Topic: Erwin Bosman blogs

[Lastfirstface]

I'm sure its probably been posted in one of the youtube threads, but there a lot of footage of Othar on the Alan Lomax archive:

[ErwinBosman]

NEW on MyBlues.eu
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Next to black vaudeville, the side shows of the circus were a highly influential channel by which the blues music could spread.

Join me on the amazing journey of the blues played in the circus annexes in the late 19th and early 20th century.

http://www.myblues.eu/blog/?p=2172

[ErwinBosman]

New on OurBlues.net:
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Fascinating article by BRUCE BASTIN on the role of touring groups and minstrelsy on the early South Eastern blues.

http://j.mp/MinstrelBastin
 

[Lyle Lofgren]

Very interesting article. I ran across a new term -- "lowpitch," on p. 36 (of the journal): "Kerr and Pink Anderson went back to working lowpitch, on trade days and Saturdays in the Spartanburg area ..."

Google says that, in medicine shows, a lowpitch show was set up on the ground, while a highpitch show was delivered from a truck bed. Does this match everyone else's interpretation of the two terms?

I'm still learning something new every day, although sometimes it's the same thing I learned the day before.

Lyle

[ErwinBosman]

Very interesting article. I ran across a new term -- "lowpitch," on p. 36 (of the journal): "Kerr and Pink Anderson went back to working lowpitch, on trade days and Saturdays in the Spartanburg area ..."

Google says that, in medicine shows, a lowpitch show was set up on the ground, while a highpitch show was delivered from a truck bed. Does this match everyone else's interpretation of the two terms?

I'm still learning something new every day, although sometimes it's the same thing I learned the day before.

Lyle

Lyle,
In the Medicine shows a distinction was indeed made between high- and low-pitch acts. The former covered the bigger acts, often composed of a large group of performers of all kind. The 'doc' stood on a mobile platform, that functioned as a real stage set up on an open space at the border of a village or small town. The latter referred to smaller acts, often of a few artists, where the quack stood on what was frequently no more than a soap box turned upside down. The doc could sell his cures and services anywhere where there was a crowd, as for instance on the corner of the street.
I will publish in the coming days an essay on the role played by Medicine Shows in the development of the American entertainment.
Erwin
www.myblues.eu

[ErwinBosman]

NEW on OurBlues.net
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Born in 1898, Dock Boggs was one of the early hillbillies to record during the '20s. Then, he was forgotten for decades until the folk revival of the '60s when his career was revived. His dozen recordings from 1927 to 1929 are monuments of folk music, comprised of fatalistic hills ballads and blues like "Danville Girl," "Pretty Polly," and "Country Blues."

Dock Boggs' unique three finger style and mixture of various kinds of "root" music (including a generous amount of blues - a music style not usually associated with the banjo) gave him a distinctive style.

Read the complete text of Barry O'Connell's essay on Dock Boggs, which had to be excerpted in the Smithsonian CD booklet for reasons of space :

http://j.mp/DocBoggs

[ErwinBosman]

Sorry for the trouble it may cause, but after talking to Paul Swinton I have decided to remove the post.
The article will be republished in a new version in the Frog Records Annual, n?3, likely to appear in Octobre/Novembre this year.

[dj]

Well, it's good news that a third Frog Annual will be coming out!

[Stumblin]

Sorry for the trouble it may cause, but after talking to Paul Swinton I have decided to remove the post.
The article will be republished in a new version in the Frog Records Annual, n?3, likely to appear in Octobre/Novembre this year.

B*ll*cks.
I hadn't finished reading it. I have no idea how to get hold of a Frog Annual and probably can't afford one anyway.
Cheers.

[dj]

I have no idea how to get hold of a Frog Annual and probably can't afford one anyway.

You go to http://www.frogrecords.co.uk/, click Contact, and send a note saying "I want to buy one of the annuals".  Paul is remarkably flexible with payment methods.   

They're ?30 each. (U.K. free p&p.)  So yeah, a bit pricey, but well worth the money.

Ordering direct from Frog is the least expensive way you can get the annuals, by far. 

 

[Stumblin]

Ta.
I'll try to rustle up some funds.

[ErwinBosman]

New on OurBlues.net :
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2002 Wayne State University thesis by Nicholas S. Schillace on the relation between John Fahey and the process of American cultural development and music in 20th Century.

http://ourblues.wordpress.com/2012/07/16/john-fahey-and-american-primitivism-the-process-of-american-identity-in-the-twentieth-century/

[ErwinBosman]

New on OurBlues.net: James McKune: ?The Great Country Blues Singers? (early 60?s)

http://ourblues.wordpress.com/2012/07/22/the-great-country-blues-singers/

James McKune, a social isolate, closeted homosexual and alcoholic, born around 1910, after having worked as a re-write man on the New York Times, drifted into an itinerant life, before finally being murdered. If we remember him now, it is because McKune was a passionate pioneer blues collector, who is likely at the basis of the blues revival in the 60s.
He was an obsessive collector of rare recordings, scavenging in junk-shops, but whose collection, stored in his room at the YMCA, contained only some 300 discs, none of them having cost him more than $3 - it was a point of principle.
McKune is said to have unearthed in 1944 a recording made in 1929 by an obscure Mississippi songster by the name of Charlie Patton.
When in 1959, Samuel Charters published his famous ?The Country Blues?, James McKune started to write a number of columns in the British-based collector?s magazine VJM Palaver. The series was called ?The Great Country Blues Singers? appearing in the early 1960?s, and is largely a reaction to Samuel Charters? publication that paid more attention to popularity and sales than to the ?real?, unadulterated folk blues.
Integrated here is a collection of essays 3-9. The text of number one is reproduced from Marybeth Hamilton?s ?In Search of the Blues? (2007, 182-183).
Thanks to Raymond Astbury for the scanning.

[ErwinBosman]

Fresh on OurBlues.net:

http://j.mp/MeAndBigJoe

Michael Bloomfield?s retelling of his travels with bluesman Big Joe Williams, in a book first published in 1980.

[Blues Vintage]

Thanks, I think you can download the entire book. But I read some bad reviews about it, contains great stories but it's poorly written.

Amazon;
"for much of the first part of it you wonder why Bloomfield, who was by all accounts just a brilliant guy, couldn't manage to write any better"