by R. A. Lawson
97. Casey Bill Weldon, “Casey Bill’s New WPA,” Vocalion 03930 (Chicago, 1937).
98. Peetie Wheatstraw, “Working On the Project,” Decca 7311 (Chicago, 1937), and “New Working On the Project,” Decca 7379 (Chicago, 1937).
99. Peetie Wheatstraw, “304 Blues,” Decca 7453 (New York, 1938).
100. National record sales rebounded from $6 million (1933) to $9 million (1935) but still fell far short of the pre-Depression figures ($100 million in 1927); by 1939, however, there were over 250,000 jukeboxes in operation in America, using more than 13 million disks; see Barlow, Looking Up at Down, 133-34.
101. Honeyboy Edwards quoted in Barry Lee Pearson, “Sounds So Good to Me”: The Bluesmans Story (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 25; see also bluesman Will Starks’s positive comments on FDR’s role in improving black Americans’ lives in Lomax, Land Where the Blues Began, 207.
102. Huddie Ledbetter quoted in Wolfe and Lornell, Life and Legend of Leadbelly, 247.
103. Historian John Kirby chronicled the responses and actions of W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles Johnson, and Ralph Bunche to explain the class tensions in the debate over the “race question” during the New Deal; see Kirby, Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era, chapter 8, “Race, Class, and Reform: The Intellectual Struggle,” 187-217. Similar to Kirby’s treatment of this subject was Wolters, Negroes in the Great Depression, part 3, “The NAACP in a Time of Economic Crisis,” 219-384.
104. Peetie Wheatstraw, “When I Get My Bonus (Things Will Be Coming My Way),” Decca 7159 (New York, 1936); see also, e.g., Carl Martin, “I’m Gonna Have My Fun (When I Get My Bonus),” Chess 50074 (Chicago, 1936); and also van Rijn, Roosevelt’s Blues, chapter 10, “When the Soldiers Get their Bonus,” 115-30.
105. During the New Deal, influential race liberals examined the many developments—black migration, industrialization, agricultural decline, new political identities among black southern-ers—that eroded the rural economic structure that gave rise to Jim Crow social policies; see Charles Johnson, Edwin Embree, and Will Alexander, The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935).
VERSE FOUR
1. Muddy Waters quoted in Lomax, Land Where the Blues Began, 410. For a detailed biography of Waters’s early life, see Gordon, Can’t Be Satisfied, 3-34.
2. Muddy Waters, “Country Blues” and “I Be’s Troubled,” Library of Congress (AAF) 18A/B (Stovall, Miss., 1941). Waters and Alan Lomax quoted in Mary Katherine Aldin, liner notes to Muddy Waters: The Complete Plantation Recordings, 1941-1942 (Chess CHD 9344).
3. In noting that Waters was twenty-nine in 1942, the author accepts the evidence in Gordon, Can’t Be Satisfied, that Waters was born in April 1913, not April 1915, as is most often reported.
4. Honeyboy Edwards quoted in Barry Pearson, “Jump Steady: The Roots of R & B,” in Cohn, Nothing But the Blues, 318.
5. Muddy Waters, “I Can’t Be Satisfied,” and “I Feel Like Going Home,” Aristocrat 1305 A/B (Chicago, 1948). Gordon, I Can’t Be Satisfied, 93.
6. Helpful here is Sam Gurgis, Hollywood Renaissance: The Cinema of Democracy in the Era of Ford, Capra, and Kazan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1-19. Many notable scholars of the South—James Cobb, Dewey Grantham, Neil McMillen, and others—consider the war years as a watershed in race relations and the South in general; see Neil McMillen, ed., Remaking Dixie: The Impact of World War II on the American South (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997). John Jeffries negotiated the arguments for and against a “continuity thesis,” including a discussion of race relations, in Wartime America: The World War II Homefront (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996), 107-19. Bernard Sternsher’s edited collection, The Negro in Depression and War: Prelude to Revolution, 1930-1945 (Chicago, Quadrangle Books, 1969), presents the strongest case for the war as a watershed period, while a more tempered view may be found in Mullen, Blacks in America’s Wars, 41-60.
7. Ronald Takaki, Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II (New York: Little, Brown, 2000) is an authoritative narrative, but see also Foner, The Story of American Freedom, 219-46; Kenneth Paul O’Brien and Lynn Hudson, eds., The Home-Front War: World War II and American Society (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1995); and Lewis Erenberg and Susan Hirsch, eds., The War in American Culture: Society and Consciousness during World War II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
8. John Egerton addressed the relationship between black activists, white race liberals, and federal officials in reshaping race policies in the 1940s; see Egerton, Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Knopf, 1994), 47-63, 201-344.
9. See Cobb, The Most Southern Place on Earth, 184, 198-201, 207, 210-11. Two focused monographs examining black Democratic voting and the withdrawal of southern conservatives from the Democratic Party are Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln; and Kari Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
10. A recent work of history that highlights the various “olive branch” methods by which FDR gave African Americans hope for change is Daniel Kryder, Divided Arsenal: Race and the American State during World War II (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
11. Glenn Miller led wartime America’s most popular swing band. A discussion of Miller’s music in the social and racial context of the war may be found in Lewis Erenberg, “Swing Goes to War: Glenn Miller and the Popular Music of World War II,” in Erenberg and Hirsch, The War in American Culture, 144-65.
12. Joe Louis has been hailed as the greatest boxer ever, and his 68-3 (54 KO) lifetime record was obviously impressive. The best documented and interpretive of the numerous Louis biographies is Chris Mead, Champion—Joe Louis, Black Hero in White America (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1985). Other common accounts of Louis’s life include an autobiography—Joe Louis, My Life Story (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1947)—and an embellished biography, Barney Nagler, Brown Bomber (New York: World Publishers, 1972).
13. Carl Martin, “Joe Louis Blues,” Decca 7144 (Chicago, 1935). For comparisons between blacks’ cultural treatment of Louis vis-à-vis older heroes of mythical Afro-Americana, see Oliver, Blues Fell This Morning, 274-77.
14. Both boxers recounted the influential match in their memoirs. Schmeling claimed the endorsement of Nazi leadership brought a new meaning to each of his bouts that he had never intended, and Louis acknowledged the fight’s importance to American politicians; see Max Schmeling, Errinnerungen (Frankfurt: Verslage Ullstein, 1977), 401-24; and Louis, My Life Story, 97-103.
15. On the second Louis-Schmeling fight, see Mead, Champion, 134-42.
16. Little Bill Gaither and Honey Hill, “Champion Joe Louis Blues,” Decca 7476 (New York, 1938).
17. The Decca advertisement was reprinted in Oliver, Blues Fell This Morning, 276, and included Joe Pullum’s “Joe Louis is the Man,” Bluebird 6071 (San Antonio, 1935).
18. Huddie Ledbetter, “Scottsboro Boys,” Library of Congress unissued (New York, 1938).
19. Frank Edwards, “We Got To Get Together,” Okeh 06363 (Chicago, 1941).
20. Louis, My Life Story, 102-3, 187-88. Testament to Louis’s role in ameliorating the disjuncture between African Americans and mainstream American identity was the contemporary publication of Margery Miller, Joe Louis: American (New York: Current Books, 1945).
21. Handy, Father of the Blues, 304; and Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 67.
22. See Betty Nyangoni, “New York City Riot of 1943,” in Walter C. Rucker and James N. Upton, eds., Encyclopedia of American Race Riots (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2006), 476-8; and Robert Shogan and Tom Craig, Detroit Race Riot: A Study in Violence (New York: Da Capo, 1976).
23. The salient developments in African American life during the war are generally covered in two works: A. Russell Buchanan, Black Americans in World War II (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Clio Books, 1977); and Neil
Wynn, The Afro-American and the Second World War (London: Paul Elek, 1976). On the experience of black servicemen specifically, see Foner, Blacks and the Military in American History, chapter 7, “World War II and Black Servicemen,” 133-75. On African American enlistment, see John Blum, V Was For Victory: Politics and American Culture during World War II (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), 184.
24. The first blues song including lyrics regarding the war in Europe was Big Bill Broonzy, “Unemployment Stomp,” Vocalion 04378 (Chicago, 1938).
25. See Little Bill Gaither, “Army Bound Blues,” Decca 7647 (Chicago, 1939); and Sonny Boy Williamson, “War Time Blues,” Bluebird B8580 (Chicago, 1940). “Uncle Sam” remained a common figure in Lower Mississippi Valley blues songs well after the war: see, e.g., Arthur Weston, “Uncle Sam Called Me (I Got To Go)” Testament 2209 (St. Louis, 1963?); and Avery Brady, “Uncle Sam’s Own Ship,” Testament unissued (Chicago, 1963).
26. Little Bill Gaither, “Uncle Sam Called the Roll,” Okeh 6092 (Chicago, 1941).
27. Roosevelt Sykes, “Training Camp Blues,” Okeh 6709 (Chicago, 1941).
28. Birth years given here are cited in Herzhaft, Encyclopedia of the Blues, 123, 331.
29. Sonny Boy Williamson, “We Got To Win,” Victor unissued (Chicago, 1945).
30. On the government’s use of radio messages to stimulate African American contributions to the war effort, see Barbara Dianna Savage, Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938-1948 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), chapter 2, “Freedom’s People: Radio and the Political Uses of African American Culture and History” 63-105. The government maintained fairly tight control over the messages broadcast on the public airwaves during the war; see Michael Sweeney, Secrets of Victory: The Office of Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
31. Secretary Stimson quoted in Blum, V Was for Victory, 185. See also Mullen, Blacks in America’s Wars, 51-52; Robert Billinger Jr., Hitler’s Soldiers in the Sunshine State: German POWs in Florida (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 1-6; and Arnold Krammer, Nazi Prisoners of War in America (New York: Stein and Day, 1979), chapter 2, “Life Behind Barbed Wire,” 43-78.
32. Josh White, “Uncle Sam Says,” Keynote 514 (New York, 1941). See also Huddie Ledbetter, “The Roosevelt Song,” Library of Congress 4473-A2 (Washington, D.C., 1940).
33. See Andrew Edmund Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War: The FEPC in the Midwest, 1941-1946 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 47-59, 94-111; Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln, 277; Cooper and Terrill, The American South, 693-94; and Cobb, The Most Southern Place on Earth, 198.
34. Beginning in World War II and lasting through the Vietnam War era, historians and other writers began publishing a number of works detailing (and in many cases, celebrating) the desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces; see Lt. Cmdr. Seymour Schoenfeld, USNR, The Negro in the Armed Forces: His Value and Status—Past, Present, and Potential (Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1945); Lt. Dennis Nelson, USN, The Integration of the Negro into the U.S. Navy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951); David Mandelbaum, Soldier Groups and Negro Soldiers (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1952), 89-106; and Leo Bogart, ed., Social Research and the Desegregation of the U.S. Army: Two Original 1951 Field Reports (Chicago: Markham, 1969).
35. The story of the USS Mason was told through firsthand accounts. See Mansel Blackford, ed., On Board the USS Mason: The World War II Diary of James A. Dunn (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1996); and Mary Pat Kelley, Proudly We Served: The Men of the USS Mason (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1995). On the integrated army unit and the 30,000 black servicemen and women who served in Hawaii, see Beth Bailey and David Farber, The First Strange Place: The Alchemy of Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii (New York: Free Press, 1992), chapter 4, “Strangers in a Strange Land,” 133-66. See also William Percy, “Jim Crow, Uncle Sam, and the Formation of the Tuskegee Flying Units,” Social Education 63 (January-February 1999): 14-21; and, more generally, consult Mullen, Blacks in America’s Wars, 51-52. On military education and the GI Bill, see Christopher Loss, “ ‘The Most Wonderful Thing Has Happened to Me in the Army’: Psychology, Citizenship, and American Higher Education in World War II,” Journal of American History 92 (December 2005): 864-91.
36. Cooper and Terrill, The American South, 695; Cobb, The Most Southern Place on Earth, 201, 209-11; Son House, “American Defense,” Library of Congress unissued (Robinsonville, Miss., 1942); and Lomax, Land Where the Blues Began, 25-27.
37. Buster “Buzz” Ezell, “Hitler and Roosevelt,” Library of Congress unissued (Fort Valley, Ga., 1943). The first verse quoted here is from “Part 1,” and the second verse from “Part 2” of “Hitler and Roosevelt.”
38. Ernest Blunt (Florida Kid), “Hitler Blues,” Bluebird B8589 (Chicago, 1940).
39. See van Rijn, Roosevelt Blues, 194-200.
40. Big Joe Williams, “His Spirit Lives On,” Chicago 103 (Chicago, 1945).
41. “Champion” Jack Dupree, “FDR Blues,” Joe Davis 5102 (New York, 1945).
42. Many black race activists regarded the American conflict with Japan as part of a broader Social Darwinist goal of imposing European hegemony on the world; see Reginald Kearney, African American Views of the Japanese: Solidarity or Sedition? (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), xiv-xvii, 126; Marc Gallicchio, The African American Encounter with Japan and China: Black Internationalism in Asia, 1895-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 1-29; Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996) 1-8, 83-124; and Penny Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997), 1-6.
43. See Blum, V Was for Victory, 46-47.
44. Doctor Peter Clayton, “Pearl Harbor Blues,” Bluebird B9003 (Chicago, 1942). Clayton’s lyric, “I turned on my radio, and I heard Mr. Roosevelt say . . . ,” may have been inspired by FDR’s famous “Day of Infamy” speech, delivered in response to the Pearl Harbor attack and heard by the largest radio audience to date—62 million listeners; see Christopher Sterling and John Kitross, Stay Tuned: A Concise History of American Broadcasting (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1978), 206.
45. Lucky Millinder Band, “We’re Gonna Have to Slap the Dirty Little Jap,” Decca 4261 (New York, 1942). The song was written by Bob Miller in 1941 and its most popular version was by a white country band headed up by Carson Robison; see Carson Robison and Orchestra, “We’re Gonna Have to Slap the Dirty Little Jap,” Bluebird B11414 (1942).
46. Lonnie Johnson, “Baby, Remember Me,” Bluebird 340714 (Chicago, 1942), and “The Last Call,” Bluebird 8980 (Chicago, 1942).
47. Willie “61” Blackwell, “Junian’s, A Jap’s Girl Christmas For His Santa Claus,” Library of Congress LBC-10 (West Memphis, Ark., 1942); see also Lomax, Land Where the Blues Began, 10.
48. Inez Washington and the Four Dukes of Rhythm, “Soldier Man Blues,” Cincinnati 2301 (Cincinnati, 1945).
49. Blum, V Was for Victory, 8.
50. Timothy Holian, The German-Americans and World War II: An Ethnic Experience (Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati Press, 1997), xi-xii, 64-87; and Stephen Fox, America’s Invisible Gulag: A Biography of German American Internment and Exclusion in World War II—Memory and History (New York: Lang, 2000), xv-xxiii.
51. Huddie Ledbetter, “Mr. Hitler,” Library of Congress unissued (New York, 1942).
52. Doctor Peter Clayton, “ ‘41 Blues,” Okeh 6375 (Chicago, 1941).
53. A good example of this may be found in Sleepy John Estes’s classic works, collected on Brownsville Blues (Wolf Blues Classics BC003). He made his recordings in Chicago, but his songs described the characters in his life from his hometown of Brownsville, Tennessee.
54. Wright, introduction to
Oliver, Blues Fell This Morning, xiii. Among the historians who view the war era as a watershed period in the history of African American civil rights, some of the most outspoken are those who interpret military desegregation during and after World War II as a major step in the federal government’s development of racially liberal policies. Most recent is Sherie Mershon and Steven Schlossman, Foxholes and Color Lines: Desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), an update to Dalfiume’s oft-cited Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces, but see also Phillip McGuire, ed., Taps for a Jim Crow Army: Letters from Black Soldiers in World War II (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Clio Books, 1993).
55. On the long-term shift away from parallelism in favor of integration, esp. during and after World War II, see Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History 91 (March 2005): 1248. On black college enrollment, see Michael Bennett, When Dreams Came True: The GI Bill and the Making of Modern America (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1996), 260.
56. At the End of an Age represents the culmination of decades of thinking and writing for Hungarian-born historian John Lukacs. The quotation included here is taken from Lukacs’s discussion of the tension between revolutionary ideas—Kuhnian paradigm shifts that inform an entire age of history—and evolutionary institutions that carry over beliefs from one age to the next, e.g., the Roman Catholic Church; John Lukacs, At the End of an Age (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002), 31. See also Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
57. There are of course many historical narratives of rock and roll’s social impact, but Michael T. Bertrand, Race, Rock, and Elvis (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), is the most cogent and evidentially sound argument that Elvis Presley and the style of music he and others created in the Mississippi Valley in the late 1940s and early 1950s was a serious threat to both regional and national social conventions.