A solid appreciation that restores Handy to his rightful place in America’s music pantheon.
Poet and biographer Robertson (A Passionate Pilgrim: A Biography of Bishop James A. Pike, 2004, etc.) takes the measure of musical giant W.C. Handy, composer of such classics as “The Memphis Blues” and “Beale Street Blues.”
Born in northern Alabama eight years after the surrender at Appomattox, W.C. Handy died the year Elvis entered the Army. At the outset of his lengthy career, this talented cornet player aspired, against the wishes of his minister father, to become “the colored Sousa,” a leader of brass-band music. He became much more. Blending African-American folk-blues melodies “with ragtime and his own distinct notation,” he fashioned the blues into a publishable, commercially successful form. Robertson revisits each stage of Handy’s career: his years as the music director of various fraternal organizations, as the leader of dance bands; as a college music professor; and, most revealingly, as a performer and director on the minstrelsy circuit, where he encountered virtually every form of popular music. The author effectively demonstrates how by 1904 Handy was uniquely poised to turn folk blues into a commodity for a national audience. Handy corralled the notoriously improvisational blues, snatching folk melodies for his compositions and making the “blue note,” unexpected minor and flatted notes, his signature. Robertson stoutly defends Handy against attacks by Jelly Roll Morton and other partisans of the New Orleans tradition, noting that in his time, Handy’s Memphis strain of blues was every bit the equal of anything emanating from the Crescent City, and surely the public’s favorite. If Robertson never quite nails Handy the man—the author includes scant information about Handy’s philandering or the blindness that afflicted half his life—he supplies plentiful details about the career, the timeless blues compositions, the groundbreaking publishing company Handy established and the composer’s late-life attention to spirituals.
A solid appreciation that restores Handy to his rightful place in America’s music pantheon.Pub Date: March 18, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-307-26609-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2009
A leading African-American scholar of the law, known for decrying the underrepresentation of minorities in the academy, reflects on protest and race in America. Four years ago, Bell (Law/New York Univ.; Faces at the Bottom of the Well, 1992, etc.), then at Harvard, protested the absence of black women from that university's law faculty by taking an unpaid leave of absence. After much dithering, Harvard failed to hire a black woman law professor; once Bell had taken the two years of leave allowed him by its rules, Harvard fired him, refusing to make an exception for his principled stand. Affecting vignettes reveal how Bell's family inspired and sustained his protest. Accounts of faculty politics, in contrast, find Bell pulling his punches. Rather than settle scores, he seeks to knit his personal and professional experiences into a broad exploration of protest and the responses that it provokes. Alongside of his confrontation with the authorities at Harvard, Bell examines protests by such figures as Paul Robeson, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Martin Luther King while weaving into his book—in a manner familiar to readers of his previous work and to those acquainted with the techniques of ``critical race studies''—an allegorical fable in which citizens of a ruling citadel argue over how to treat the downtrodden outside of their walls. Bell illuminates an ugly picture: Protesters become pariahs, true reform may be impossible to achieve, yet struggle is necessary to preserve dignity and self-esteem. If Bell's pessimism seems a bit hyperbolic, his argument lends moral authority to those who exhort us toward social reform—those such as Bell himself, whose perhaps overdue disillusion with Harvard enables him to forcefully pose questions of how and why the institutional imperatives of power and prestige compromise moral vision. Bell's clearly written jeremiad, with its moving portrait of the author as exemplary protester, will inspire new examinations of struggles in our citadels of power—perhaps even new protests there. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8070-0926-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A slow poke through Montana by Conrad (former editor of Horizons), a guy who likes a side dish of bile to accompany his travels. Conrad hits the road in the Big Sky State to take in the scenery and dig up a little family history. The family side of the story comes and goes—both grandfathers moved to the territory back in the late 1800s—with Conrad trying valiantly to paint them as fascinating characters. They're not, even with murder, mayhem, and adultery thrown in. Nor does Conrad succeed as an artful recorder of today's Montana. He can't help trotting out the obligatory Montaniana—barroom fisticuffs, brushes with Mr. Griz, trouty days, whiskey nights—while historical context comes in spurts from the ``Billings was named after Frederick Billings, an executive of the...'' school of background information. He mooches around with a fine disregard for the consequences, a little piece of bravery much to his credit. Most folks Conrad runs into are either forlorn, bitter, drunk, or just plain ready to brawl—bump into someone and get your lights punched out, mention the wrong name and get your lights punched out, offer an ill-timed comment and get your lights punched out. Then again, maybe he just spent too much time in bars. There is a wealth of detail in theses pages, some of it captivating, from ghoulish doings in Great Falls to the virtues of buffalo meat to tensions over wolf reintroduction to the quick portraits of the folks he crosses paths with, but little, if any, continuity. One item is cobbled to another, a pastiche from which an image of Montana never emerges. Don't expect to learn why they call this land the Last Great Place; even as a miscellany, Conrad's sidelong glimpse of Montana never conjures much excitement. (Photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-258551-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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