Long Lost Blues: Popular Blues in America, 1850-1920

Long Lost Blues: Popular Blues in America, 1850-1920
ISBN-10
0252056043
ISBN-13
9780252056048
Category
Music
Pages
282
Language
English
Published
2024-03-18
Publisher
University of Illinois Press
Author
Peter C. Muir

Description

Mamie Smith's 1920 recording of ""Crazy Blues"" is commonly thought to signify the beginning of commercial attention to blues music and culture, but by that year more than 450 other blues titles had already appeared in sheet music and on recordings. In this examination of early popular blues, Peter C. Muir traces the genre's early history and the highly creative interplay between folk and popular forms, focusing especially on the roles W. C. Handy played in both blues music and the music business. Long Lost Blues exposes for the first time the full scope and importance of early popular blues to mainstream American culture in the early twentieth century. Closely analyzing sheet music and other print sources that have previously gone unexamined, Muir revises our understanding of the evolution and sociology of blues at its inception.

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