Cross the Water Blues: African American Music in Europe

2. Taking the Measure of the Blues

23 Our band is the cat’s nuts— Banjo jazz, with a nickel-plated amplifier, To soothe the savage breast . . . That’s how I remember the beginning of a poem with which I, and my friend Jimmy Gribble, opened our first recital of jazz and blues at Harrow College of Art, close on six decades ago. Some of our fellow students were amused, a few were shocked, many were puzzled, but we used it to draw attention to the originality of a contemporary American poet, William Carlos Williams, as well as to the mistakes, misconceptions, and stereotypes which the poem conveyed, if it were taken literally. Nostalgically, I even thought of using it to open my talk at the conference in Gloucestershire, but I felt that maybe it wouldn’t be appropriate. Jimmy and I gave a few such recitals illustrated with 78rpm records from our respective growing jazz and blues collections, until the principal of the College, John Platt, went berserk in threatening us with expulsion, if we played “such muck” again. Taking the Measure of the Blues 2 —PAUL OLIVER 24 PAUL OLIVER For us it was a period of discovery in art and music; particularly for me, one of excitement as I explored African tribal art, and the music of African American blues. In his introduction Neil Wynn mentioned that it was the unique and spine-chilling experience of hearing the singing of black servicemen on “fatigues” who were “digging in” an American military base at Stoke-by-Clare in Suffolk, which stimulated a lifetime passion. “They’re singing a blues,” my fellow harvest camp worker, Stan Higham, told me. He had fifty or so blues records kept in an orange box, and it was hearing these that started my collecting. I’ve often been asked how, during World War II and the lean years after, it was possible to find blues records, and what items were among them. Some have inquired how I, and presumably, other collectors , developed our taste in the music and our understanding of it. How was it, I would be asked, that some of the earliest and most informed writing on blues, including the first large-format blues magazine, was published in Britain, when a blues singer had not even visited the country, let alone sang to the enthusiasts? How, using a phrase current at the time, did we “take the measure of the blues”? As the term is one which implies evaluation and assessment of the quality of blues in our experience, it really requires an assessment of the criteria that were applied, and the standards by which the performances were assessed. But it goes deeper than that, for the issue that it raises is one which is fundamental: what attracted us to blues in the first place, and how did we meet it or adjust to it? To put it more simply: what was the appeal of the blues? I cannot give an answer to these queries on behalf of all who were excited by the music, because we each came to it by different routes and were engaged in it for different reasons. I must therefore speak for myself, although I am aware that a number of other enthusiasts came to the blues from a position which, to some extent we shared: that of the enjoyment of folk music. Of course, one could ask the identical questions in relation to the appeal of folk music and song,but the story is somewhat different.For me,and others of my generation, folk music and folk dancing were actually part of our education—they were an element in school life. Many practices that are now regarded with nostalgia or with patronizing curiosity were customary experiences: Maypole dances or Morris dancing, for instance. Bargees still sang the songs of the sailing barges; there were fiddlers, singers, and string 25 TAKING THE MEASURE OF THE BLUES players in innumerable villages,and veterans who still recalled the sea shanties of their youth. It was fun, it was interesting, and I was a folk music enthusiast. Yet there were aspects that many of my contemporaries did not appreciate. For example, the melodies of folk music often appeared simple, and were frequently “arranged”for concert presentation—satisfying some,and infuriating me. It was their beauty in simplicity that meant much to me. On the other hand, the singers had their repertoires, and many...