When I received the press release for the book
Texas Blues by Alan Govenar (Texas A & M Press), I thought it looked like a good read. I am about half way through reading a book on the Delta Blues, so I requested the book. A few days latter there was a box on my doorstep. Now, usually when I get a book it is a good strudy envelope, but this was a box. Inside was
Texas Blues. This thing weighs in at around 11" by 8" and is over 600 pages long, including discographical info and indexes. It is like a text bok for Texas blues. Dividing the state into regions (with a couple sections specific to style or instrument), Govenar presents here an in-depth oral history of Texas blues, using interviews with the artists themselves to tell their own story of the music. The book is also filled with rare and beautiful pictures of the artists at leisure and at work.
This is Mr. Govenar's sixth book on the blues and his research runs deep. I appreciate Mr. Govenar taking the time to give his thoughts on the book and his work.
Music Tomes: How did you first become interested in the blues?Alan Govenar: My interest in the blues dates back to when I was four years old in the inner city of Boston. The first LPs I remember my father bringing home were
The Twelve Top Hits of 1956, an anthology of rhythm and blues and early rock 'n' roll, and a jazz and blues compilation that included Sarah Vaughn, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie.
MT: Your newest book, Texas Blues, is quite impressive! It is like a text book for the blues. You mention in the book that you formed the idea for the book in 1987, and you went on to publish five books on the blues between that time and now. How did those books inform what you did in "Texas Blues" and vice versa?AG: I had studied Texas blues in a folklore class when I was a junior at Ohio State University in 1973, but when I moved to Austin to go to graduate school, I was surprised that there were no books on the subject. I had read the books of Paul Oliver and Sam Charters, who both covered different facets of the history of Texas blues, but did not explore the influence of T-Bone Walker. In 1984, I got a commission from the Dallas Museum of Art to do a project, called "Living Texas Blues," which involved the writing of a small book, the production of three short films, and the compilation of an anthology of recordings to show how the growth of Texas blues paralleled the emergence of a regional style of painting among a group of painters known as "The Dallas Nine." This project became the basis of my book
Meeting the Blues: The Rise of the Texas Sound, which in turn led to
The Early Years of Rhythm Blues: The Photography of Benny Joseph and
Deep Ellum and Central Track: Where the Black and White Worlds of Dallas Converged (which I co-authored with Jay Brakefield). All of these books inform
Texas Blues: The Rise of a Contemporary Sound, but about 30-40% of the book represents new research, especially as it relates to the discussion of the blues antecedents in the 19th century and to younger, cross-over musicians on the scene today. The idea was to bring together elements of my earlier work to present a more comprehensive overview.
MT: Texas Blues is over 500 pages long (not counting dicographical information and indexes), was there ever a point that you felt like it might be getting too big? That you might need to narrow the scope?AG: I wanted to be as inclusive as possible, not only as it related to the text, but to the photographs and ephemera associated with the music. There were many color of photographs of mine that had never been published, as well as numerous images in the collections of the Texas African American Photography Archive, which I co-founded with Kaleta Doolin. While the book is big and comprehensive, it is by no means definitive. There is still more work to be done.
MT: What was the hardest part of putting the book together?AG: The most difficult part of compiling the book was providing a cohesiveness that unified the text, photographs, and ephemera. While in many instances the photographs and ephemera illustrate points made in the text, this is not uniformly the case. The history of Texas blues is intrinsically fragmentary, and through these oral histories, narratives, and visual images, the vast scope of the music comes into view.
MT: There are other areas that are associated with the blue and when they are brought up, you get a good idea of what the sound is. for instance when people talk about the Chicago Blues, most people think of those early electric guitar recordings of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, while if you mention Piedmont you think of finger-style acoustic. Texas blues, on the other hand, can cover all of those things, from acoustic to electric and several points in between. What is it about the state that causes the music to be so diverse?AG: In Texas, the blues developed a unique character that resulted from the cross-pollination of musical styles — itself an outcome of the migratory patterns of African Americans and the growth of the recording industry. Not only is the African American population of Texas less concentrated than that of other states in the South, blues music in the region evolved in proximity to other important traditions: the rural Anglo, the Cajun and Creole, the Hispanic, and the Eastern and Central European.
MT: How did you decide to break the books into regions rather than assemble the stories by artist or style?AG: In many ways, the diversity of Texas blues stems from the geographical regions in which the music was performed. What unifies these variations is the influence of the electric guitar and its interplay with a distinctive saxophone sound, and consequently, I have devoted sections to these instruments. In addition, I felt the need to have a Zydeco section, because it feeds from and into the Texas blues. Breaking the book into geographical regions was a way to bett
er understand the immensity of the state and how a particular approach to music can be rooted in different communities. This was probably more true from a historical perspective. In the contemporary sound, these distinctions are, to some extent, artificial.
Texas Blues delves into the roots of regionalism, but ultimately demonstrates through the stories of younger musicians how regional identity has become somewhat irrelevant in the worlds of cyberspace and mass media communication.
MT: The book is made up of several interviews and a lot of great pictures, many taken by yourself. Is there an experience or two that stands out about some of those pictures?AG: The photograph of the couple dancing (p. x) opposite the acknowledgements page is one of my favorites. I had tried so many times to photograph the energy of the dance scene associated with Texas blues, especially the vitality of the Monday night shows at the Longhorn Ballroom during the 1980s. For me, this photograph epitomizes that power and elegance. Other favorites are two women at the Longhorn Ballroom (p.111), Robert Ealey (p.182), Clyde Langford (p. xx), the birthday celebration for Guitar Slim (Rayfield Jackson) in Houston (p. 313) and countless others.
MT: In the introduction you tell a great story about looking for the grave of Blind Lemon Jefferson and that leading to visiting the home of a couple of elderly ladies who, it seems, couldn't have cared less. Who was the most difficult subject to track down or interview?AG: The elderly women I met when researching stories about Blind Lemon were actually quite interested in what I was doing. While one of the women was not exactly sure of my motives, she was concerned that perhaps, I didn't know that Blind Lemon had died so long ago. I never think of the process of fieldwork and research as difficult. I enjoy looking and driving around, talking to people and finding a way to photograph and record what I experienced.
MT: What projects are you currently working on?AG: I am currently finishing a biography of the bluesman Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins, to be published next year by Chicago Review Press. I am also completing two books with Don Ed Hardy, the first of which will be published in the Spring 2009 by teNeues. In addition, I am designing and making the multimedia for Le Museé Franco Américan du château de Blérancourt in France and completing two films, one on Simon Shaheen, the Palestinian violinist and oud player, and the other on Qi Shu Fang and her Beijing Opera Company.
MT: Why do you feel the subjects you write about are important?AG: Too many histories of the blues take a very authoritative tone, focused more on the interpretations of the author than the perspective of the subjects. I wanted to give the subjects of my book the opportunity to speak for themselves, to establish their own points of view, even if it meant what they had to say was sometimes inexact and impressionistic. Through the stories of these blues artists, we can get a clearer understanding of the complex relations between myth, memory, and history.
MT: Can you recommend some other books on the subject that you consider essential reading?AG: I'd recommend the books of Paul Oliver:
The Story of the Blues,
Conversation with the Blues,
Blues off the Record: Thirty Years of Blues Commentary,
Broadcasting the Blues: Black Blues in the Segregation Era. Also, Roger Wood's books
Down in Houston and
Texas Zydeco, Charles Wolfe & Kip Lornell's
Leadbelly, and Gary Hartman's
History of Texas Music. My books,
Deep Ellum and Central Track: Where the Black and White Worlds of Dallas Converged, which I co-authored with Jay Brakefield and
The Early Years of Rhythm and Blues: The Photography of Benny Joseph also help elucidate the context in which Texas blues emerges as a regional sound. For young readers, check out my books,
Osceola: Memories of a Sharecropper's Daughter and
Stompin' at the Savoy: The Story of Norma Miller.
I wanted to take a minute and thank all of you who have been regular readers of the blog and to those new readers who are just discovering it. I've only been doing this blog for three months and the response has been great. I hope that I am able to help, in some small way, to get the word out on some releases that hadn't gotten much attention and that you, the reader, will be able to add some great books to your library.
