Paul Oliver, Mack McCormick, Alan Govenar, Kip Lornell - THE BLUES COME TO TEXAS

https://www.texasobserver.org/a-sweeping-history-of-texas-blues-celebrates-little-known-musicians/

"From October 1959 until the mid-1970s, Paul Oliver and Mack McCormick collaborated on what they hoped to be a definitive history and analysis of the blues in Texas. Both were prominent scholars and researchers—Oliver had already established an impressive record of publications, and McCormick was building a sprawling collection of primary materials that included field recordings and interviews with blues musicians from all over Texas and the greater South.

Despite being eagerly awaited by blues fans, folklorists, historians, and ethnomusicologists who knew about the Oliver-McCormick collaboration, the intended manuscript was never completed.

In 1996, Alan Govenar, a respected writer, folklorist, photographer, and filmmaker, began a conversation with Oliver about the unfinished book on Texas blues. Subsequently, Oliver invited Govenar to assist him, and when Oliver became ill, Govenar enlisted folklorist and ethnomusicologist Kip Lornell to help him contextualize and document the existing manuscript for publication.

The Blues Come to Texas: Paul Oliver and Mack McCormick’s Unfinished Book presents an unparalleled view into the minds and methods of two pioneering blues scholars." 

Derrick Stewart-Baxter - MA RAINEY and the classic blues singers

Christian O`Connell - Blues How Do You Do - Paul Oliver and the Transatlantic Story of the Blues

Paul Oliver - Conversation with the Blues

Paul Oliver,Tony Russell, Robert M.W. Dixon, John Goodrich and Howard Rye - Yonder come The Blues

Bob Groom - THE BLUES REVIVAL

Paul Oliver - Screening The Blues

Paul Oliver - Story des Blues

Paul Oliver - Blues Fell This Morning

Paul Oliver, Max Harrison, William Bolcom - The New Grove - Gospel, Blues and Jazz

Paul Oliver - Songsters & Saints : Vocal Traditions on Race Records

In this innovatory book the celebrated writer on the blues, Paul Oliver, rediscovers the wealth of neglected vocal traditions presented on Race records. When blues first reached a large audience it was through the 'Race records' issued specifically for black purchasers in the 1920s. Blues South have been extensively discussed by many writers. Paul Oliver shows that this emphasis has drawn attention away from the other important vocal traditions also available on Race records: the songs of Southern rural dances, the comic and social songs and ballads of the medicine shows and travelling entertainments, and, even more neglected, the sacred vocal traditions, from the song-sermons of the Baptist and Sanctified preachers to the gospel songs of the church congregations and of the 'jack-leg' preachers and street evangelists. Over 500 artists and 700 song titles are indexed and there is a guide to reissued recordings.

Paul Oliver - Bessie Smith (Kings of Jazz)

Tony Russell - Black, Whites and Blues

Bruce Bastin - Crying for the Carolines

Guido van Rijn - Roosevelts Blues - African-American Blues and Gospel Songs on FDR

http://www.bluesworld.com/Guido.html

Music historian Charles Wolfe has noted that listening to blues music is a sure way to understand "the thought, spirit, and history of the very segment of the Negro community that historians have rendered inarticulate through their neglect." This volume helps us to comprehend both the import of Wolfe's statement and an unprecedented phenomenon that occurred in the 1930s. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president of the United States, thousands of black Americans, traditionally Republican, deserted the party of Lincoln and became Democrats.

In Roosevelt's Blues Guido van Rijn documents more than a hundred blues and gospel lyrics that contain direct political comment about FDR. Altogether they convey the thought, spirit, and history of the African-American population during the Roosevelt era. Blacks had decidely become Democrats. He also has identified some 300 blues and gospel songs recorded from 1902 to 1945 with direct political references. Many of these lyrics, fully quoted here, cite the mistreatment of blacks and refer to the "Red Cross Store," which distributed relief supplies during the 1926 flood of the Mississippi. Others mention Roosevelt's "alphabet agencies"---CWA, RFC, PWA, CCC, and WPA--- and broach various topics of the World War II era: FDR's strong leadership, Hitler, Stalin, rationing, and the role of blacks in the armed forces.

Included in the book are recorded sermons by Rev. J. M. Gates and lyrics to songs recorded by such notable musicians as Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter, Big Bill Broonzy, "Champion" Jack Dupree, Sonny Boy Williamson, Josh White, the Mississippi Sheiks, and many others. Using these sources, which have been neglected by historians, van Rijn documents Roosevelt's vast popularity among blacks.

R.M.W. Dixon, J. Godrich - Recording The Blues

Bengt Olsson - Memphis Blues

Robert Springer - Nobody Knows where the Blues Come from: Lyrics and History

Paul Oliver - Broadcasting The Blues: Black Blues in the Segregation Era

Paul Oliver - Blues Off The Record : Thirty Years of Blues Commentary