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Wake up dead man : hard labor and Southern blues / collected and edited by Bruce Jackson ; with a new preface.
Van Pelt - Albrecht Music Library M1977.C55 J2
Available
- Format:
- Musical score
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Prisoners' songs--Texas.
- Prisoners' songs.
- African American prisoners--Texas--Music.
- African American prisoners.
- Texas.
- Genre:
- Music.
- Folk music.
- Physical Description:
- 1 score (xxvi pages, 326 pages) : illustrations ; 23 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Athens : University of Georgia Press, 1999.
- Summary:
- "Making it in Hell, " says Bruce Jackson, is the spirit behind the sixty-five worksongs gathered in this eloquent dispatch from a brutal era of prison life in the Deep South. Through engagingly documented song arrangements and profiles of their singers, Jackson shows how such pieces as Hammer Ring, " "Ration Blues, " "Yellow Gal, " and "Jody's Got My Wife and Gone" are like no other folk music forms: they are distinctly African in heritage, diminished in power and meaning outside of their prison context, an used exclusively by black convicts.
- The songs paced workers through the rigors of cane-cutting, logging, and cotton-picking. Perhaps most important, they helped resolve the men's hopes and longings and allowed them a subtle outlet for grievances they could never voice when face-to-face with their jailers.
- Notes:
- "Brown Thrasher Books."
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 317-319), discography (pages 319-320), and index.
- ISBN:
- 0820321583
- OCLC:
- 43583575
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