Review: Look Away, Dixieland by James B. Twitchell

Look at that extended title. I'm not sure who this book is being marketed to. That title is designed to alienate the Southern reader, which makes little sense as the North doesn't care much about us.  I would suggest that Look Away, Dixieland be featured in The Oxford American (if it hasn't) because it dovetails nicely with the type of South they market.

So let's pretend that I came across this book in the OA and leave the marketing to someone else. Twitchell is the descendent of a carpetbagger and a long time resident of North Florida. The thing about Florida is that you can live there your entire life without having to encounter the South. It's not that the South doesn't exist, it's that Florida has created protective bubbles containing the Snowbirds, the Sh'tbirds, and the transplant who just wants the weather. (It's sort of like residing in Number 6's Village.) It is to Twitchell's credit that he stepped out of that bubble.

Look Away, Dixieland is a fantastic read on several levels. In revealing his personal brush with the post Civil War backlash (and correctly calling those involved Death Squads) he proves himself an able teller of history. As he tells the events, there was little mystery to me why things unfolded as they did. As well, I can certainly see why it wouldn't be as clear to someone not raised in the culture. The second half of the book is concerned with Twitchell's search of understanding of the South and a resolution of the events in the past. This ends with a powerful moment that brings Twitchell face to face with a Southern tradition - touching artifacts. Southern museums are often focused on the mundane and on touching those items with your own hands, so it is fitting that his journey ended this way. So many times in my youth I recall being invited to touch the ball that killed great uncle whoever, or to wrap my hands around a Nazi artifact and think about my jewish cousins. For the South, contact means context.

Twitchell's Southern encounters are almost as entertaining as his historical tales. While I don't agree with all of his conclusions (I certainly disagree with his version of how the North operates.) it's refreshing to find a transplant willing to open his mind to a different culture. At times naive (Why would a black president erase institutionalized racism?) and condescending, (Southern people! So nice!) Twitchell usually checks himself before the reader has to. I never felt the need to close the book or break out a "Bless his heart." Aside from being a very entertaining read Look Away, Dixieland offers a great look at how the other half thinks - both about themselves and about us. We are still a nation as divided as we are united. There are many Americas in America but Look Away, Dixieland offers a chance for two of them to appreciate each other.

Review For Two: Heat Wave by Donald Bogle & Blue Smoke by Roger House

I've already raved this week about R. A. Lawson's Jim Crow's Counterculture. I read it as part of a trio of books over the last few weeks. Heat Wave and Blue Smoke take very different paths to the same result, a definitive look at an artist and their time period.

Donald Bogle is well known for his exhaustive research and meticulous detailing. Heat Wave is no exception. Things get off to a slow start as he explains the background behind what begins to seem like every person Ethel Waters ever met or could meet. Once he gets rolling, however, he offers a comprehensive look at this pioneering artist that is refreshingly free of rose colored glasses. Perhaps it's fitting that Waters, certainly not an easy woman, is so well documented in what is not an easy book. Heat Wave is worth the time, and it will reward the reader willing to explore not just Ethel Waters but the world she lived in. Ethel has largely been forgotten, but Bogle respects both her place in history and her absolute talent. Here she is in a clip from a film intended for black audiences only, with a very young Sammy Davis Jr as the President. I chose this clip because it illustrates the difference in the artist when she is not beholden to please a white ticket buyer. Instead of the cotton picker of her 1929 recording of this song, an elegant woman takes the stage before expounding on the power of Harlem life and completely refuting cotton as a profession.

Blue Smoke has a different aim. Rather than a comprehensive exploration of the times and people that made the artist, Roger House uses the art to explore the man. Taking Broonzy's discography to tell the story of his life, House quote his lyrics before expanding on the times in which he wrote them. It makes for an instantly accessible and compelling read. House writes as economically as Broonzy sang.

Unlike Ethel Waters, Bill Broonzy did not find his fortune with his guitar. It certainly led him to many experiences he would not otherwise have had, but it never allowed him to fully leave manual labor behind. as with other artists of the time his interaction with the Lomax family both gained him a wider audience and a minstrel version of himself to perform for the white blues enthusiasts. House details his work bringing other musicians to be interviewed by Alan Lomax, stressing that we have to view those tapes through the lens of Lomax's own bias. Broonzy knew what Lomax was looking for and he delivered it. We can't therefore take those words as a full and accurate representation of Bill Broonzy himself. In the music House finds a fuller picture of the man and through that man the era in which he worked. LSU Press has great pricing on Blue Smoke, both in paperback and ebook.  I think it is definitely worth your time. Since it's only fair, let me follow that look at Ethel Waters with a look at Big Bill Broonzy, a guitarist that should be familiar to everyone. The effects of his popularity in Europe are certainly seen in the work of the European musicians that followed.

Review: Jim Crow's Counterculture by R. A. Lawson

As a music fan and a person of Southern descent, my celebrity obsessions might be different than yours. I had the opportunity to review three very different books recently. Heat Wave is a biography of Ethel Waters from Donald Bogle put out by Harper Collins, while Jim Crow's Counterculture and Blue Smoke both come from LSU Press by authors new to me. I'm on my third read of Jim Crow's Counterculture. It's not as instantly accessible as Blue Smoke, but it's far and away my favorite. There's something about Lawson's style that says Pay Attention Now.

When I was young it was an established 'fact' that Blues were most authentic when they were most rustic, that accomplished musicians had been tainted by white cultural influences. This was racist poppycock, of course. Then (as now) black musicians were serving two very different masters. The first was what the white public wished to hear and by extension the white executives wished to record. The second was what the black public wanted to hear. Covering the period from the beginning of Jim Crow to the end of WW2, Lawson illustrates how the male blues musician (who performed a very different type of show than the female) was a vehicle for protest against Jim Crow and the dominant culture. Even so, it was a very constrained avenue. (During WW2 songs of revenge against the Japanese are quite common, but it's a rare song that dared to speak out against the Germans. As much as they were our enemy, they were still white.) Within those confines black artists  recorded their lives, their aspirations, and changed their own possibilities. As Lawson says - 


"Black southerners during Jim Crow were forced to be deferential, yet bluesmen projected powerful braggadocio. Black men were often emasculated or condemned as rapacious beasts, yet the bluesmen openly celebrated their sexuality. Plantation sharecropping, levee building, and logging exploited black workers in the Delta, so the musicians tried to abandon manual labor." 


Through blues music the black southerner could move in white circles, he could amass material goods that were out of his reach through traditional means. While he was certainly not relieved of the strictures of Jim Crow, he could move between social boundaries more freely. The life of a black southern musician, while often itinerant, could offer far more independence than that of a sharecropper or manual laborer. Wearing the clothes of a laborer for his white audience the musician was defining how they saw him, but they were no longer defining who he was. Things could be said in song that could not be said in words. Of course there was not a total freedom of expression. As Ice-T leaned with "Cop Killer" the dominant culture still maintained a strong sense of what was an appropriate thing for the artist to say. Reading Lawson's section on the emergence of the bluesman as an identity made me reflect on modern black music. "Thug Life" isn't a far stretch from the lawless hedonism of the early bluesman's image. The refutation of morality and law as a path of rebellion for the project dwelling youth of today comes as a straight line from the refutation of same by the young southern sharecropper. Jim Crow may be behind us, but it's legacy of limited opportunities, of devalued black lives, of a dominant culture defining what is possible remains. Lawson uses music to illustrate points in his text, indeed Charley Patton's "High Water Everywhere" could be about Hurricane Katrina's aftermath.

"Looka here the water now, Lordy, levee broke, rose most everywhere, That water at Greenville and Lula, Lord, it done rose everywhere, I would go down to Rosedale, but they tell me there’s water there."

Lawson has written a tremendously engaging book. It might not be for everyone, but it is certainly for anyone. I consider Jim Crow's Counterculture an absolute bargain as an e-book. Kindle has it at the standard $9.99 price, hopefully to all regions. A truly rewarding read.