Jim Crow's Counterculture: The Blues and Black Southerners, 1890-1945 by R. A. Lawson (review)

The community of blues scholars has often been divided between those who view the genre as indicative of acceptance of white supremacy and those who understand it as resistance. These battle lines have in part been generational, with the work of early blues researchers coming under fire (often justifiably) from later writers whose investigations were influenced by the identity politics and radical critiques of American culture that originated in the Black Power and Black Arts movements. This latter group has, however, also left an enduring rift among enthusiasts, academicians, and practitioners of the genre. With Jim Crow's Counterculture, R. A. Lawson seeks to span this chasm by portraying the blues as a counterculture that evolved over time, variously accommodating and challenging racial inequality as its individual practitioners navigated paths along a continuum between these two poles. The result is a useful and engaging study, but one that becomes tangled in one snare of the field even as it seeks to unravel another.

Lawson bridges the divide between accommodation and resistance by suggesting that the blues involved both, but changed over time. According to Lawson, blues artists "preached an antiwork ethic"; however, over the decades, this " 'me'-centered mentality of the blues increasingly became 'we' centered as the musicians began to praise hard work, national unity, and patriotism" (x-xi). In effect, Lawson argues that the Great Migration, the New Deal, and World War II transformed the blues from a counterculture that rejected labor as emblematic of racial subservience to one that celebrated the work ethic and the war effort as ways to claim full American citizenship.

Lawson organizes his study chronologically, tracing shifting incarnations of the blues from the early years of Jim Crow through World War II. Drawing on lyrics, biographies, and musicians' first-hand accounts, he claims that a work ethic developed within a counterculture that had previously rejected labor, thereby confirming white stereotypes of black laziness. Lawson contends that the new opportunities of the Great Migration laid the groundwork for this metamorphosis. World War I, by contrast, was a relatively minor influence since blues musicians rarely viewed the war as a means toward racial advancement, as did the black middle classes. The counterculture's growing work ethic emerged during the Great Depression as blues musicians bemoaned what Lawson describes as the "impoverished emasculation" of outright government aid while singing glowingly of the benefits of public works jobs (159). By World War II, he explains, blues musicians had invested themselves in a national identity that not only led them to press for citizenship rights, but to praise the war effort and condemn the nation's enemies—something they had largely declined to do during World War I. The counterculture of the "antiwork ethic" and black escapism had become one of pluralism, ready to reach across racial lines and espouse American ideals of hard work and patriotism (x). It was through these developments, Lawson claims, that blues musicians came to think of themselves as Americans, adopting "a wider identity beyond their individual selves or their race" (175).

Lawson deserves praise for his careful treatment of music and lyrics as historical artifacts. Indeed, some historians may demand more traditional archival materials; however, Lawson's unflinching insistence on viewing the blues as a rich sonic archive should be answer enough for those who take music seriously. Lawson's knowledge and love of the music is readily apparent as he incorporates lesser-known performers and, notwithstanding an overly male focus, a feature to which I shall return, does a good job of casting a wide net. He also adeptly connects the blues to a broader African American history, clearly demonstrating music's capacity to offer new perspectives on that story. Indeed, his exploration of musical expressions of disgust with racism in New Deal programs on the one hand, and the musical embrace of President Roosevelt's Second New Deal on the other, is an illuminating...