egroj world: Ragged but Right Black Traveling Shows, Coon Songs, and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz

Saturday, August 3, 2024

Ragged but Right Black Traveling Shows, Coon Songs, and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz

 


The commercial explosion of ragtime in the early twentieth century created previously unimagined opportunities for black performers. However, every prospect was mitigated by systemic racism. The biggest hits of the ragtime era weren't Scott Joplin's stately piano rags. “Coon songs,” with their ugly name, defined ragtime for the masses, and played a transitional role in the commercial ascendancy of blues and jazz.

In Ragged but Right, Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff investigate black musical comedy productions, sideshow bands, and itinerant tented minstrel shows. Ragtime history is crowned by the “big shows,” the stunning musical comedy successes of Williams and Walker, Bob Cole, and Ernest Hogan. Under the big tent of Tolliver's Smart Set, Ma Rainey, Clara Smith, and others were converted from “coon shouters” to “blues singers.”

Throughout the ragtime era and into the era of blues and jazz, circuses and Wild West shows exploited the popular demand for black music and culture, yet segregated and subordinated black performers to the sideshow tent. Not to be confused with their nineteenth-century white predecessors, black, tented minstrel shows such as the Rabbit's Foot and Silas Green from New Orleans provided blues and jazz-heavy vernacular entertainment that black southern audiences identified with and took pride in.

 

 









This file is intended only for preview!
I ask you to delete the file from your hard drive after reading it.
thank for the original uploader

4 comments:

  1. Qué maravilla de títulos, Egroj. Lástima que en castellano haya tan pocos proporcionalmente. En fin, me guardo algunos para intentarlo -con mi inglés de instituto y poco más- cuando termine con la colección de los de mi tierra. Por cierto, ¿tienes "La huella del gato", de Marco Noriega, una biografía de los Stray Cats? Un saludo.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No todavia no he dado con ese libro, sí ha estado en el blog el de Slim Phantom

      Delete
    2. No conozco a nadie que tenga el de La Huella, pero supongo que algún día aparecerá por algun lado. Slim... es de los tres el que menos me interesa musicalmente (colaboraciones de todo tipo incluidas), y por lo tanto también a otros niveles. A ver si algún día Brian y Lee sacan zumo a sus muñecas en algo que no sea riffear, slapear o 'solear' XD Muchas gracias.

      Delete