Illinois Press Book Blog

No Depression tips a cap to two of our recent music titles, Jon Fox’s King of the Queen City and Stephen Calt’s Barrelhouse Words.

I’m tickled to note that on November 2 Stephen Calt published … a nearly 300-page book titled Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary. . . . I actually think it’d make a great nightstand book, or, for those of you who keep stupid joke books by the toilet, this one might upgrade your ambiance some.

In today’s Dream Job category, we have the University Library at California Santa Cruz seeking to fill the Grateful Dead Archivist position. So: perfect opportunity to sport your Jerry tie, or fashion faux pas?

black cat bone
I believe my good gal have found my black cat bone
I can leave Sunday mornin’ Monday mornin’ I’m tippin’ ’round home.
—Blind Lemon Jefferson, “Broke And Hungry,” 1926

A hoodoo charm held to confer magical powers upon its possessor, including invisibility and the ability to triumph over sexual rivals. In the above song, the performer is suggesting that his girlfriend has been able to prevent abandonment by virtue of using his own black cat bone. As dispensed by some conjurers, the charm was represented as a bone boiled from a live black cat that made no reflection in a mirror (Puckett, 1925). An ex-slave noted: “First, the cat is killed and boiled, after which the meat is scraped from the bones. The bones are then taken to the creek and thrown in. The bone that goes up stream is the lucky one and should be kept” (Minnie R. Ross, as quoted in Born in Slavery). At the same time, the phrase was loosely applied to mean “just a bone they put in that hoodoo bag . . . [with] a piece of lodestone, some kind of red cloth; they got it mixed up together” (Willie Moore).

From Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary by Stephen Calt.

As a first-time author, the whole meeting-the-readers idea is still pretty new to me. I’ve spent virtually all of my writing life working in a vacuum, very rarely having any contact with anyone who reads my work. That suits the shy side of my nature just fine, but promoting a new book offered a different experience that I thought might be interesting, or with luck, maybe even fun. It turned out to be that and more.

My book, King of the Queen City: The Story of King Records, tells the tale of an innovative and important record company that operated in Cincinnati, Ohio, from 1943 to 1971. I know that many people in Cincinnati are interested in the history and legacy of King Records—and feel strongly that King has never received the credit it deserves as a pioneering American record company—so I obviously hoped to reach that core group with the book. I was fairly confident they’d at least appreciate King of the Queen City. What I hadn’t expected was their gratitude.

I felt that gratitude most strongly at two Cincinnati events, the annual multi-author Books by the Banks festival, sponsored by the Cincinnati Public Library and held downtown at the Duke Energy Convention Center, and a book signing the next day at Shake It Records, the coolest record store I’ve ever had the pleasure of shopping at.

The first book I signed at Shake It was for a woman who had to rush off to catch her daughter’s soccer game. She bought a couple of books and promised to buy several more for holiday presents. She then said, sort of apologetically, “I know you’ve heard this a million times already, but I just wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart for writing this book. I know it must have been hard, and my husband and I thank you for sticking with it.”

Well, no, I haven’t heard that a million times already, but I heard it over and over at those two gatherings. Most of the thanks came from folks who said they “had been waiting years for this” and/or that it was a story “that needed to be told.” The high point for me was hearing that from Zella Nathan, the nonagenarian widow of King Records founder Syd Nathan.

It was highly gratifying for a new author to sell some books at these two functions and fairly surreal to be asked to autograph them. I look forward to hearing from people that they enjoyed reading it and that they’ve recommended it to friends. But being thanked so profusely by so many people for doing what was essentially a labor of love—that goes way beyond gratifying. That will take some thinking about.

*****

Jon Hartley Fox is the author of King of the Queen City: The Story of King Records.

Last week, The Jerusalem Post newspaper featured a review of Walter Rimler’s George Gershwin: An Intimate Portrait.

“Rimler shines in weaving together anecdotes, correspondence and a wealth of interviews with the composer and his contemporaries to create a vibrant, flesh-and-blood picture of the man and his music in a readable and enjoyable book. Rimler’s Gershwin is genuinely likable, if somewhat arrogant: a mama’s boy to a coldhearted matriarch; a brother who was abandoned in deteriorating health; and a playboy who finally tried to settle with the wrong girl.”

Coming to New York to launch I Feel a Song Coming On, my new biography of songwriter Jimmy McHugh, was certainly quite a contrast to the way any of my previous books has entered the world. Leaving my home in Oxford, UK, at 5.30 am for London’s Heathrow airport was an early start on the first day, and by the time I reached the Zankel Hall for Michael Feinstein’s McHugh concert that same evening, it was half past midnight—British time—when the show began. I mustered some kind of coherence for an onstage interview with Michael, helped by McHugh’s grandson Jim’s excellent and witty memories of the great songsmith.

By the time I left the after show reception at the Russian Tea Room, I had been awake for 24 hours. But after a brief sleep it was time to be up bright and early for a visit to WGBO in Newark. The same studio and the same interviewer (Andrew Meyer) whom I’d met on the promo tour for my New History of Jazz in 2001. That book had originally been scheduled to be launched on 12 September 2001 with a party at the Knitting Factory. Obviously the tragic events of the previous day made that impossible, and so my tour took place in October, with a launch party at a hastily cleaned up Knitting Factory club that still looked and smelt somewhat like a Pompeii exhibit.

Obviously traveling around talking about a jazz book in those somber times was light relief for some radio and tv shows, but I remember that entire fall book tour of 2001 had an air of unreality about it.

This time any air of unreality was to do with the marvelous events that had been organized in New York to get the McHugh book going. On the Friday of my brief tour, after a couple of other short interviews and much discussion of future marketing, there was a signing at Barnes and Noble, opposite Lincoln Center. Some of my author friends had been pessimistic— “You won’t get many people along,” “If anybody is there they won’t be in a book buying mood,”—that kind of thing. They could hardly have been more wrong. A great, friendly crowd, marvelous music from Wesla Whitfield, and a gracious interview by Tom Santopietro. And judging by the ache in my right wrist afterwards, I must have sold and signed a lot of books!

Thanks to everyone at Illinois University Press, Barnes and Noble, and Jimmy McHugh Music for making this flying visit a musical, social and commercial success!

*****

Alyn Shipton is a jazz critic for the Times of London and a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio. He is the author of the new book I Feel a Song Coming On: The Life of Jimmy McHugh.

bird liver
I wanna give you folks a warnin’,
I mean this mornin’,
An’ I want you all to strictly understand:
Now you can call me what you choose, but I’m a bird liver-cravin’ man.
—Sylvester Kimbrough, “Bird Liver Blues,” 1929

An elderly woman; black slang synonymous with hogmeat (Hill). The statement “you can call me what you choose” is put forth with the assumption that the singer will be regarded as a gigolo.

From Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary by Stephen Calt.

On October 9, 2009, Barnes & Noble Lincoln Triangle hosted an event for Alyn Shipton’s new book I Feel a Song Coming On: The Life of Jimmy McHugh, the first biography of the classic American songwriter. Tom Santopietro moderated a conversation with Alyn Shipton and McHugh’s grandson Jim McHugh, and Wesla Whitfield performed hit titles from the McHugh songbook.

Alyn Shipton interviewed by Guy Thomas for Jimmy McHugh site

Wesla Whitfield sings from the Jimmy McHugh songbook

For an audio tour of the Jimmy McHugh soundscape, listen to this week’s syndicated Riverwalk Jazz program.

John Broven, author of the recent book Record Makers and Breakers: Voices of the Independent Rock ‘n’ Roll Pioneers, will participate in a From Songwriters to Soundmen: The People Behind the Hits panel at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland on October 21, 2009, at 7:00 PM.

And, the next evening, October 22, Broven will speak about Record Makers and Breakers at the Arlington Public Library (Central location) in Arlington, Virginia.

The paperback edition of Record Makers and Breakers is included in our Spring 2010 catalog and will be published in February 2010.

Today’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross will feature a segment on the new book King of the Queen City: The Story of King Records.

Interviewees include author Jon Hartley Fox, bassist Bootsy Collins, and Sire/Warner Bros. record executive Seymour Stein who started his career at King.