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How's this book?
QuoteIt's kind of tough to penalize the artists too much when you realize that all the record companies wanted to do was to keep re-mining whatever musical vein had recently yielded a hit record.At least some of the artists felt frustrated by what they perceived as the record companies' straight jackets. To quote Jerry Zolten's notes to Volume 8 in Document's Bumble Bee Slim series, Slim "walked out on his Chicago recording base because he was tired of the same old approach to production... 'Each time I go to the studio I have a piano player and a guitar player.Piano and guitar, piano and guitar, you hear one number, you hear them all'".
It's kind of tough to penalize the artists too much when you realize that all the record companies wanted to do was to keep re-mining whatever musical vein had recently yielded a hit record.
It's short - 116 pages in my edition - but then all the hard facts we know about Peetie Wheatstraw's life would fit on about 3 pages. There's a lot of information on what St. Louis and East St. Louis were like in Wheatstraw's day, and a lot of lyric transcription and analysis. I'm not sure I agree with all the biographical conclusions Garon draws from Wheatstraw's lyrics, but the book is well written, easy to read, and when you get done you'll know all there is to know about Peetie Wheatstraw. It's illustrated and indexed, with a bibliography and discography. And it comes with a CD of Wheatstraw's music. At least it did in 2003 when I bought my copy.
perhaps it should be born in mind that when first published in 1970 it told us more than we ever knew at the time
There's a chapter in Sam Charters' The Country Blues that talks about this issue. The chapter title is The Bluebird Beat and talks about the sound and bands being somewhat interchangeable at Bluebird, with a few exceptions like solo players such as Tommy McClennan. I find stuff like Tampa Red or Washboard Sam from this period quite enjoyable, but there's no question that this is music moving closer to the assembly line and best taken in small doses.
There's a chapter in Sam Charters' The Country Blues that talks about this issue. The chapter title is The Bluebird Beat...