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2 “They Cert’ly Sound Good to Me” SHEET MUSIC, SOUTHERN VAUDEVILLE, AND THE COMMERCIAL ASCENDANCY OF THE BLUES LYNN ABBOTT AND DOUG SEROFF The era of popular blues music was not suddenly set into motion by Mamie Smith’s 1920 recording of“Crazy Blues.”By the time Mamie Smith was allowed to walk into a commercial recording studio, the blues was an Americanentertainmentinstitutionwithanaboundinglegendaryandafirmly established father figure,W.C.Handy.The history of the commercial ascendancy of the blues is partially preserved in sheet music and, although this field has been well plowed, new insights still crop up in the furrows. A more important but far less explored platform for the blues’ commercial ascendancy was the African American vaudeville stage, the history of which is embedded in the entertainment columns of black community newspapers. As soon as there was a visible network of black vaudeville theaters in the South, the first identifiable blues pioneers appeared before the footlights. Working through disparate cultural impulses, these self-determined southern vaudevillians gave specific direction to new vernacular forms, including the so-called classic blues heard on the first crashing wave of race recordings. Blues in its various twentieth-century expressions was shaped by the historical interaction of two separate impulses and the dynamic tension between them, all under the influence of a confounding outside force— commercialization in a racist society. The first impulse was to perpetuate the indigenous musical and cultural practices of the African American folk heritage, which eventually formed the cornerstone of an independent black cultural image.The second,countering impulse was to demonstrate mastery of standard Western musical and cultural conventions. Through this impulse came the necessary formalizing structures without which there could 50 . LYNN ABBOTT AND DOUG SEROFF have been no composition, development, dissemination, and widespread popularization of ragtime, blues, and jazz. Blues and jazz made their popular ascendancy through the door opened by ragtime and as the fruition of in-group musical expressions extending from slavery. Research in African American community newspapers of the early 1890s reveals diverse musical activity in a wide geographic sampling of black communities in every social stratum.1 This activity generally reflected trends and phenomena in the dominant culture. Vague rumblings of an independent force affecting the music gradually surfaced from deep within the black communities. Eastern Kansas, the land of John Brown and place of refuge for freedmen escaping the increasingly violent white southern reaction to radical reconstruction,appears to have been a primordial breeding ground for such developments. Witness this rather sheepish commentary from the “Literary and Musical” column of the November 17, 1893, edition of the Kansas City American Citizen: Now as to Kansas City’s musical world we can say but little this week. However , something is to be done this season to maintain interest in this art, for which Kansas City has made herself somewhat noted. We have a number of real professional musicians here, who, so far as talent is concerned, would be creditable to Boston; but it appears that something has diverted the exercise of their powers into channels remote from society’s path.Whether this is due to the proper amount of perseverance in a certain direction, or a lack of a proper appreciation on our part, deponent saith not. But so it is. Precisely what was diverting Kansas City’s local musicians was spelled out in the April 13, 1895, edition of the Leavenworth Herald: “If the present ‘rag’ craze does not die out pretty soon, every young man in the city will be able to play some kind of a‘rag’ and then call himself a piano player. At the present rate, Leavenworth will soon be a close second to Kansas City as a manufacturer of piano pugilists.” The emergent“rag craze”was firmly entrenched in neighborhood saloons, of which there were reported to be“thousands”in eastern Kansas during the 1890s.2 On April 27, 1895, the Topeka Weekly Call announced: “At the next meeting of the Leavenworth city council an ordinance prohibiting piano playing and other music in saloons is to be passed. The ordinance has been drafted by request of the police department. Music in Leavenworth saloons has become an almost indispensable feature.” To the editor of the Leavenworth Herald, the new music was a reflection of deteriorating social standards : “If you are a crapshooter and a ‘piano pugilist’ in Kansas City, it is a sign that you are a ‘society’ man.”3 [3...

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