Blues: A Regional Experience by Bob Eagle and Eric S. LeBlanc, and: The Great Jazz Guitarists: The Ultimate Guide by Scott Yanow (review)

Abstract

Blues: A Regional Experience. By Bob Eagle and Eric S. LeBlanc. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2013. [xxx, 598 p. ISBN 9780313344237. $52.20.] Illustrations. The Great Jazz Guitarists: The Ultimate Guide. By Scott Yanow. Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books, 2013. [xvii, 237 p. ISBN 9781617130236. $24.99.] Bibliographic references, discography, filmography. Although Blues: A Regional Experience is first book by Eric LeBlanc and Bob Eagle, both men have long been known to blues readers. Living in Australia, Eagle has contributed articles and reviews to many blues magazines for nearly fifty years. LeBlanc is a lifelong resident of Canada, recently retired from National Research Council of Canada. Blues fans know him as source of Eric's Blues Dates, a daily feed of vital statistics (including dates of births and deaths) for blues musicians on newsgroups Blues-L and Pre-War-Blues (Yahoo). 1 became familiar with ongoing research of both men when they served as associate editors under me for Encyclopedia of Blues (New York: Routledge, 2006). Ever since they left that project midway through its writing phase, I have hoped that their vital statistics data would be published in a form more durable than a daily newsgroup feed. Their data is indeed presented in Blues: A Regional Experience, not so much to constitute a researcher's resource, but more to serve their call to reconsider blues history through geography. Their topic is encapsulated in statement: the blues is a highly individual form of expression, so question arises whether these similarities [among performers from same general region] are truly regional rather than due to local influence of a dominant performer (p. xvii). This question had occurred previously to Bruce Bastin, who admitted in Red River Blues: The Blues Tradition in Southeast (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), that he was changing his previous characterization of blues musician Blind Boy Fuller from innovator (in Crying for Carolines [London: Studio Vista, 1971]) to synthesizer of 1930s blues styles. In their project, Eagle and LeBlanc take view that blues foundations are more regionally cultural than racial, as witness its substantial abandonment by African Americans in recent decades (p. xvii). Their thesis, then, is that blues could have developed only in cotton plantation black (p. 3) before World War II, especially before 1920. Toward proving that thesis, they have organized their biographical vital statistics data by natural ecoregions as researched by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, not according to state boundaries prescribed by law. The ultimate task of reader, then, is to determine whether any musician included in an ecoregion section dominates all other musicians listed there. I anticipate, though, that Blues: A Regional Experience will be used more by librarians and catalogers and less by its authors' intended audience. Authority records for blues musicians have been difficult for catalogers to research, mostly because blues culture has always been oral in nature and seldom written down. During planning stage of Routledge blues encyclopedia, LeBlanc told me that he had gleaned much of his data from published books, periodical articles, LP sleeves, and CD booklets. At that time (1999-2000), there were opportunities to obtain death certificates from various states, but with monetary costs and sometimes with access restrictions. LeBlanc and Eagle acknowledge (p. xi) that recent appearances of Ancestry.com and other online genealogical resources have enabled them to conduct their research faster and in greater detail than before. Indeed, their endnotes cite Social Security Death Index data, census records, state birth indexes, draft cards, and other types of documents hardly accessed or used by blues researchers fifteen years ago. For many names, Leblanc and Eagle provide only straw to grasp. …