[78-L] Interracial recording hillbilly vs. jazz

Michael Biel mbiel at mbiel.com
Sun Sep 1 01:19:09 PDT 2013


Is the category vaudeville blues or vaudeville/blues?  Every one of Bert
Williams and Williams & Walker records would be interracial, and I
wouldn't put them in the same category as Mamie Smith.

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.,com 

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [78-L] Interracial recording hillbilly vs. jazz
From: gdkimball <gdkimball at cox.net>


And to add more silliness to the equation,  are we counting recordings
that feature Pacific Islanders and Haoles?



-------- Original message --------
From: Julian Vein <julianvein at blueyonder.co.uk> 
 
On 31/08/13 19:27, Joe Scott wrote:
> One of the chapters in the recent book Hidden In The Mix: The African American Presence In Country Music claims that the two largest categories of interracial recording before about 1933 were vaudeville blues (Mamie Smith with Joseph Samuels' band type stuff) followed by hillbilly. That's incorrect, there were more jazz than hillbilly. The writer apparently doesn't know that trumpeter Bill Moore's sessions with the likes of Tommy Dorsey were interracial sessions, e.g., which reminds us that if you compare one thing to another you should know about the other.
> Reminds me, another recent book, Black Recording Artists by Gibbs, he doesn't seem very interested in Achille Baquet or Bill Moore either.
> Joseph Scott
> _______________________________________________
>
> What would be more interesting is which social groups Baquet and Moore moved in outside the studio. Where did they feel most comfortable?

It seems we're in danger of descending into the "South African Pencil 
Test".
https://www.google.co.uk/#q=south+african+pencil+test

Should be get obsessed with the colour of a musician's skin down to this

amount of details.

      Julian Vein


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