Book Description

Why untold? Most blues histories, outstanding as they are, take us back to the late 1890s but rarely further. As South Carolina's Cradle of Jazz Project wrote: "From the end of the dances at Congo Square (c. 1820) to the beginning of jazz, there is a black hole ... when the old West African music slowly turned into the new music of America." America's Gift was written expressly to illuminate that 'black hole', to discover exactly what happened to America's slave music in the 19th century, and how it evolved during the centuries before. Why untold? First we examine the origins of Africa's ancient slave trade, the West's involvement with slavery from the 1400s, and how America's first Africans were pirated from Portuguese slavers. We tell how the musical rhythms of old Africa absorbed the melodies of white America, in the 17th and 18th centuries. We explain how various musical strands intertwined over those centuries, to finally create a music only named blues in 1912. Why untold? Such historical information is usually only available in isolation. America's Gift pieces the story together like a jigsaw puzzle, yet avoids the blues minutia and academic intensity often found in histories of 20th century blues. Not avoided are the 19th century's distasteful minstrel and coon song periods. Often cut from blues histories these days, these genres are so essential to blues' evolution. In America's Gift, facts are not overruled by political correctness.Why untold? Discover how and where the term 'blues' evolved and how it reached America. Find out how only white singers recorded blues in America, from 1914 to 1920, and why black singers didn't want to sing blues. America's Gift tells you who-did-what-first in the years leading up to and into the blues era, and the genres they did it in. It is the first book, to our knowledge, to link American sea shanties to the evolution of the blues.Why untold? America's Gift discovers blues recorded in London by African Americans three years BEFORE the generally-accepted date of 1920. It tracks down the earliest known African Americans playing the folk music later called blues, and what they sang. It discloses who published and recorded what blues song first, who recorded the first blues guitar, first guitar solo, first slide guitar, first harmonica, first country blues and first electric guitar blues, even earlier sometimes than previously thought. Why untold? Read about the great blues dispute of 1938 where two blues giants argued over the genre's past. America's Gift gives you the full blues story up to the 1950s. On the way it selects 20 rocking blues tracks that pre-empted rock 'n' roll. These date from 1936 to 1949, years before the oft-cited Rocket 88 in 1952.America's Gift is illustrated, nearly a foot tall and an inch thick, with 367 pages of easy-to-read type and a 21-page index. It has been described as a "lightening read", just in case you're thinking it might be a bit stodgy.