Topic: Newsweek article on Skip James, Bert Williams

[uncle bud]

There's an article in Newsweek (yup, Newsweek) in which the author recalls visiting Skip James' home in Philadelphia in the 60s and deals with James, other blues singers, and Broadway actor Bert Williams.

Quite interesting actually. I think the points being made by the likes of Marybeth Hamilton, discussed in the article, are perhaps short-sighted, at least as they appear in summary forms I've seen lately. Don't have the book yet so I shouldn't condemn the theory. But the figure of the downtrodden "primitive" black blues singer has never dominated my own perspective on blues or my reason for loving it. And while it may have for some in the early days of white audiences' discovery of blues, I don't think it's been that way all through to the present either. I think the Newsweek author, David Gates, also disagrees.

Anyway, read for yourself here:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/109582

[dj]

But the figure of the downtrodden "primitive" black blues singer has never dominated my own perspective on blues or my reason for loving it.

Heck, I bought into that back in high school in the 60s.

From the article: W. C. Fields called [Bert] Williams "the funniest man I ever saw and the saddest man I ever knew."  If I'd seen the quote unattributed and out of context, I'd have thought it referred to Fields.