Black History Month: Books

BLOOD & SOIL: America’s poor–cotton field slaves, mine workers, sharecroppers–find freedom through music, creating gospel, protest songs, and Delta Blues.

Everything has been written about the private life of Billie Holiday: a youth shattered by violence, a marital journey with many lows and an addiction to hard drugs which ate away a good part of her life. Skilfully crafted, the documentary "Billie Holiday, The Life And Artistry Of Lady Day" takes the opposite view of this tragic destiny and above all recalls the main musical chapters of the lady with the gardenia. Short but precise, this film presents her trajectory in the clubs of the Big Apple and her musical collaborations with Teddy Wilson and Artie Shaw. Summarized here in a few shots, the meeting with the saxophonist Lester Young nevertheless testifies to a most inspired artistic collaboration. And the racist lynchings of the Deep South are openly denounced with a masterful interpretation of the terrible "Strange Fruit," based on a text by Abel Meeropol. Obviously the post-war period and the signatures with labels like Decca and Verve are rightly described as creative. The bewitching timbre of Billie Holiday’s voice loses its fluidity, however, and develops a dusky tone. A fact confirmed with the moving “Lady In Satin,” a disc of unfathomable sadness and a swan song of the woman who, in his time, Lester Young nicknamed Lady Day. Vincent Caffiaux

On February 7, 2003, renowned artists across music genres and generations commandeered the stage at New York City's Radio City Music Hall to pay tribute to their common heritage and passion: the blues. Shared with thousands of fans in attendance, legendary performers from the roots of rock, jazz, and rap joined forces for a once-in-a-lifetime salute to the blues benefit concert whose proceeds went to musical education. Executive produced by Martin Scorcese, produced by Alex Gibney and directed by Antoine Fuqua, Lightning in a Bottle captures the night's magic and weaves a history of blues through the juxtaposition of performers, backstage interviews, rehearsals, and archival clips of some of the greatest names in American music, from blues royalty like Buddy Guy and B. B. King to their musical heirs ranging from John Fogerty and Bonnie Raitt to Mos Def and Indie.Arie.

In their graphic novel Love in Vain published in 2014, Mezzo and Dupont, two French cartoon artists, tell the tale of legendary bluesman Robert Johnson’s chaotic life (1911-1938). Like other iconic musicians after him, Johnson met with a tragic death at the age of 27. Translated worldwide, the book became a best seller. Three years later, Mezzo and Dupont traveled to Mississippi on their character’s tracks, to the birthplace of the blues. Highlighted with music and drawings, Mississippi Ramblin’ recounts their trip, peppered with numerous encounters with genuine bluesmen of the Deep South.

This documentary pays tribute to the rich African American blues heritage of the largest city in Texas by tracing the unlikely relationship between a cast of colorful characters and a Chicagoborn photographer now living in Ireland. The primary focus is a 1998 reunion of almost 80 musicians for a group portrait, an event staged in a Third Ward building that dates back to Temple Beth Israel, the state’s oldest Jewish congregation. Yet the larger story incorporates additional video produced, in Houston and in Ireland, between 1995 and 2018. Ultimately Our Great Day blends diverse elements of local history— musical, socioethnic, even entrepreneurial and architectural—with blues performances, interviews with artists and insiders, and personal reflections by and about a fortunate photographer and his transatlantic connection to the original blues people of Houston.

As part of recapturing our lost and hidden past, "T'Ain't Nobody's Bizness" presents the facts concerning the alternative sexualities of famous blues singers in a way that is unsensational yet entertaining. Many people will be surprised at how developed and robust alternative sexualities were 90 years ago. Although some of these women strove to hide and deny their same-sex activities in later years, especially if they turned to religion, their lesbian and bisexual proclivities contributed to the sexual and social freedom they championed for women both in their careers and in their personal lives.

Guitar icon Buddy Guy reflects on his legacy and passes along the blues lessons he himself received from legends Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf to a phenom of the next generation in this stirring documentary.

Wild Women Don't Have the Blues shows how the blues were born out of the economic and social transformation of African American life early in this century. It recaptures the lives and times of Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Alberta Hunter, Ethel Waters and the other legendary women who made the blues a vital part of American culture. The film brings together for the first time dozens of rare, classic renditions of the early blues. What we call the blues can be traced back to the work songs of generations of Black fieldhands. Ma Rainey, "Mother of the Blues," first put this folk idiom on stage in 1902. Others, like Ida Cox and Bessie Smith, took songs like "Downhearted Blues" and "Jailhouse Blues" on the road with traveling vaudeville and minstrel shows.The Blues performers provided cultural continuity for millions of blacks who migrated from the rural South to the industrial cities of the North during World War I. Mamie Smith broke new ground in the 1920s when she shouted out "Crazy Blues" - the first blues recording by a a black woman and one that opened up the recording industry to black artists. Bessie Smith brought black music to a national audience in the groundbreaking early "talkie" St. Louis Blues. Survivors of the blues era remind us that celebrity status offered little protection against segregation and economic exploitation. Few of these women received much financial reward from their popularity. With the Depression, American musical taste shifted towards the upbeat sounds of swing, and the classic blues died out. Yet as contemporary Chicago blues artist Koko Taylor reminds us, the blues and their legacy continue. "You get up in the morning and go to work and your boss tells you you been laid off. Your got the blues. Believe it or not, even the President's got the blues."