IN TUNE: CHARLEY PATTON JIMMIE RODGERS AND THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN MUSIC - BEN WYNNE

My father, as a male YT boomer, has entered the age where he’s super into the blues. Thankfully not blues-rock, but actual pre-war Delta blues. There is something of a Ken Burns lurking within all of us I suppose. Does this mean I’ll be into records from the 50’s when I’m his age? Time will tell. Anyway, this book is about the time in American history right after recording was invented when we start being able to hear what sorts of music folks were making and, just as importantly, these folks were able to listen to each other. Wynne tells this story by focusing on two founders of what went on to be called the Blues and Country music, Charley Patton and Jimmie Rodgers. There’s lots of fascinating biographical stuff, Rodgers really was railway worker for years, Patton really did play on plantations in, as the book describes the Delta, The Most Southern Place On Earth. The stuff about Dockery Plantation, the site where Patton played often and where the version of the Blues we have was basically invented, was fascinating. However, the deeper thesis of the book was even more interesting to me. Wynne essentially argues that Rodgers was a blues singer, that he came up, a generation later, in a milieu that was not very different from Patton’s. Both were very poor, tapped in dead-end circumstances and Southern at a time when the pre-civil war powers had consolidated their rule and operated (putting this in the past tense might be wishful thinking) a sort of racist feudalism. This apartheid was supposed to keep Blacks and Whites apart and a certain small segment on top, in perpetuity, but at the lowest rungs, where Patton and Rodgers lived, there was much more crossover than was supposed to be allowed. And the music that came out of it, either Blues or Country (though these genres were called “Race records” and “Hillbilly records” at the time of their creation) grew out of the same soil. It's a tragic historical reality that this musical affinity didn’t translate into enough tangible solidarity between poor YTs and Black residents of the south. But if you’re interested in American music, the deep south or either of the artist this is a great book. Certainly got me to listen to more JImmie Rodgers.