Two New Books for Pre Order

[AllenLowe]

As I've mentioned I have various books which have remained in ms over the years but not been published, and a new project on the blues that has been in limbo. The original plan was to bring a bunch of these out as Ebooks, but due to various problems that idea has been shelved (though it will probably eventually happen). I am working now with a small press to get my rock and roll history and my blues chronicle into hard copy print; both will be linked with a web site with substantial musical samples (over 800 for the blues book alone). In order to make this project financially floatable I need to have a modest pre-order of 25 of each of these books. We will be selling each them at $20 plus shipping ($8 in the USA, $20 to Europe; US postal rates have unfortunately gone beserk). Order both for $30 plus shipping.

the two titles are:

Really the Blues?

A Horizontal Chronicle of the Vertical Blues 1893-1959

and:

God Didn’t Like It:

Electric Hillbillies, Singing Preachers,

and the Beginnings of Rock and Roll,

1950-1970

I expect to have them available by late October or early November; unless the pre-order is insufficient in which case I will give a full refund or the option to wait (they will eventually be out, I am certain). I can take check, cash, paypal, m.o., whatever. Email me at allenlowe5@gmail.com to reserve and pay; I am very proud of these two books, and will include, in my next post, the intro to the blues book by James Smethurst of the University of Massachusetts (the blues book, btw, will have a previously unpublished photo of Son House).

Edited August 22, 2013 by AllenLowe

[AllenLowe]

Intro by James Smethurst, Professor of African American Studies, U Massachusetts. to "Really the Blues?"

"This book represents Allen Lowe at his idiosyncratic, eclectic, freewheeling, analytically sharp, and historically astute best. He invites you to take exception with him while causing you to rethink many of your deeply held shibboleths about the blues and African American music. He wears his opinions on his sleeve and then works mightily to back them up. Strangely enough, this is a book about the blues that insists that the blues was one of many forms of African American music rather than the absolute bedrock of African American music. In many respects, the core of the book is the demonstration of the entrance of many popular genres of African American and European American “high” and popular music into both the blues and the repertoire of many early artists we associate with the blues, from the music’s very inception - as well as the entrance of the blues into many genres of popular music.

He gives due, if still somewhat controversial, credit to African American minstrelsy, medicine show music, ragtime and the related genre of the “coon” song and performance, with all these genres’ ambivalencies and contradictions in the development and circulation of the blues as a popular form (if one can speak of the blues as a single form) as well as in the development of the popular blues artist. At the same time, as he discusses in a personal account in the form of a Q & A that begins the book, he is much concerned with the question of how authenticity might work in such an aesthetically and commercially mixed form that is African American at its base, but significantly practiced and influenced by so-called white music and artists from very early on. What I find particularly engaging about Lowe’s discussion of authenticity is that he does not simply reject the notion of authenticity in post-modern fashion, but finds ways of reinvigorating that notion for the discussion of a patently hybrid music that had roots in the black folk sometime in the nineteenth century, but which subsequently travelled much geographically, aesthetically, sonically, and commercially. To put it another way, he takes the blues seriously as a historically bound musical genre with serious aesthetic concerns and expectations, even if those concerns and expectations were constantly being negotiated and renegotiated in the relationships between the blues artists and their audiences within the peculiar context of the popular music industry of the United States.

Following the opening setting of the terms and concerns of discussion, the book is not a seamless narrative. Rather, it is a sort of chronological travelogue that focuses on a series of artists and recordings without a lot of transition. This has the virtue of looking carefully at individual recordings and artists that we might not know (e.g., the Afro American Folk Song Singers and Al Bernard) as well as others that we thought we knew (W.C. Handy and Mamie Smith), but whom Lowe shows from angles that we might not have considered. One pleasure of this approach is that Lowe’s palpable love for the music he discusses is made clear while at the same time he avoids the well-worn clichés and received narratives about the blues and jazz that have attended criticism of the those musical genres for decades.

While there is much worthwhile to found throughout the book, I found the first part, focusing on the early recordings of black and white artists engaging the blues, basically African American forms contemporary with the early blues, and what might be thought of as pre-blues, to be most revelatory. It seems to me to be the best and most concise catalogue of the early-recorded blues.

Again, if one is looking for the “story” of the blues (and jazz) told in either some rise and fall declension narrative or an ahistorical “the blues always was and will be” manner, this is not one of those books. However, if you want to read an episodic, chronological survey animated by the lively critical intelligence of a jazz musician, fan, and historian, a survey that will call many earlier narratives of the blues and the blues in jazz into question without rejecting the possibility of narrative, then this is that book."

Edited August 22, 2013 by AllenLowe

[AllenLowe]

some comments on my past work:

Allen Lowe has made a crucial contribution to American culture, and all those who want to see our musical history whole are in his debt."

-Greil Marcus

“Allen Lowe is a great writer….an American master…. (and) one of the few musicians doing anything new today. He is the tradition. I’m a big fan of Allen Lowe and I think as a musician and a scholar he is very important and I think he is deeply misunderstood because he doesn’t hate himself."

-Anthony Braxton

“That Devilin’ Tune combines the best features of the musicological and jazz critical traditions. (It) is criticism of the best sort. It does not evaluate, rank, or taxonomize—it elucidates and makes relevant to the way we perceive the totality of the music, the way we recreate these sounds in our own imaginations. It is a perhaps the first real jazz morphology… a musical attitude, a loose alliance of very different kinds of information, that manages to cohere and flow through any available circuit, and across any geographical and anthropological borders.”

-Joe Milazzo

“Allen Lowe has “forced us to rethink everything we ‘know’ about jazz” - but I’ll add that he's also forced us to question what we know about pop, country, and the blues as well. He has historicized pop music brilliantly…and the fact that he did it, and not one of the “big” recording companies who are sitting on treasures of American music, is all the more astonishing.”

-John Szwed

“Let’s hope he finds an audience.”

-Harvey pekar

Edited August 22, 2013 by AllenLowe

[Big Beat Steve]

O.K., so if I got this right I'd need to pay $50 for both of these books plus shipping to Europe, right?

WIll send a mail during the weekend with my formal reservation and payment.

BTW, did I overlook something or is the Really The Blues Vol. 1 (1893-1929) CD set the only set of the projected 4 that has for far been released?

[AllenLowe]

yes to both. this will complete the blues project (the remaining music will be on line).

my paypal, btw, is alowe5@maine.rr.com

Edited August 23, 2013 by AllenLowe

[AllenLowe]

it may be bad form but I need to bump this; a little underwhelmed by the response. So we'll keep trying, Thanks to those who have ordered,

[AllenLowe]

thanks everyone, we need two more orders to hit our goal; don't disappoint Jerry's kids, who are not known for their forgiving ways.

Edited August 24, 2013 by AllenLowe

[Big Beat Steve]

As promised in my initial mail, my preorder for both of your books just went out through P'pal.

Hope you will be able to round up enough preorders for both books soon..

[Larry Kart]

Mine will be in the mail today.

[king ubu]

I'm in but need a few days to send payment.

Edited August 24, 2013 by king ubu

[AllenLowe]

we're not going anywhere.

actually, we're right on goal, thanks everybody, we have enough to go forward.

[mikeweil]

I'll be in for the blues book when it's out - but ordered too many things already this month. Glad you reached the first line.