[78-L] Interesting, if LONG, read about Paramount and early blues recordings

[Joe Scott]

The idea that people "change American music" by making "ultrarare records" never fails to attract readers, does it? (Changing American music by making records of whatever style that sell really well for a while, that's unmagical by comparison.) Oh well, it's only the New York Times.
The only real reason to read the article is to see, way far down, Mack McCormick's transcript of an interview with one L.V. Thomas and (some of) the following discussion (her shoes maybe could give off a vibe, not so much). Thomas's recollection that "Take Me Back" and "Jack O'Diamonds" (non-blues black folk songs) were already around as of about 1902 or 1903 and that she didn't know the notion of "blues music" as of about 1902 or 1903 all adds up very well. Since she described her friend Geetchie Wiley and how they liked to play their guitars, etc., it looks like she's our lady (as Mack McCormack helpfully informed Paul Oliver in the 1960s).
The general stuff in the article has various problems.
The "country blues" was not born in any sense whatsoever in 1926, but in about 1905 (and Ed Andrews and others began recording country blues in 1924).
"Paramount [recorded...] an unprecedented, never-to-be-repeated, all-but-unconscious survey of America’s musical culture." No, what they recorded really wasn't very different from other record companies: Columbia recorded Peg Leg Howell's"Please Ma'am," Victor recorded Furry Lewis's "Kassie Jones," Gennett recorded Jay Bird Coleman's "No More Good Water 'Cause This Pond Is Dry," etc. etc. etc. etc.
Alan Lomax's 1940 list of important commercially-recorded folk was far from "the first time someone had publicly recognized these commercial recordings as something other than detritus," e.g. _Negro Workaday Songs_ by Odum (who had found blues in the field about seven years before Alan was born) and White published in 1926, Dorothy Scarborough's article based on her interview with W.C. Handy, Broonzy's appearance at Carnegie Hall in 1938.
For a while the article reads as if wanting to hear a particular recording of "Pick Poor Robin Clean" because it's "obscure" as of the '40s-'50s, that particular thing, is more notable than, say, being Luke Jordan and still knowing the song "Pick Poor Robin Clean" in the '40s-'50s.
I hope Mack McCormick's research finds a good home. I was never too impressed with his notion that blues arose in Texas given that Odum's and E.C. Perrow's research has been available since long before he was born and they documented the earliest known "blues" songs collected in the field, before 1910, in Mississippi and Georgia (that said, I suppose the Lomaxes' apparent falsehoods about John's research in pre-1910 Texas and blues may have influenced McCormick).
I know McCormick has said he likes to think that he ever saw Henry Thomas in person. Personally I'm not sure whether McCormick ever really saw "1874" in a family bible next to Thomas's name.
As an aside, there seems to be a style of article that has caught on in recent years: I went on an adventure; at first I thought one thing, later I thought another. Compared to just telling us what you currently believe and why, it can look like (more "Famine in Russia, civil war in Chile"-like) padding.
Joseph Scott
----- Original Message -----
From: David Lennick
Sent: 04/13/14 07:38 AM
To: 78L
Subject: [78-L] Interesting, if LONG, read about Paramount and early blues recordings

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