The Poetry of the Blues

by Samuel Charters

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Genres: Music, Poetry

173 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Samuel Charters was an American music historian, writer, record producer, musician, and poet.

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before he was a film-maker, James Wolpaw worked at Lupo's Blues Club in Providence, and he did a good video on Blues, including some footage of my interviewing a couple Blues masters. Jimmy later put me in three films about poetry, one nominated for an Oscar, "Keats and His Nightingale: a Blind Date" in 1986. Then a PBS film on Dickinson, "A Loaded Gun," and a film on a local RI poet, where I don't think I made the cut.
Back then I learned from the Blues men and their friends that the two great Black musical forms, Gospel and the Blues, were gender-specific, men generally preferring the Blues, and women, Gospel. Of course, there were singers of both genders in both genres. Charters starts his Ch. 4 with "Although the blues has always been an expression of...the Negro community, it has never been accepted by the entire social group. Among both religious people and among the growing middle class professional groups there is often a dislike or disinterest in the blues. The religious feeling is very strong, and in the South many singers who have become church members are reluctant to perform anything but church music. The preoccupations of the blues: love, sexuality, personal disappointment and unhappiness are felt to be an insistent reminder of the worldly life that the Christian should forget"(57).

To prepare for interviewing Jimmy's Blues men, I got this book from him, maybe early 1980's. A good book, perhaps in need of more Black dialect for rhythmic accuracy and tone. One of the oldest,
"Feeling tomorrow, like I feel today,
If I feel tomorrow like I feel today,
I'll pack my suitcase, and make my getaway."
I always heard "Feelin'" in the first line, and in the last, "pack my bag," but I am recalling sixty years ago when I first heard it.
Charters makes great points about what's behind the here and gone males in the Blues: the social upheaval, in the 1950's, when 325,000 Blacks left Mississippi and 220,000 fled Alabama (101). They sang about the highways they had to travel, like Big Joe Williams' "Highway 49," in Mississippi.
The Blues is full of wonderful metaphors for love and sex, and also unexpected verbs for rhyme, like "I heard a low whisper, the door begin to cry/ It wasn't the milkman, 'cause he done passed on by"(90).
Charters contrasts pop songs with the Blues, "There is little concern with conventional morality in the blues...While the conventional American song remains in its adolescent dream of unending tremulous affection, the blues, with a complete frankness, accepts the reality of adultery and promiscuity with a resigned shrug"(91).

Many Blues singers emphasize sincerity, that the singer must himself have had the experience his blues expresses. Memphis Willie B said, "A blues is about something real, what a man feels when his wife leaves him, or some disappointment that happens to him that he can't do anything about. That's why none of these young boys can really sing the blues"(18). I say in the margin, Same goes for teaching Shakespeare's tragedies to 15-year olds. They haven't had the defeats to understand.
When asked what made a good Blues singer, Henry Townsend laughed, "Trouble...that's right. You can only express what happened to you." But singing the blues can also save a married couple from fighting, when Baby Tate gets the Blues from his wife, "what gives me the blues, when my wife makes me mad...Well, the first thing I do I'll grab my guitar and walk out of the house to keep from having a fight"(19). That's brilliant, playing guitar and writing Blues to keep from marital spat.

[nina]

quickly re-read this for my dissertation. efficient summary of the themes in the blues, but the last chapter is excessively patronising and demeaning in its arguing that there is "little political protest" in the blues. and the whole time it sounds like Charters tries to convince the white audience interested in the revival that black people are people too. also sometimes just doesn't name the songs that are quoted? weird. anyway, useful for a very quick and white overview of blues lyrics, but just go read Angela Davis' Blues Legacies and Black Feminism instead

[Garry Marlton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the best read but it was interesting because it was short.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

As you might imagine from the title, this reads a bit like a week of English 101 lectures. There are several examples of lyrics, but unfortunately few references to the titles or recording labels that would help you track down the music. It gets a little preachy at times and sometimes seems like the book was written (in 1963) as much to convince white folks that black folks are people too as to discuss the lyrics of the blues.