Ragged But Right: Black Traveling Shows, Coon Songs, and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz

Ragged But Right: Black Traveling Shows, Coon Songs, and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz - Paperback

$90.00
$90.00
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Ragged But Right: Black Traveling Shows, Coon Songs, and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz
  • Ragged But Right: Black Traveling Shows, Coon Songs, and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz
Ragged But Right: Black Traveling Shows, Coon Songs, and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz - Paperback

Ragged But Right: Black Traveling Shows, Coon Songs, and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz - Paperback

by Lynn Abbott , Doug Seroff
$90.00
$90.00

Book Overview

The commercial explosion of ragtime in the early twentieth century created previously unimagined opportunities for black performers. However, every prospect was mitigated by systemic racism. The biggest hits of the ragtime era weren't Scott Joplin's stately piano rags. "Coon songs," with their ugly name, defined ragtime for the masses, and played a transitional role in the commercial ascendancy of blues and jazz.

In Ragged but Right, Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff investigate black musical comedy productions, sideshow bands, and itinerant tented minstrel shows. Ragtime history is crowned by the "big shows," the stunning musical comedy successes of Williams and Walker, Bob Cole, and Ernest Hogan. Under the big tent of Tolliver's Smart Set, Ma Rainey, Clara Smith, and others were converted from "coon shouters" to "blues singers."

Throughout the ragtime era and into the era of blues and jazz, circuses and Wild West shows exploited the popular demand for black music and culture, yet segregated and subordinated black performers to the sideshow tent. Not to be confused with their nineteenth-century white predecessors, black, tented minstrel shows such as the Rabbit's Foot and Silas Green from New Orleans provided blues and jazz-heavy vernacular entertainment that black southern audiences identified with and took pride in.
ISBN9781617036453
Author Lynn Abbott , Doug Seroff
PublisherUniversity Press of Mississippi
GenreYoung adult
FormatPaperback
PublishedAugust 2020
LanguageENG- English
Pages472
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

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Young Adult Fiction Young Adults

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More by Lynn Abbott

Ragged But Right: Black Traveling Shows, Coon Songs, and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz

Ragged But Right: Black Traveling Shows, Coon Songs, and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz - Paperback

Ragged But Right: Black Traveling Shows, Coon Songs, and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz - Paperback

By Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff
About Lynn Abbott
Lynn Abbott is an independent scholar living in New Orleans. His work has been published in American Music, 78 Quarterly, American Music Research Center Journal, and The Jazz Archivist. Doug Seroff is an independent scholar living in Greenbrier, TN. His work has appeared in American Music, Black Music Research Newsletter, Blues Unlimited, and Record Exchanger, among others. A leading expert on black gospel quartet singing for twenty-five years, he has written chapters published in anthologies and many scholarly essays for a wide variety of journals.
About Doug Seroff
Lynn Abbott is an independent scholar living in New Orleans. His work has been published in American Music, 78 Quarterly, American Music Research Center Journal, and The Jazz Archivist. Doug Seroff is an independent scholar living in Greenbrier, TN. His work has appeared in American Music, Black Music Research Newsletter, Blues Unlimited, and Record Exchanger, among others. A leading expert on black gospel quartet singing for twenty-five years, he has written chapters published in anthologies and many scholarly essays for a wide variety of journals.

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