The Blues Come to Texas. Paul Oliver and Mack McCormick’s Unfinished Book by Alan B. Govenar (ed.) (2019)

In the 1950s and 1960s, any solid university library with a section on folklore, gospel music, American Studies, or African Studies would probably have a number of standard works on the subjects, as back then there were rather few academic books on music, musical culture and its relatedness to African cultures and the rural US.

It is very likely that some of those books would be authored by one Paul Oliver, English native, who at that time was one of the most important writers on jazz and blues in England (author of such classics as Blues Fell This Morning and Conversation with the Blues), simply because there was nobody else who could (and would) do it. Following several careers as album cover designer, journalist and researcher, he also wrote hundreds of liner note texts for American recordings and authored countess essays and record reviews.

Mack McCormick in the 1950s made a name for himself when he compiled and collected massive amounts of field recordings and tape interviews with black musicians from all over Texas and the greater South.

In the late 1950s, both authors, one in the US, one in England, agreed on a common project: to write a book on Texas blues. At least, that was the plan.

The two excellent introductory texts by editor/compiler Alan Govenar and Kip Lornell give a good deal of insight into the correspondence, labor sharing, discussions on chapter and theory design, frustrations on both author‘s sides, and the overall difficult logistics of putting such a huge project together. Those long introductions are essential for the development of the work, since the book unfortunately was never published during the lifetime of either original author, but only came out in its final form in 2019.

McCormick’s and Oliver’s collaboration, which started roughly in 1959 with much enthusiasm, professionalism and a shared interest and urge to understand and document the musical style, over the years began to wane and as today‘s reader now can witness, also left a mark on their telegram and letter conversations. There, both authors use a more and more unfriendly and sometimes even plain hostile style.

Obviously, over the years promises were broken and egos got hurt. Their personal estrangement was (seemingly) ultimately caused by Oliver’s wish for more data and refined texts, while McCormick wanted to have the project finished.

Things were not facilitated by the fact that within the almost twenty years the two collaborated without visible progress, Oliver published several individual books on the side, held lectures, recorded artists and devoted time to many other projects on the side, which may have led McCormick to believe that their mutual project would not have the highest priority level with Oliver.

Furthermore, communication and data sharing in pre-Internet times meant writing long letters on the typewriter, making several carbon copies, typing supplemental lengthy new drafts, adding corrections of the writings of the other party, putting it in large boxes and shipping these abroad. Together with entire folders of newspaper clippings, conversations and interviews on either tape or paper, pictures or other library finds. Those shipments were the regular way of collaboration for more than a decade.

Finally, in 1996, editor Alan Govenar (folklorist, photographer, filmmaker) established contact with Oliver and was invited by him to complete the huge manuscript and moreover, publish the Texas blues book. As Oliver became ill, Govenar was supported by folklorist and ethnomusicologist Kip Lornell to prepare the existing manuscript and thousands of fragments from Oliver’s vault for final publication.

It is most unlikely that such a huge and detailed amount of field work as the core of such a monumental study on Texas blues will ever be repeated, even with today‘s methods of communication and real-time team access to documents and audio files. Furthermore, the subjects of the main book project – Texas blues men and women who influenced the style in the early half of the 20th century – by now have almost all passed away. And no longer will there be an occasion to record the stories, memories and first hand experiences of the unique musicians who performed the style in the Texas area. The same is true for the two book authors. Oliver died in 2017, McCormick passed away in 2015.

The finished 8.8 x 11 inche, 460 page three pound book then actually contains a number of smaller books, in a way. First, it is the more or less separate work of two strong-willed individuals (while authorship of most of the chapters is not always clearly distinguishable). McCormick, a fieldwork pro who spent thousands of hours driving to remote places and digging through obsolete vaults to come up with tons of taped conversations, record matrix numbers and newspaper clippings in “his back yard,” i.e. as American based in Houston, TX, with access to the interviewees.

Paul Oliver, on the other hand, mostly was the distant collector of printed and recorded evidence of blues culture in the US, while he, an English native, apart from some journeys to the South and Africa, spent most of his life in England and was busy with many other projects from different disciplines. Besides being a blues researcher and journalist, he also had a strong interest in architecture (in recognition of this line of work, he became a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2003), art history, encyclopedic work and was a collector of many things.

Then, with all emphasis on the difficult cooperation, the book obviously contains precious data and stories on various Texas areas (in particular, Santa Fe, Houston, Galveston, Fort Bend, Dallas, San Antonio), barrelhouse blues culture, gospel music, Boll Weevil song variations and string bands. It also mentions local conditions and components such as permanent segregation, vaudeville culture, bootlegging, minstrelsy, medicine shows, cattle ranching, cotton cultivation, Texas jazz, and many other circumstances that influenced/were influenced by the blues culture.

In the texts countless references to and interviews with individual musicians, such as Bernice Edwards, Harold Holiday, Smokey Hog, James Tisdom, T-Bone Walker, Lowell Fulson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Leroy Carr, Hattie Burleson, Roosevelt Williams, Leon Calhoun, Ragtime Texas, Mance Lipscomb, Texas Alexander, Leon Benton, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Roosevelt T. Williams, Ivory Joe Hunter, Clifton Chenier, Kokomo Arnold, Charles Brown, Leadbelly and many, many others are quoted. Furthermore, many blues research topics not strictly related to Texas also found their way into some sections. Finally, several hundred blues songs and their performance and rendering by various artists over time are listed. The immense 30 page index reads like a blues dictionary.

Finally, thanks to the long introductions by editor Govenar, the readers may get a glimpse of the tremendous amount of work that went into the edition, that by now actually is the result of four authors (Oliver, McCormick, Govenar and Lornell).

The two texts are completed with original introduction, penned by Paul Oliver in the late 1970s; by then he already envisioned a two-volume edition, due to the unusually large amount of data and conclusions.

Any blues researcher will be more than grateful for this enormous treasure that finally, some forty years later, is available. The contents may not have altered blues research (if it had come out in 1979, for example,) but may have added valuable detail and could have cleared up many a discussion where evidence or historical fact could have been proven by one of the many interviews done by McCormick or a remark by Oliver.

Highly recommended for any folklorist, historian or blues researcher, as the huge volume in small type and printed in two-column pages easily would provide enough material to bring forth three or four standard-sized volumes.

 

Review by Dr. A. Ebert © 2020

 

Alan B. Govenar (ed.), Kip Lornell (Contributor). The Blues Come to Texas. Paul Oliver and Mack McCormick’s Unfinished Book. (John and Robin Dickson Series in Texas Music, sponsored by the Center for Texas Music History, Texas State University), Texas A&M University Press, 2019, 460 p.