Blues Fell This Morning: Meaning in the Blues

by Paul Oliver

Blues Fell This Morning has become the classic account of the blues, one of the most evocative strands of American popular culture. Richard Wright's foreword pays tribute to Paul Oliver's deep understanding of 'those starkly brutal haunting folk songs created by millions of nameless and illiterate American Negroes in their confused wanderings over the American southland and in their intrusion into the northern American industrial cities'. Here as never before, material from recordings and recollections of singers, going back to the 1920's, are woven into an interpretative account of meaning in the blues.

Genres: Music, History, Nonfiction, African American, Jazz

372 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

Paul Oliver was a British architectural historian and writer on the blues and other forms of African-American music.

Librarians note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[East Bay J · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Blues Fell This Morning was published in 1960, the blues craze in England was just getting started. Bands like The Yardbirds, Stones, Who and Animals that would take the blues and amp it up were yet to exist and blues music in England was being performed by the bands of Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies. England’s fascination with American roots music was building steam. Blues Fell This Morning, then, was published at the perfect time.

Paul Oliver may also have been the perfect person to write about blues at that time. As an Englishman, Oliver was able to take an outside look at the blues, how it came to be and what it was all about. Not having grown up amidst America’s racism, Oliver was able to give the appropriate significance and respect to his subject and unflinchingly highlight the effect racism so clearly had on the blues.

Unlike his later book, The Story Of The Blues, in which he more or less created a catch all bio collection of some of the best and brightest names in blues, Oliver made a very concentrated effort in Blues Fell This Morning to do just as the subtitle suggests; give meaning to the blues. From slave songs to big city blues, Oliver makes it make sense in a way you can take with you and apply to other books on blues and to blues recordings. Also, like The Story Of The Blues, Blues Fell This Morning is jammed full of great stories. The lives these legends lived are kept alive in the retelling of their stories.

This copy of Blues Fell This Morning is the “second edition”, published in 1990. It’s interesting to note, however, the actual second time this book saw print was in 1963 as The Meaning Of The Blues.

[Jamie Howison · Rating 3 out of 5]

For anyone interested in exploring blues scholarship, this is a "must read." Originally published in 1960, "Blues Fell This Morning" is one of the first sustained studies of the blues tradition, and as such has been a book with which later scholars have had to contend. With the lyrics of 350 blues songs included in whole or in part, it is stands as a rather rich resource.

Yet it is not without its very real problems. Oliver was an English architectural historian by training, and a blues music aficionado by avocation. At the time of his writing this book he'd never actually even been to the United States to see and hear any of the music in its context. He did interview at length a number of key blues people (notably Big Bill Broonzy), but I'd say this the book suffers from its arms-length character. Interestingly, in his foreword to the book the novelist Richard Wright greets this as a positive thing, writing, "I see certain psychological advantages in an outsider examining these songs and their meaning," adding that, "to the meaning of the blues, Paul Oliver brings, in the fullest human sense, what courts of law term ‘corroborative evidence.’"

Frankly, I'm not convinced. Oliver presumes to understand much about a world he never engaged first-hand, and at times slips into some rather broad generalizations about American "Negro" culture. He's also quite guilty of doing something that James Cone and Jon Michael Spencer have both identified as a key weakness in much white scholarship on the blues, namely he all but severs the blues from the spirituals, failing to see the deep spiritual and religious questions that are so often at play in this music.

But again, if you want to explore the critical scholarship on this music, you have to contend with Oliver. Just be sure you follow it up with some Cone's "The Spirituals and the Blues," Spencer's "Blues and Evil," and maybe Angela Davis's Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday."

[Ted Gurley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading for anyone interested in understanding early blues music (up to 1960). Notes and bibliography demonstrate the research that Oliver did.

[Curtis Anthony Bozif · Rating 2 out of 5]

For many reasons, not the least of which being Oliver's rather bland writing style, this is my least favorite book about blues music. Oliver was an English man who, before writing this book in the late fifties, had never been to the United States. Aside from quoting extensively from blues lyrics he'd heard on record, Oliver writes little about the music itself. Instead, he focuses on the history of the black people who created the music in the first half the of the 20th century. Finally, like most white blues loving scholars of his generation, Oliver's focus is almost exclusively on rural, folk, or country (which is to say acoustic) blues musicians and singers. He saw electrified urban blues as somehow not authentic! Today, outside it's wealth of early blues lyrics, this book is mostly a document of mid-century folk revival enthusiasm.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book for an anthropology class in college. I already loved the blues, but through this book I learned so much more about the music, the musicians, the cities and the struggles that shape the American experience.
Somewhere along the line, I gave this book away. I don't know what I was thinking; but it says something about the power of the writing that to this day I wish I had held onto my copy.

[Vicky Sharratt · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent study of the history of blues music through thematic analysis of lyrics and perfomers life stories. A must for any true fan of blues music cataloging the early years of the style and it's roots.