Celebrating African American History
Norris Highway 61: Heart of the Delta
Randall Norris and Jean-Philippe Cyprès / Foreword by Morgan Freeman

A celebration of the Mississippi Delta in words and pictures, this volume brings to life this storied region of the South. Actor Morgan Freeman provides a foreword in which he recounts his personal history as a child in the Delta and discusses why he was pulled back to his ancestral home, despite its challenges.
Okonkwo A Spirit of Dialogue: Incarnations of Ogbanje, the Born-to-Die,
in African American Literature
Christopher N. Okonkwo

Christopher Okonkwo’s A Spirit of Dialogue adds to the slowly growing body of well-researched, thought-provoking explorations of Africa’s knowledge systems that go deeper than previously imagined in their ability to inform African descendants on both sides of the Atlantic.” -Anthonia Kalu, University of North Colorado
Robinson To Lift Up My Race: The Essential Writings of Samuel Robert Cassius
Edited by Edward J. Robinson

Born into slavery in 1853, Samuel Robert Cassius is a fascinating and instructive example of the first generation of freed slaves in the United States. This collection of writings by Cassius gives us the man—evangelist, educator, farmer, entrepreneur, postmaster, politician, and father of twenty-three—in a significant moment in the emergence of black culture and society between Reconstruction and the Great Depression.
Robinson A Godsend to His People: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Marshall Keeble
Edited by Edward J. Robinson

Marshall Keeble stands as one of the Church of Christ’s most influential and celebrated African American evangelists. He helped establish over two hundred churches and baptized approximately forty thousand individuals during his nearly seventy years of ministry. A Godsend to His People brings to light over forty years of Keeble’s writings.
Shields Phillis Wheatley’s Poetics of Liberation: Backgrounds and Contexts
John C. Shields

Phillis Wheatley was the first African American to publish a book on any subject in America and only the second woman to do so. Phillis Wheatley’s Poetics of Liberation is a groundbreaking study of this important and most controversial writer.
Books Celebrating Traditional Music and Culture

Journeyman's RoadJourneyman’s Road
Modern Blues Lives from Faulkner’s Mississippi to Post-9/11 New York Adam Gussow

“Adam Gussow has lived the Blues life. By some miracle he has also lived to write about it. Whether his subject is a novel by Faulkner or the romance of buying an amp, his prose is as dynamic as a guitar solo by Stevie Ray Vaughan.” —Krin Gabbard, author of Black Magic: White Hollywood and African American Culture
 “Adam not only knows the blues…he feels it. Read this book and you will too.”
—Shemekia Copeland Harmonica lessons from Adam Gussow on YouTube
Listen to music by Adam Gussow and Sterling “Mr. Satan” Magee
View Adam Gussow’s book tour and scheduled performances
Read more

Grassroots MusicGrassroots Music in the Upper Cumberland
 Edited by William Lynwood Montell
“This book is, in a sense, a folk history of the music cultures of this area, and one full of rich detail and cultural surprises.” —Charles K. Wolfe

In this new book, various authors cover a variety of musical styles: English ballads, gospel, bluegrass, modern country, and even rock ’n’ roll—all find their unique expression in the musical mosaic of the Upper Cumberland. Read more

 

 

 

Fiddlin' Charlie BowmanFiddlin’ Charlie Bowman
An East Tennessee Old-Time Music Pioneer and His Musical Family
Bob L. Cox
With an Afterword by Archie Green

This new book tells-for the first time-the story of Charlie Bowman, a musician from East Tennessee, who was a major influence on the distinctive fiddle style definitive of country music of the 1920s and 1930s.
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Jook Right OnJook Right On
Blues Stories and Blues Storytellers
Barry Lee Pearson

“Jook Right On could possibly produce the same kind of blues revival 2000s that Charter’s work did almost fifty years earlier.” —Bruce Conforth, Journal of Folklore Research “Pearson has collected a gold mine of compelling tales, organized them with convincing logic, and introduced them with the kind of penetrating insight and professional modesty that any blues scholar might do well to emulate.”
—Adam Gussow, author of Seems Like Murder Here: Southern Violence and the Blues Tradition and Journeyman’s Road: Modern Blues Lives from Faulkner’s Mississippi to Post-9/11 New York

Podcasts- Listen to interviews from Jook Right On
Read more

Other UT Press titles on music tradition and culture


African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia: A Study of Folk Traditions

Black Hymnody: A Hymnological History of the African-American Church

Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance: A Collection of Essays

Blues and Evil

Charles Faulkner Bryan: His Life and Music

A Companion to The New Harp of Columbia

Deford Bailey: A Black Star in Early Country Music

Folk Songs of Middle Tennessee: The George Boswell Collection

A Hot-Bed of Musicians: Traditional Music in the Upper New River Valley–Whitetop Region

Rise My Soul: Old Harp Singing from Wear’s Valley (CD)

February Feature: The Paper Bag Principle

Kerr“This is, to my knowledge, the first full-length treatment of complexion legends and myths, filling a major gap in the literature. . . . It treats controversial issues with great sensitivity and insight.”
—Nancy Bonvillain, Simon’s Rock College of Bard

The only attempt to document rumor and legends relating to complexion in black communities, The Paper Bag Principle looks at the divide that has existed between the black elite and the black “folk.”

Read an Excerpt

While a few studies have dealt with complexion consciousness in black communities, there has, to date, been no study that has catalogued how the belief systems of members of a black community have influenced the shaping of its institutions, organizations, and neighborhoods. Audrey Kerr examines how these folk beliefs—exemplified by the infamous “paper bag tests”—inform color discrimination intraracially.

Kerr argues that proximity to whiteness (in hue) and wealth have helped create two black Washingtons and that the black community, at various times in history, replicated “Jim Crowism” internally to create some standard of exceptionalism in education and social organization.
The Paper Bag Principle focuses on three objectives: to record lore related to the “paper bag principle” (the set of attitudes that granted blacks with light skin higher status in black communities); to investigate the impact that this “principle” has had on the development of black community consciousness; and to link this material to power that results from proximity to whiteness.

Other titles of interest:
Maxine Smith’s Unwilling Pupils: Lessons Learned in Memphis’s Civil Rights Classroom (forthcoming March 2007)
Journeyman’s Road: Modern Blues Lives from Faulkner’s Mississippi to Post-9/11 New York (forthcoming June 2007)
Inventing Black Women (forthcoming July 2007)
Sutton E. Griggs and the Struggle against White Supremacy (forthcoming July 2007)
George S. Schuyler: Portrait of a Black Conservative
Little X: Growing Up in the Nation of Islam
Jook Right On: Blues Stories and Blues Storytellers
The Civil Rights Movement in Tennessee
The Letters of Jean Toomer
Critical Essays on John Edgar Wideman

Kerr The Paper Bag Principle: Class, Colorism, and Rumor and the Case of Black Washington, D.C.

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Home for the Holidays in Appalachia

Thirteen states between (and including) parts of New York and Mississippi constitute the enigmatic Appalachian region—home to the beautiful mountain system that shares its name. It is a region that has produced some of the most talented writers, gifted artisans, and richest lore in the world. The University of Tennessee Press is pleased to be the publisher of many books that celebrate this very special place. This holiday season we showcase some of our most recent releases in Appalachian studies. UT Press—at the corner of Appalachia and the world.

Encyclopedia of Appalachia Encyclopedia of Appalachia
Edited by Rudy Abramson and Jean Haskell

Read an Excerpt

The one-stop indispensable guide to Appalachia’s rich history and unique culture.

A Handbook to Appalachia A Handbook to Appalachia
An Introduction to the Region
Edited by Grace Toney Edwards, JoAnn Aust Asbury, and Ricky L. Cox

Read an Excerpt

An overview of Appalachia’s history, culture, people, literature, religion, and much more. An excellent companion to the Encyclopedia of Appalachia.
Appalachia and Beyond Appalachia and Beyond
Converstions with Writers from the Mountain South
Edited by John Lang

Read an Excerpt

Conversations with Fred Chappell, Robert Morgan, Lee Smith, Mary Lee Settle, Charles Wright, and many more.
Get Your Jook On!

Listen to the Podcast

Jook Right On
Jook Right On

Blues Stories and Blues Storytellers

Barry Lee Pearson

“Pearson has collected a gold mine of compelling tales, organized them with convincing logic, and introduced them with the kind of penetrating insight and professional modesty that any blues scholar might do well to emulate. This is a terrific book—one I know I’ll use in my own teaching.”
—Adam Gussow, author of Seems Like Murder Here: Southern Violence and the Blues Tradition

Jook Right On: Blues Stories and Blues Storytellers is what author and compiler Barry Lee Pearson calls a “blues quilt.” These blues stories, collected by Pearson for thirty years, are told in the blues musicians’ own words. The author interviewed over one hundred musicians, recording and transcribing their stories. These are stories from well-known musicians such as John Lee Hooker, Koko Taylor, David “Honeyboy” Edwards, and Little Milton, and from more obscure artists such as Big Luck Carter, Henry Dorsey, Joseph Savage, and J. T. Adams. Pearson provides an introduction to the world of the blues and the genre of blues stories as well as brief biographies of the musicians.

Divided into five sections—Blues Talk, Living the Blues, Learning the Blues, Working the Blues, and The Last Word—the book provides an overview of the inner workings of the blues tradition from the artist’s point of view.

Wordsmiths by trade, the storytellers bring to their tales qualities also found in blues song performance and philosophical perspectives characteristic of the blues tradition such as improvisation, ironic humor, ambivalence, and a life-affirming sense of hope in the face of adversity. Pitched somewhere between story and song, this remarkable chorus of voices provides concrete illustrations of what it means to live the blues, to feel the blues, and to play the blues. Taken together, these artists provide a collective history of one of America’s most influential art forms.

Blues fans and those interested in African American music, folklore, American music history, popular culture, and southern history will want to read Jook Right On: Blues Stories and Blues Storytellers.

The Author: Barry Lee Pearson is professor of English and American studies at the University of Maryland. He is the coauthor of Robert Johnson: Lost and Found, Virginia Piedmont Blues: The Lives and Art of Two Virginia Bluesmen, “Sounds So Good to Me”: The Bluesman’s Story, and more than a hundred articles. In 1993 he was nominated for a Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album for Roots of Rhythm and Blues: A Tribute to the Robert Johnson Era.

Copyright ©2006 The University of Tennessee Press · Knoxville, Tennessee 37996 · 865-974-3321 • Last Modified 03/11/08 • University of Tennessee

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