Pioneers of the Blues Revival

Preface

Preface Steve Cushing Whatever transgressions academia may ascribe to the pioneers of the blues revival, my purpose in compiling this book is to acknowledge and honor the work of this select group of early blues enthusiasts from the late 1950s and 1960s and to profile them as they tell their own stories in their own words. I selected these particular individuals because I was influenced by their work during the earliest days of my exploration into blues—by their books, their magazines, their reissued vintage recordings, and newly produced recordings by vintage artists. In recent years it has become stylish to disparage their efforts and the era, but I regard their efforts as selfless, honorable, and positive. And talking with the seventeen interviewees found in this manuscript has served only to reinforce that opinion. Their efforts resulted in financial comfort and renewed artistic acclaim for a number of prewar blues artists and provided a new audience for postwar blues that had been eclipsed as a commercial enterprise by doo-wop, rock ’n’ roll, and soul music. And viewed through a much wider lens, I believe the blues revival served as a second front in the 1960s civil rights movement, a benign alternative to the clashes in Alabama and Mississippi, an alternative where there was communication between the races, regardless of how awkward the early conversations may have been, as at least this small contingent of the two races began to learn how to talk to each other—no small accomplishment in a world of segregation. It’s been more than fifty years since they initiated the decade of blues activism we refer to as the “blues revival,” and most of the interviewees included here are about seventy years old or older. I hope this book will serve to help document these pioneers and their work. ...