.  There was an artistry there that seemed to me to to go somewhere else.
     I don't know if this helps with the question of why the term The Country Blues.  I just never thought of those artists and their music in any other way.           
                              Sam Charters

[Slack]

Thanks Sam for taking the time and trouble to sign up for the forum and for making your post!  How great it is to have your first person perspective of the term 'Country Blues', a music we all love and obsess over!