Musicians and music scholars rightly focus on the sounds of the blues
and the colorful life stories of blues performers. Equally important
and, until now, inadequately studied are the lyrics. The international
contributors to Nobody Knows Where the Blues Come From explore this
aspect of the blues and establish the significance of African American
popular song as a neglected form of oral history.
"High Water Everywhere: Blues and Gospel Commentary on the 1927
Mississippi River Flood," by David Evans, is the definitive study of
songs about one of the greatest natural disasters in the history of the
United States. In "Death by Fire: African American Popular Music on the
Natchez Rhythm Club Fire," Luigi Monge analyzes a continuum of songs
about exclusively African American tragedy. "Lookin' for the Bully: An
Enquiry into a Song and Its Story," by Paul Oliver traces the origins
and the many avatars of the Bully song. In "That Dry Creek Eaton Clan: A
North Mississippi Murder Ballad of the 1930s," Tom Freeland and Chris
Smith study a ballad recorded in 1939 by a black convict at Parchman
prison farm. "Coolidge's Blues: African American Blues from the Roaring
Twenties" is Guido van Rijn's survey of blues of that decade. Robert
Springer's "On the Electronic Trail of Blues Formulas" presents a number
of conclusions about the spread of patterns in blues narratives. In
"West Indies Blues: An Historical Overview 1920s-1950s," John Cowley
turns his attention to West Indian songs produced on the American
mainland. Finally, in "Ethel Waters: 'Long, Lean, Lanky Mama, '" Randall
Cherry reappraises the early career of this blues and vaudeville singer
