Wim Verbei
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496805119
- eISBN:
- 9781496812544
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496805119.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This book stands as both a remarkable biography of J. Frank G. Boom (1920–1953) and a recovery of his incredible contribution to blues scholarship originally titled The Blues: Satirical Songs of the ...
More
This book stands as both a remarkable biography of J. Frank G. Boom (1920–1953) and a recovery of his incredible contribution to blues scholarship originally titled The Blues: Satirical Songs of the North American Negro. The book tells how and when the Netherlands was introduced to African American blues music and describes the equally dramatic and peculiar friendship that existed between Boom and jazz critic and musicologist Will Gilbert, who worked for the Kultuurkamer during World War II and had been charged with the task of formulating the Nazi's Jazzverbod, the decree prohibiting the public performance of jazz. The book ends with the annotated and complete text of Boom's The Blues, providing the international world at last with an English version of the first book-length study of the blues. At the end of the 1960s, a series of 13 blues paperbacks edited by Paul Oliver for the London publisher November Books began appearing. One manuscript landed on his desk that had been written in 1943 by a then 23-year-old Frank (Frans) Boom. Its publication was announced on the back jacket of the last three Blues Paperbacks in 1971 and 1972. Yet it never was published and the manuscript once more disappeared. In October 1996, Dutch blues expert and publicist Verbei went in search of the presumably lost manuscript and the story behind its author. It only took him a couple of months to track down the manuscript, but it took another ten years to glean the full story behind the extraordinary Frans Boom, who passed away in 1953 in Indonesia.Less
This book stands as both a remarkable biography of J. Frank G. Boom (1920–1953) and a recovery of his incredible contribution to blues scholarship originally titled The Blues: Satirical Songs of the North American Negro. The book tells how and when the Netherlands was introduced to African American blues music and describes the equally dramatic and peculiar friendship that existed between Boom and jazz critic and musicologist Will Gilbert, who worked for the Kultuurkamer during World War II and had been charged with the task of formulating the Nazi's Jazzverbod, the decree prohibiting the public performance of jazz. The book ends with the annotated and complete text of Boom's The Blues, providing the international world at last with an English version of the first book-length study of the blues. At the end of the 1960s, a series of 13 blues paperbacks edited by Paul Oliver for the London publisher November Books began appearing. One manuscript landed on his desk that had been written in 1943 by a then 23-year-old Frank (Frans) Boom. Its publication was announced on the back jacket of the last three Blues Paperbacks in 1971 and 1972. Yet it never was published and the manuscript once more disappeared. In October 1996, Dutch blues expert and publicist Verbei went in search of the presumably lost manuscript and the story behind its author. It only took him a couple of months to track down the manuscript, but it took another ten years to glean the full story behind the extraordinary Frans Boom, who passed away in 1953 in Indonesia.
Wim Verbei
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496805119
- eISBN:
- 9781496812544
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496805119.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This chapter details the Netherlands' introduction to African American blues music. Most people believe that that the Netherlands' first became acquainted with African American blues music in the ...
More
This chapter details the Netherlands' introduction to African American blues music. Most people believe that that the Netherlands' first became acquainted with African American blues music in the second half of the 1960s, during the American Folk Blues Festivals (AFBFs). However, AFBF of 1965 was not the first blues concert in the Netherlands. That privilege fell to the guitarist/singer Big Bill Broonzy, who more than a decade earlier had conquered the Netherlands on his own. The chapter also describes the beginning of the Dutch blues era in 1926 and Amsterdammer Frans Boom's attendance of Duke Ellington concert in 1939.Less
This chapter details the Netherlands' introduction to African American blues music. Most people believe that that the Netherlands' first became acquainted with African American blues music in the second half of the 1960s, during the American Folk Blues Festivals (AFBFs). However, AFBF of 1965 was not the first blues concert in the Netherlands. That privilege fell to the guitarist/singer Big Bill Broonzy, who more than a decade earlier had conquered the Netherlands on his own. The chapter also describes the beginning of the Dutch blues era in 1926 and Amsterdammer Frans Boom's attendance of Duke Ellington concert in 1939.
Wim Verbei
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496805119
- eISBN:
- 9781496812544
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496805119.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This chapter focuses on Frans Boom as an avid collector of blues records and his correspondence with publicist, jazz critic, and musicologist Will Gilbert. By the end of 1940, an exchange of ...
More
This chapter focuses on Frans Boom as an avid collector of blues records and his correspondence with publicist, jazz critic, and musicologist Will Gilbert. By the end of 1940, an exchange of information arose between the expert Gilbert and the eight-years-younger Boom. The basis of their relationship was their mutual love of music. Gilbert was knowledgeable about things in which Boom was interested. Boom in turn had at his disposal an extensive collection of song texts that Gilbert could draw upon for his work as a publicist. Both of them sounded out the possibilities their relationship afforded. In the months that followed, at the beginning of 1941, Boom slowly extended his contact with Gilbert, both in terms of intensity and content.Less
This chapter focuses on Frans Boom as an avid collector of blues records and his correspondence with publicist, jazz critic, and musicologist Will Gilbert. By the end of 1940, an exchange of information arose between the expert Gilbert and the eight-years-younger Boom. The basis of their relationship was their mutual love of music. Gilbert was knowledgeable about things in which Boom was interested. Boom in turn had at his disposal an extensive collection of song texts that Gilbert could draw upon for his work as a publicist. Both of them sounded out the possibilities their relationship afforded. In the months that followed, at the beginning of 1941, Boom slowly extended his contact with Gilbert, both in terms of intensity and content.
Stephen Wade
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036880
- eISBN:
- 9780252094002
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036880.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This chapter describes the recordings of Ora Dell Graham. In the fall of 1940, the year she turned twelve, Ora Dell stood before her classmates in her school auditorium. As John A. Lomax operated a ...
More
This chapter describes the recordings of Ora Dell Graham. In the fall of 1940, the year she turned twelve, Ora Dell stood before her classmates in her school auditorium. As John A. Lomax operated a disc recorder, she performed a handful of songs that she animated with dance steps, hand clapping, and vocal effects. Three of these numbers, along with the earliest published recordings of Muddy Waters, subsequently appeared on an album of African American blues and game songs issued by the Library of Congress. This news came as a surprise to her nephew, Sonny Milton. He then asked why anyone would care about a little black girl from Mississippi. The reason is that in November 1940, just three weeks after Ora Dell made her recordings, Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish summarized the Library's acquisition policy in the “Canons of Selection,”: “The Library of Congress should possess all books and other materials ... which express and record the life and achievements of the people of the United States.” The Library's canon embraced the entire nation, welcoming not only the papers of a president but the poetry of a schoolyard child. The recordings she made gave tangible evidence of this policy of inclusion.Less
This chapter describes the recordings of Ora Dell Graham. In the fall of 1940, the year she turned twelve, Ora Dell stood before her classmates in her school auditorium. As John A. Lomax operated a disc recorder, she performed a handful of songs that she animated with dance steps, hand clapping, and vocal effects. Three of these numbers, along with the earliest published recordings of Muddy Waters, subsequently appeared on an album of African American blues and game songs issued by the Library of Congress. This news came as a surprise to her nephew, Sonny Milton. He then asked why anyone would care about a little black girl from Mississippi. The reason is that in November 1940, just three weeks after Ora Dell made her recordings, Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish summarized the Library's acquisition policy in the “Canons of Selection,”: “The Library of Congress should possess all books and other materials ... which express and record the life and achievements of the people of the United States.” The Library's canon embraced the entire nation, welcoming not only the papers of a president but the poetry of a schoolyard child. The recordings she made gave tangible evidence of this policy of inclusion.
