Langston Hughes and the Blues (review)

The most renowned African American poet of the twentieth century, whose centennial was celebrated in 2002, Langston Hughes was a pioneer in mining the blues tradition. This paperback edition of Steven C. Tracy's study, brought out in hardcover in 1988, when it was generally acknowledged as the first full-length publication of its type, remains an important contribution to Hughes scholarship. In his introduction to the paperback edition, Tracy recalls that certain critics faulted the first edition for its excessive notes, many of which referred to blues recordings. Tracy's goal was to "trace the influence of the oral blues tradition on Hughes's blues poems" (2). Tracy refers to over one hundred Hughes poems and related songs. For those who considered substantial references to blues recordings as unnecessary, Tracy offers no apology. In fact he mentions a number of CD titles as an update to the discography. Tracy does admit that beyond structural analysis, a major part of his approach, it is important to consider the "spiritual and sociopolitical implications of the music" (xi).

The initial chapter addresses "Folklore and the Harlem Renaissance" by exploring the similar folk interests of Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Sterling Brown in relation to the critical ideas of James Weldon Johnson, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Alain Locke. The second chapter, "Defining the Blues," considers the complexity of the term itself, at once a reference to "an emotion, a technique, a musical form, and a song lyric" (59). Most important, Hughes's route to using the blues was the result of influential white American vernacular poetry, especially, as Hughes has acknowledged, the work of Carl Sandburg, which he read as a youth, and also that of Vachel Lindsay; but Hughes realized that he had his own vernacular tradition in the blues, which he experienced in various black communities, including Chicago and Washington, DC. Certainly his reading of Paul Laurence Dunbar revealed black vernacular elements.

The problem with citing influence is that it might suggest imitation or lack of originality. Hughes's "Proem" is seen as similar to Sandburg's "Old Timers," and probably Hughes's most recognized blues poem, "The Weary Blues," also the title of his first collection, is linked stylistically in part to Lindsay's "The Congo." Hughes, however, employed blues elements more extensively than any of his predecessors or contemporaries. Tracy offers a somewhat technical analysis of the blues and Hughes's poetry by using such concepts as the "twelve-bar stanza" and AAB format.

Jazz is another influence and can be distinguished from the blues by its greater reliance on instrumental improvisation. Although there is sharper present-day distinction between jazz and blues, in the 1920s many of the so-called jazz artists were playing blues structured compositions, and this has been the case throughout the evolution of jazz. In chapter 3, "Creating the Blues," Tracy notes that Hughes called the first poem he "'sold'" a "'jazz poem,'" (155). Because of the breadth of his career, Hughes became familiar with later developments beyond blues such as 1940s bebop and "modern" jazz of the fifties. Although Tracy is not primarily concerned with improvisational-instrumental jazz, it is certainly an area that needs closer exploration in relation to Hughes's poetry. Tracy rightly asserts that Hughes employed "aspects of the blues tradition more regularly than any other poet of his time" (248), but it is also important to emphasize the latter stages of Hughes's career and the influence of jazz legends Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, and Charles Mingus as well as the importance of Hughes's Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz (1961).

With a very thorough bibliography and discography organized with subheadings, Langston Hughes and the Blues is a commendable scholarly work.