Blues Before Sunrise: The Radio Interviews

Introduction

Introduction Blues Before Sunrise was first broadcast in June 1980. For the first ten years it was a local-only program broadcast on WBEZ, the public radio station in Chicago. In 1990 the program went into national syndication and today is heard on seventy-five stations across the nation. The focus of this award-winning program is on the first fifty years of recorded blues, starting with the very first blues record, “Crazy Blues” by Mamie Smith, recorded in 1920. When historians and musicologists refer to blues as “America’s root music,” it’s the blues recorded during this period to which they refer. These recordings serve as the basis for most of American popular music, including jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues, soul, and rock ’n’ roll. Each week the show explores, preserves, and popularizes the various genre and eras of the blues. Imagine walking through the rooms that house the record collection at the Smithsonian Institution, the walls lined from floor to ceiling with shelves of blues records—blues from every era and stylistic school ever known. Blues Before Sunrise is the program that pulls the records off the shelf and plays them for you, profiling the figures—seminal and obscure—that shaped this music; helping to breathe life into these neglected pioneers of popular culture, tracing their development and highlighting their relevance through the decades. Blues Before Sunrise is not just another record show; it’s a cultural treasure trove, the program where every week is Black History Month! In addition to playing records from this historic era, over the years I’ve made it a part of the program mission on Blues Before Sunrise to talk with the people who’ve made the music. Throughout its history this program has presented extensive, in-depth interviews with literally scores of blues people, including singers and players, record producers, managers, and deejays. These bluesmen and blueswomen have fascinating stories to share about their lives and careers, their recordings, and the bygone world that spawned the blues. These stories are humorous and dramatic and help bring to life this largely undocumented chapter of African American heritage. This book is a collection of twelve of the interviews/oral histories that were originally broadcast on the Blues Before Sunrise radio program. In almost every case the interviews selected for this book are definitive—the best, most informative conversations on record with each of these candidates. The interviewees in the “Ancient Age” section are all artists who recorded before World War II. With the deaths of Robert Jr. Lockwood and Henry Townsend in 2006, the interviews found in this section may be the final word from their generation. Over the next decade, the final few survivors of postwar Chicago blues will be gone as well. I hope this simple portfolio will ensure that the life stories that accompany their music will be preserved in full bloom for coming generations. xiv introduction ...