The following warnings occurred:
Warning [2] Undefined array key "lockoutexpiry" - Line: 94 - File: global.php PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/global.php 94 errorHandler->error
/showthread.php 28 require_once
Warning [2] Undefined array key "lockoutexpiry" - Line: 550 - File: global.php PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/global.php 550 errorHandler->error
/showthread.php 28 require_once
Warning [2] Undefined array key "avatartype" - Line: 811 - File: global.php PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/global.php 811 errorHandler->error
/showthread.php 28 require_once
Warning [2] Undefined array key "avatartype" - Line: 811 - File: global.php PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/global.php 811 errorHandler->error
/showthread.php 28 require_once
Warning [2] Undefined variable $awaitingusers - Line: 34 - File: global.php(872) : eval()'d code PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/global.php(872) : eval()'d code 34 errorHandler->error
/global.php 872 eval
/showthread.php 28 require_once
Warning [2] Undefined array key "style" - Line: 937 - File: global.php PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/global.php 937 errorHandler->error
/showthread.php 28 require_once
Warning [2] Undefined property: MyLanguage::$lang_select_default - Line: 5196 - File: inc/functions.php PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/inc/functions.php 5196 errorHandler->error
/global.php 937 build_theme_select
/showthread.php 28 require_once
Warning [2] Undefined array key "additionalgroups" - Line: 7360 - File: inc/functions.php PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/inc/functions.php 7360 errorHandler->error
/inc/functions.php 5216 is_member
/global.php 937 build_theme_select
/showthread.php 28 require_once
Warning [2] Undefined array key "mybb" - Line: 1997 - File: inc/functions.php PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/inc/functions.php 1997 errorHandler->error
/inc/functions_indicators.php 41 my_set_array_cookie
/showthread.php 665 mark_thread_read
Warning [2] Undefined array key "additionalgroups" - Line: 7360 - File: inc/functions.php PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/inc/functions.php 7360 errorHandler->error
/inc/functions_user.php 813 is_member
/inc/functions_post.php 416 purgespammer_show
/showthread.php 1114 build_postbit
Warning [2] Undefined array key "profilefield" - Line: 6 - File: inc/functions_post.php(484) : eval()'d code PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/inc/functions_post.php(484) : eval()'d code 6 errorHandler->error
/inc/functions_post.php 484 eval
/showthread.php 1114 build_postbit
Warning [2] Undefined array key "canonlyreplyownthreads" - Line: 672 - File: inc/functions_post.php PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/inc/functions_post.php 672 errorHandler->error
/showthread.php 1114 build_postbit
Warning [2] Undefined array key "showimages" - Line: 757 - File: inc/functions_post.php PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/inc/functions_post.php 757 errorHandler->error
/showthread.php 1114 build_postbit
Warning [2] Undefined array key "showvideos" - Line: 762 - File: inc/functions_post.php PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/inc/functions_post.php 762 errorHandler->error
/showthread.php 1114 build_postbit
Warning [2] Undefined array key "fragment" - Line: 1409 - File: inc/class_parser.php PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/inc/class_parser.php 1409 errorHandler->error
/inc/class_parser.php 1555 postParser->mycode_parse_video
[PHP]   postParser->mycode_parse_video_callback
/inc/class_parser.php 472 preg_replace_callback
/inc/class_parser.php 201 postParser->parse_mycode
/inc/functions_post.php 774 postParser->parse_message
/showthread.php 1114 build_postbit
Warning [2] Undefined array key 0 - Line: 1502 - File: inc/class_parser.php PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/inc/class_parser.php 1502 errorHandler->error
/inc/class_parser.php 1555 postParser->mycode_parse_video
[PHP]   postParser->mycode_parse_video_callback
/inc/class_parser.php 472 preg_replace_callback
/inc/class_parser.php 201 postParser->parse_mycode
/inc/functions_post.php 774 postParser->parse_message
/showthread.php 1114 build_postbit
Warning [2] Undefined array key "fragment" - Line: 1409 - File: inc/class_parser.php PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/inc/class_parser.php 1409 errorHandler->error
/inc/class_parser.php 1555 postParser->mycode_parse_video
[PHP]   postParser->mycode_parse_video_callback
/inc/class_parser.php 472 preg_replace_callback
/inc/class_parser.php 201 postParser->parse_mycode
/inc/functions_post.php 774 postParser->parse_message
/showthread.php 1114 build_postbit
Warning [2] Undefined array key 0 - Line: 1502 - File: inc/class_parser.php PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/inc/class_parser.php 1502 errorHandler->error
/inc/class_parser.php 1555 postParser->mycode_parse_video
[PHP]   postParser->mycode_parse_video_callback
/inc/class_parser.php 472 preg_replace_callback
/inc/class_parser.php 201 postParser->parse_mycode
/inc/functions_post.php 774 postParser->parse_message
/showthread.php 1114 build_postbit
Warning [2] Undefined array key "posttime" - Line: 9 - File: inc/functions_post.php(887) : eval()'d code PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/inc/functions_post.php(887) : eval()'d code 9 errorHandler->error
/inc/functions_post.php 887 eval
/showthread.php 1114 build_postbit
Warning [2] Undefined array key "avatar_padding" - Line: 19 - File: inc/functions_post.php(887) : eval()'d code PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/inc/functions_post.php(887) : eval()'d code 19 errorHandler->error
/inc/functions_post.php 887 eval
/showthread.php 1114 build_postbit
Warning [2] Undefined array key "invisible" - Line: 1555 - File: showthread.php PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/showthread.php 1555 errorHandler->error
Warning [2] Undefined variable $threadnotesbox - Line: 33 - File: showthread.php(1587) : eval()'d code PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/showthread.php(1587) : eval()'d code 33 errorHandler->error
/showthread.php 1587 eval
Warning [2] Undefined variable $ratethread - Line: 41 - File: showthread.php(1587) : eval()'d code PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/showthread.php(1587) : eval()'d code 41 errorHandler->error
/showthread.php 1587 eval
Warning [2] Undefined variable $addremovesubscription - Line: 82 - File: showthread.php(1587) : eval()'d code PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/showthread.php(1587) : eval()'d code 82 errorHandler->error
/showthread.php 1587 eval
Warning [2] Undefined variable $thread_deleted - Line: 107 - File: showthread.php(1587) : eval()'d code PHP 8.0.30 (Linux)
File Line Function
/showthread.php(1587) : eval()'d code 107 errorHandler->error
/showthread.php 1587 eval




Early Blues
09-01-2015, 10:18 PM, (This post was last modified: 09-01-2015, 10:22 PM by john.)
#1
Early Blues
I have been reading (listening to) a book of essays by John J. Sullivan that includes this NY Times article that is available online. Sullivan is a great writer and this is about his exploration of these early blues singers and others, as well as the collectors of the old blues 78s.

Quote:THE BALLAD OF GEESHIE AND ELVIE
On the trail of the phantom women who changed American music and then vanished without a trace.

BY JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN

APRIL 13, 2014

IN THE WORLD of early-20th-century African-American music and people obsessed by it, who can appear from one angle like a clique of pale and misanthropic scholar-gatherers and from another like a sizable chunk of the human population, there exist no ghosts more vexing than a couple of women identified on three ultrarare records made in 1930 and ’31 as Elvie Thomas and Geeshie Wiley. There are musicians as obscure as Wiley and Thomas, and musicians as great, but in none does the Venn diagram of greatness and lostness reveal such vast and bewildering co-extent. In the spring of 1930, in a damp and dimly lit studio, in a small Wisconsin village on the western shore of Lake Michigan, the duo recorded a batch of songs that for more than half a century have been numbered among the masterpieces of prewar American music, in particular two, Elvie’s “Motherless Child Blues” and Geeshie’s “Last Kind Words Blues,” twin Alps of their tiny oeuvre, inspiring essays and novels and films and cover versions, a classical arrangement

Yet despite more than 50 years of researchers’ efforts to learn who the two women were or where they came from, we have remained ignorant of even their legal names. The sketchy memories of one or two ancient Mississippians, gathered many decades ago, seemed to point to the southern half of that state, yet none led to anything solid. A few people thought they heard hints of Louisiana or Texas in the guitar playing or in the pronunciation of a lyric. We know that the word “Geechee,” with a c, can refer to a person born into the heavily African-inflected Gullah culture centered on the coastal islands off Georgia and the Carolinas. But nothing turned up there either. Or anywhere. No grave site, no photograph. Forget that — no anecdotes. This is what set Geeshie and Elvie apart even from the rest of an innermost group of phantom geniuses of the ’20s and ’30s. Their myth was they didn’t have anything you could so much as hang a myth on. The objects themselves — the fewer than 10 surviving copies, total, of their three known Paramount releases, a handful of heavy, black, scratch-riven shellac platters, all in private hands — these were the whole of the file on Geeshie and Elvie, and even these had come within a second thought of vanishing, within, say, a woman’s decision in cleaning her parents’ attic to go against some idle advice that she throw out a box of old records and instead to find out what the junk shop gives. When she decides otherwise, when the shop isn’t on the way home, there goes the music, there go the souls, ash flakes up the flue, to flutter about with the Edison cylinder of Buddy Bolden’s band and the phonautograph of Lincoln’s voice....

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/...ml?hp&_r=1

Last Kind Word Blues


Motherless Child Blues
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)