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Mac users may not
be able to access these clips, so I have provided transcripts.
Sammy Blue is a blues musician from
Atlanta, GA who began performing as a blues musician in 1972.
I spoke with him in October, 1998 and he had this comment to make
on the therapeutic origin of blues music:
Transcript: "To me, the blues is
an expression of many things, you know, but I'll be honest with
you what I personally feel it is more than anything is a form
of therapy, you know what I mean? If you can, if you can have
something horrible happen, you know, consistently and be able
to to sit around and sing about it, laugh about it, there isn't
any better therapy. And I mean, excuse me, but you know when all
of this stuff was happening to the black people they don't run
out to the analyst, to the therapist. Do you know what I mean?
They don't have that luxury. So, you know, it comes out that way.
Its a way of dealing with life, of facing up to whatever has happened,
and talking about and getting it out instead of holding it in
and being oppressed by it."
In
October, 1998, I spoke with Chicago Bob Nelson, a blues
artist from Baton Rouge, LA who began playing music in 1959 at
age 16. He spoke about the appeal of traveling as one of the initial
reasons he was attracted to blues:
Transcript: "My main reason for
being a musician, I used to admire people that traveled all the
time. My main reason for it was when I hear people saying we've
been to Europe, we've been to Italy and France...wow, I'm going
to start playing so I can go over there."
Chicago
Bob comments
on hearing Louis Armstrong describe the treatment he received
from whites while playing in their homes:
Transcript: "Louis Armstrong used
to, you would hear Louis Armstrong make a statement about how
he used to play for all these white folks, you know in the South,
right...Mississippi, Louisiana. And because he was a musician,
black, they'd bring him into the house and he'd sit down at their
table, you know. The other black people that come to the house
have to come through the back door. Music actually put a little
love in people's hearts."
Chicago
Bob speaks
about the integration of musicians:
Transcript: "Music is one of the
reasons for integration. See musicians always felt like, you know,
we get together and play and not look at each other's color of
skin. I mean that's the main thing a lot of musicians did to integration,
its been that way. See music brings people together, you know.
It actually brings people together."
Freddie
Vanderford
is a blues artist living in Union, SC. I spoke with him in December,
1998 and he described his friendship with Peg Leg Sam Anderson:
Transcript: "It was like, there
wasn't any color difference , you know. The way we looked at it
was, you know, I'm just a...just a kid to him, you know, and he
was just this...this good ol' guy who let me hang around with
him and play music."
Kip
Anderson is
a blues artist in Starr, SC who began playing blues in 1959 at
age 13. I spoke with him in November, 1998, and he shared these
thoughts with me about the integration of musicians (there is
a buzz in this clip):
Transcript: "The color line among
musicians and music has been very thin. It has not been as thick
in music as it has been in other areas."
Nappy
Brown is a
bluesman currently residing in Pomaria, SC. I spoke with him in
November, 1998 about his feeling that music helped to bring the
races together:
Transcript: "Yeah, that is true,
for the blues, rock 'n' roll...well, you see that is what really,
really brought the races together."
Kip Anderson talks about the British Invasion
and its effect on the popularity of blues (there is a buzz in
this clip):
Transcript: "Blues has always had
a following, but, it was really a black following. But when the
Beatles and...well, the British artist themselves, the Beatles
came to mind...[there were] many others, when they did the invasion
thing, as they call it, they would record a lot of music that
the black artists had recorded years earlier. And the white people
did not know about this music and many of them thought it was
something brand new and so then the British artists would tell
them 'no, this was recorded by such and such an artist,' and so
there came a new respect for them [the original black artists]."
Transcript: "What would happen was
these British people came over and started doing doing them [covers
of black tunes] and they [the original black artists]got new respect,
like I told you before, and then the establishment began to -
at first there was resistance - but they began to slowly...you
know, barriers were broken down."
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