Sam Charters RIP

[Chuck Nessa]

Surprised to see no notice on this board. He was a fascinating and frustrating man, as are many good ones.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/19/arts/music/samuel-charters-foundational-scholar-of-the-blues-dies-at-85.html?_r=0

[Larry Kart]

It was mentioned here:

One of my best friends knew Sam and his wife Ann (scholar of the Beat Generation) from 1966 on. He said earlier today:

"It's the most laudatory obit I can imagine about Sam, whom I knew well since he walked in the front door of our house on Thayer St. [in Evanston, Il.] in summer of 1966, referred to us by [a friend] whom Ann taught at Colby and Jim Schwall (Sam was recording Siegel/Schwall Band). He and Ann were tireless self-promoters but they did publish 50+ books between them, and over the years I ran into many people who'd read some of them.

"Sam was a hustler. He had genuine interests, but too many of them: blues, jazz, the Beats, poetry, Black Mountain, Swedish movies, Scandanavian classical music, women painters, etc., etc. What he and Ann wanted was more, and thus were never satisfied."

I got crosswise with Charters once when he messed up the reissue of the 1950s Vanguard label jazz recordings that John Hammond made, scattering sessions between CDs, getting personal listings wrong, maybe even leaving off some tracks altogether,; I don't recall all of it now, but it was a flaming mess. So I wrote to some honcho at the Moss Music Group (I think it was them), going into detail about how Sam was doing the job in such a clueless way as to piss off the logical audience for these recordings and make it less likely that they would be purchased. Apparently this hit home, because they let Sam go in midstream. When I ran into him a while later at my friend's apartment, his attitude seemed to be IIRC, "How could you do that to me -- complain to a corporate guy? You and I are both fans, right?"

[Chuck Nessa]

That seems true. Delete if you want.

[paul secor]

He has my thanks for being the first to record Joseph Spence. The blues recordings he did were somewhat hit or miss imo, but the J.D. Short recordings from the early '60's and Buddy Guy's A Man & the Blues are top notch.

[Chuck Nessa]

First time I met Sam (1966) he said something like "if you want to get noticed, find something nobody is writing about and produce a book. That's what I did."

[Chuck Nessa]

any way to merge the relevant comments from both threads? I want to speak about the whole deal.

[Larry Kart]

This has my name on it, but it's John L's post from the other thread:

"His [Charter's] encouraging Americans' appreciation of blues was certainly valuable in the 1950s and '60s. I remember Bob Koester leading him to Chicago musicians to make those Vanguard albums in 1966. But this obituary makes Bukka White, Sleepy John Estes, etc. appear important only because inferior musicians such as Bob Dylan, etc. sang their blues."

Could merge that whole books on the blues thread with this one but not just a part of it, except by copying a post, as I've done.

[JSngry]

It was mentioned here:

One of my best friends knew Sam and his wife Ann (scholar of the Beat Generation) from 1966 on. He said earlier today:

..."Sam was a hustler. He had genuine interests, but too many of them: blues, jazz, the Beats, poetry, Black Mountain, Swedish movies, Scandanavian classical music, women painters, etc., etc. What he and Ann wanted was more, and thus were never satisfied."

Don't know if that applies to those specific people, but I find the (what appears to be) general premise that one can have "too many" "genuine interests" and as a result be "never satisfied" to perhaps be questionable and/or Puritanical and or maybe just a little short-dicked.

You tell me.

[Neal Pomea]

He did an important Cajun recording live from Fred's Lounge in Mamou when the band had Revon Reed announcing, Sady Courville, Roy Fuselier, and Preston Manuel.

This is Mamou Cajun Radio, Sonet lp 802, 1979

[AllenLowe]

Larry Gushee's remarks on Charters' New Orleans work were.....colorful.

[paul secor]

He did an important Cajun recording live from Fred's Lounge in Mamou when the band had Revon Reed announcing, Sady Courville, Roy Fuselier, and Preston Manuel.

This is Mamou Cajun Radio, Sonet lp 802, 1979

He also recorded two albums on Sonet: The Cajuns Volumes 1 & 2. Volume 1 has some dynamic music by The Balfa Brothers with Nathan Abshire.

[Neal Pomea]

He did an important Cajun recording live from Fred's Lounge in Mamou when the band had Revon Reed announcing, Sady Courville, Roy Fuselier, and Preston Manuel.

This is Mamou Cajun Radio, Sonet lp 802, 1979

He also recorded two albums on Sonet: The Cajuns Volumes 1 & 2. Volume 1 has some dynamic music by The Balfa Brothers with Nathan Abshire.

[Larry Kart]

It was mentioned here:

One of my best friends knew Sam and his wife Ann (scholar of the Beat Generation) from 1966 on. He said earlier today:

..."Sam was a hustler. He had genuine interests, but too many of them: blues, jazz, the Beats, poetry, Black Mountain, Swedish movies, Scandanavian classical music, women painters, etc., etc. What he and Ann wanted was more, and thus were never satisfied."

Don't know if that applies to those specific people, but I find the (what appears to be) general premise that one can have "too many" "genuine interests" and as a result be "never satisfied" to perhaps be questionable and/or Puritanical and or maybe just a little short-dicked.

You tell me.

I think what my friend meant -- and again he knew Sam and Ann Charters well for about fifty years -- was that Sam had so many interests that he often handled them in a rather slap-dash and/or half-assed manner. Or to put it another way, if you yourself were knowledgable about a field that Sam was/had been delving into, you might have doubts about how (and in some cases why) he was going about his delving. Further, speaking from personal if limited direct experience with Sam (see post #2 above), when confronted about his sometime fast-and-loose methods, he defaulted to the position that a man with his fingers in so many worthy pies shouldn't/couldn't be expected to pay that much attention to how the pies actually turned out/tasted.

[Larry Kart]

A bit more, Jim: Maybe I am bit too puritanical at times about some things (haven't measured my dick lately, though), but if so, I'm especially so about people who get into worthwhile areas that have been unjustly ignored and (see Charter's remark that Chuck quotes in post #5 above) then often proceed there as though that absolves them from the need to be scrupulous, careful, etc. (In effect, you might think of Charters as the anti-Nessa.) Aside from the moral side of this, the practical danger here is that the self-promoting, slap-dash would-be pioneer often establishes his fantasies and fabrications as "facts" that then are cited down the corridors of time until someone who really knows what's what takes the trouble to contradict them. E.g. See Allen's post #10 above about Larry Gushee on Charters' New Orleans work.

[AllenLowe]

as an addendum, Charters once described to me, as though he knew for certain, how Buddy Bolden's band sounded; in my then-innocence I believed him. Years later, having gotten to know Gushee, I repeated this to him and he basically told me that this info was to be taken with the same degree of complete disbelief that other historical work of Charters should be taken.

Edited March 20, 2015 by AllenLowe

[Larry Kart]

Would the world have been a better place without Sam Charters in it?

IMO, no.

Could Sam Charters have done what he did/tried to do in a more careful, scrupulous manner?

IMO, yes. Other people have.

The problem, I think, is that there are at least three ways or types involved here:

1) The romantic pioneer in the field who is rather fast and loose at times of arguable necessity (the Lomaxes, perhaps?), because there is so much underbrush to be cleared

2) The also pioneering scrupulous, honorable producer or scholar e.g. Nessa, Gushee

3) The guy who is in effect bouncing off of type #1 some years down the road in an imitative and at times self-promoting fashion, with his slap-dash moments being less a matter of the depth of the underbrush to be cleared away but of an "I don't want to be/can't be bothered" attitude. That IMO was Charters -- the good with the not so good or even the bad at times.

[JSngry]

Well, ok then. The problem seems to have been that not that people can have "too many genuine interests" & that doing so never satisfies them, it's that Charters himself was a bit rushy and sloppy and grabby and opportunistic as opposed to being focused and dedicated. His flaws seem to have been distinctly of himself, not of some general moral imbalance which would inevitably and predictably come to be befallen unto anybody who pursued a wide range of interests.

Those seem to be too different things to me, but the statement you quoted seemed to me to imply otherwise.

[Larry Kart]

Well, ok then. The problem seems to have been that not that people can have "too many genuine interests" & that doing so never satisfies them, it's that Charters himself was a bit rushy and sloppy and grabby and opportunistic as opposed to being focused and dedicated. His flaws seem to have been distinctly of himself, not of some general moral imbalance which would inevitably and predictably come to be befallen unto anybody who pursued a wide range of interests.

Those seem to be too different things to me, but the statement you quoted seemed to me to imply otherwise.

Just to be clear, the "too many genuine interests" passage was not mine but that of a good friend of mine who knew Charters well for some 60 years. I can't explain more precisely what he meant by that (and what he didn't say that might have stood behind what he said), except that my friend is a generous-minded person in general and, it always seemed to me, toward Charters in particular.

[JSngry]

Yeah, that was all clear. Just was uncomfortable with the possibly implied disrespect/disdain towards those whose tastes tend towards the omnivorous. Might not have been what he meant, at all, but I couldn't tell. As someone whose tastes tend that way myself, I scoff at the notion/implication that it by default leaves one "not satisfied", and I will hold that "too many genuine interests" is simply an indicator of what the individual does with the input, not with the amount of input itself, not a case of "too many" but rather "carelessly handled".

OTOH, maybe not what was meant at all, unconsciously or otherwise, so...never mind!

[7/4]

I used to work in the same office as Ann. I had no idea who she was until years later. I helped her with computer problems a few times.

take care Sam.