Gatchet - Authenticity and Blues in Austin

7/25/2019 Gatchet - Authenticity and Blues in Austin

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i

Tve Cot Some Antique in

The Discourse of Authenticity and

Identity in the African American Blues

Community in Austin Texas

Roger Davis Catchet

Abstract:

This essay draws on the author's oral history work in the African

American blues community inAustin,

Texas,

in order to examine how professional

blues artists there understand and negotiate the concept of authenticity.

More to the point, this essay explores the ways in which the narrators use the

category of authenticity as a way to articulate their own identity. Through a

close textual analysis of the interviews, it demonstrates how race, class, and

lived experience are intimately tied to notions of authenticity in the blues and

locates the ambiguity inherent in the narrators' discourse at the center of a

larger cultural struggle for empowerment and recognition in this historically

marginalized community. Two songs by the musicians featured in this essay

follow after the conclusion. Listening to these requires a means of accessing

the audio files through hyperlinks. See Instructions for Multimedia Reading of

the OHR, which follows the Editor's Introduc tion at the fron t of the

journal,

for

further explanation on how to access this article on line.

Keywords:

African American, authenticity, blues music, class, race.

The peculiar human desire for authentic objects and experiences, although not

new, appears to be a particularly salient concern today. As rhetorical scholar

Barry Brum mett argues nA hetoricofStyie our culture is shot through w ith a

The author would like to thank Kathryn Nasstrom, Martha Norkunas, Joshua Gunn, Barry Brummett, Dana

Cloud,

Madeline Maxwell, Jennifer Fuller, Amanda Davis Catchet, and the blind reviewers for their thought-

ful advice and generosity. The interviews conducted for this essay are part of the Project in Interpreting the


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208 I GATCHET

longing for authenticity precisely because it is so engrossed in images, floating

signs,

simulations, and style. There is thus a cultural longing for authenticity,

for the

real,

that is expressed in numerous texts and advertisements. ^ Similarly,

literary critic Ceoffrey Hartman argues that we are currently living in an era

of simulacra, of increasing saturation by the media and new, vast sources of

information or disinform ation, which leads to the schizoid feeling tha t the

world we live in is not the real world. ^ Many hope that authenticity, whatever

they understand it to be, is the prescription for curing this postmodern, cultural

schizophrenia, theterra firma that prevents them from losing their footing dur-

ing times when everything else seems so uncertain.

Authenticity can be productively understood not as an objective quality

or state of being but rather as the product of cultural struggle.^ The many

ways in which au then ticity is de fined, categorized, and negotiated sym bolically

will always depend on how this struggle plays out and who takes part in it, as

various parties draw on discursive and symbolic resources (language, images,

signs) to influence what they and others understand authenticity to be. In

popular cultural forms such as music, an artist's id entity often heavily influences

whether or not that a rtist is perceived as au thentic . This is particularly true in

the blues, where constructions of race and class are used to nego tiate au the n-

ticity in complex ways. Indeed, the blues' historical roots in slavery and sys-

temic racism have often led some to link the authenticity of its performers with

problematic conceptions of primitive blackness. For example, rhetorical critic

Stephen A. King argues that dominant discourses framing historical blues sites,

such as the Mississippi Delta, often traffic in pervasive racial stereotypes that

romanticize the poor, itinerant, or hypersexualized black musicianwhat King

calls the prim itive blues sub ject. '' InRomancing the

Folk

historian Benjamin

Filene shows how famed cultural preservationists John and Alan Lomax, whose

early field recordings of American vernacular music for the Library of Congress

have had a powerful impact on our understanding of the authenticity of blues

and folk artists, thoroug hly exo ticized Huddie Ledbetter (better known as

Lead Belly ), one of the more popular artists they recorded. In their efforts to

depict him as an authentic musician, Filene shows how the Lomaxes' pu blic ity

campaign depicted him as a savage, untamed animal and focused endlessly

on his convict past. ^ The history of American popular music is replete with

examples like Lead Belly's, to such an extent that historian Brian Ward argues


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Discourse of Authenticity and Identity I 209

tha t the earnest quest for some sort of myth ical, hermetically sealed, 'real'

black American music, unadulterated by white influences and untarnished by

commercial considerations, continues. ^ In light of this, it is important to con-

sider how black blues musicians themselves understand au thenticity in relation

to their art, a task for which oral history is uniquely we ll suited .

This essay explores the concept of authenticity through oral histories with

African American professional blues musicians. Drawing on interviews w ith four key

members of theAustin,Texas, blues community, I examine how their constructions

of authenticity reflectacomplex discourse on iden tity thatistied to race, class, and

lived experience. Oral history provides access into this world of professional blues

artists, a world where authenticity in the blues moves far beyond one's technical

proficiency in the idiom. In fact, contrary to what common sense m ight suggest, for

some narrators authenticity hasvery little to do with musical

ability.

Tothisend,the

essay proceeds as follows. First, I examine the historical and cultural roots of East

Austin's blues scene, taking care to situate this local scene in the broader context

of the history of the blues in the United States. Next, I offeraclose textual analysis

of the interview transcripts, focusing on the artists' discourse of authenticity and

identity. Finally, I conclude by considering the ambiguity inherent in the narrators'

discourse, especially in relation to the changes that have occurred in Austin's blues

scene

as a

result of desegregation. As

will show, the artists' definitions of au then-

ticity can be understood as part of

a

larger cultural struggle for empowerment and

recognition in this historically marginalized community.

The East ustin blues scene

Since its emergence in the mid-1970s, rap has grown to become the dominant

form of contemporary African American musical and cultural expression in the

United States, but the blues, an older African American musical idiom w ith West

African roots, continues to enjoy widespread popularity around the globe. In his

introduc tion to the exhaustiveAll Music uideto theBlues Cub Koda describes

the blues as a bedrock musical fo rm tha t hasalwaysbeen here. ^ Its origins

can be traced back at least as far as the early 1900s, when artists like Certrude

M a Rainey and W. C. Handy claimed they first heard songs that were rep-

resentative of the genre.^ Over the past century, the blues has evolved into a

powerful cultural force: it is performed by both black and white musicians (and

increasingly by wh ites), it has a woridwide (and since the 1960s predom inantly


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210 I CATCHET

white) audience, and its widespread infiuence on popular music is evident in

genres such

s

jazz, rock, funk, and, most recently, rap and hip hop. Thus, the

historical and contemporary significance of the blues is complex and can best

be understood as a

long,

often contentious process of struggle and appropria-

tion between African American musicians and white musicians and record label

owners. Cultural critic George Lipsitz argues that popular music and the blues

in particular are created through a dialogic process tha t is embedded in co l-

lective history and nurtured by the ingenuity of artists interested in fashioning

icons of opposition. ^ For blues artists, the blues creates opportunities for ope n-

ing political spaces of contestation, emancipation, and iden tity form ation . More

importantly for this essay, the concept of authenticity has become a ubiquitous

part of th e relationship between a blues artist's subjectivity and the music she /

he plays.

In The Sound of

Soul

black studies scholar Phyl Garland reminds us, I t

should never be forgotten that the sound of soul has also been the sound of

suftering. ^ Indeed, the emergence of soul and its close relative, the blues, as

distinct musical idioms must be understood in relation to the historical context

and specific material conditions that aftected the creation and development of

early black music in America. The so-called fathe r of the b lues, W. C. Handy,

claimed that he first discovered blues music when he encountered an itinerant

slide guitar player in Tutwiler, Mississippi, in 1903 or 1904.^^ The precondi-

tions for the development of the blues can actually be located much earlier, in

the long history of institutionalized racism, forced enslavement, and the myriad

acts of systemic violence enacted on southern blacks by whites throughout the

early history of the United States. Although it is impossible to identify a precise

year or geographic location when the blues first formed, blues scholar Clyde

Woods situates the birth o f the blues after the overthrow of Reconstruction,

when the blues became an alternative form of communica tion, analysis, moral

intervention, observation, [and] celebration for a new generation that had wit-

nessed slavery, freedom, and unfreedom in rapid succession between 1860

and 1875. ^^ According to Woods, the blues was an agentive response from

southern blacks to the violence and oppression that pervaded the American

South. Interestingly, he further describes the blues as an epistemology, or way

of

knowing,

that ensure[d] the autonomy of thou ght and action in the midst of


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iscourse

of Authenticity and Identity I 211

constant surveillance and violence, and became

a

highly developed introspec-

tive and universalist system of social thought. ^^ Thus, the blues is more than

a simple musical ar t it is a symbolic resource for unify ing oppressed blacks, a

way of bein g in the world and a direct means of consciousness-raising for the

black community.^^

The two Creat Migrationsthe diaspora of black laborers out of the South

and into urban centers in the North, West, Midwest, and Northeast United

Statesthat took place from 1915 to 1930 and again from 1940 through

1970 had profound cultural implications, Lipsitz argues.^^ Chief among them

was the growth of white interest in the blues,

as

whites sough t autonomy, emo-

t ion,

and authentic connection to others. ^^ Moreover, the regional variety blues

fans enjoy today from the fingerpicking style known as Piedm ont blues on

the East Coast to the swinging jump blues of the West Coast, and everything in

betweenall developed largely because of the Creat Migrations. As a result, a

unique style developed in and around

Texas,a

state that has

a

long and rich blues

history. Although there is no shortage of books in both the academic and popular

press detailing the history and development of the blues in cities like Chicago,

Detroit, and Memphis, less work has been done on Austin. Several excellent

studies have been published in recent years that focus on Texas cities, such as

Houston,

Dallas, and San An tonio, but to date there has been no comprehensive

study of the storied blues scene on Austin's East side.^'' Despite its blues history,

Austin, the capital of the state, is better known in the popular imaginary as the

seat of

exas

country music and home to the cosmic co w bo /' and progressive

country movements of the 1970s. It is important to consider Austin blues more

closely, not simply because its history has been overlooked, but also because it

is an example of what rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke calls a representative

anecdote for the ways tha t blues authen ticity is always articulated to specific,

localized scenes. ^ Austin race relations in the twen tieth century were inextrica-

bly yoked to the local blues scene there, making it a particularly fecund site for

analyzing the identity politics o f authenticity in the blues.

In 192 8, city planners called for the creation of a Negro dis trict in East

Austin as part of efforts to segregate the city along the East Avenue corridor.

'^ Woods,Development

Arrested

29 .

1''

Kevin Phinney, Souled American How Black Music Transformed White Culture (New York: Billboard,


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212 I C TCHET

now the site of Interstate Highway 35. It was segregated here

hard,

recalls

East Austin blues artist Donald Duck Jennings.^^ W ithin this segregated com -

munity, however, blacks created spaces where they could enjoy music and forge

strong social ties. By the 1950s, a vibrant blues scene had developed there,

based around popular black-owned clubs. Decades before Austin christened

itself the Live Music Capital of the World, the city held a small yet prom in-

ent place on the national blues scene by virtue o f its location on the Chit lin '

Circuit, a loose collection of venues throughout the country where touring

black performers could play for enthusiastic black audiences. As historian Allen

0. Olsen argues, Austin's unique reputation on the Chitlin' Circuit was fortified

by the success of similar black clubs in San Antonio , where artists were con-

tinu ing an age-old trad ition of bringing fresh musical ideas into black neighbor-

hoods and helping to create the kind of communal events that brought people

Fig.

1 Victory Grill Mural,2010.

The

mural features the visages of individuals who


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iscourse of Authenticity and Identity I 213

together to share in a dynamic cultural exchange. '^ Internationally known art-

ists,such as B. B. King and Ike and Tina Turner, were among some o f th e more

prominent musicians who frequented East Austin during this time . This cultural

enclave included numerous black-ow ned blues clubs or juke jo in ts , such as

the historic Victory

Crill,

venues that provided ga inful employment for local art-

ists and tou ring musicians alike.

East Austin juke joints, particularly Charlie's Playhouse, were also some of

the firs t sites to experiment w ith desegregation in Austin, years before the city

began the offic ial, legal process of in tegration. Although it was rare for Jennings

and his colleagues to find work playing in West Austin clubs when the city was

legally segregated, he was one of the few black musicians who got booked

regularly for fratern ity and sorority events for white students. Jennings was a

member of Bluesboy Hubbard and the Jets, an all-black band fronted by Henry

Bluesboy Hubbard.The Jets' popularity at Creek social events led many wh ite

university students to venture into East Austin to watch Hubbard and his band

perform at Charlie's Playhouse. Speaking o f this era, Hubbard remembers, it g ot

to the point where if you went to Charlie's on a Friday or Saturday, the place

was completely wh ite. It would be like ninety-e ight percent white. ^^ Jennings,

who continues to play in a band with Hubbard today, agrees. They'd be in there

like flies, he says, referring to the large number of white students that visited

the club operated by Charlie and Ira Cilden.^^

For Jennings, blues music carried the potential to help facilitate the com-

plex process of integration throughout Austin, especially after Clifford Antone,

who was white, opened his famous namesake blues club in East Austin in the

summer of 1975. So the music helped bring people together, Jennings says,

people of different color and people of color, it brought us all together because

it didn't matter about you being there white, and I'm being there black. We

come for the entertainment. ^^ One of the unfortunate consequences of deseg-

regation in Austin, however, was the closing of the more prominent clubs that

anchored the East side blues scene. As these dubs faced greater competition

from white-owned venues like Antone's, many struggled to stay open as black

blues musicians sought more and higher-paying gigs in clubs throughout the

city.^ ^ Increasing numbers of whites were now not only attending blues perfor-

mances but playing blues professionally

swell.

Cultural scholar Barry Shank has


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214 I GATCHET

argued tha t the African-American comm unity in East Austin nurtured a blues

culture that would come to reinforce the developing white blues scene in the

late sixties and seventieseven as one remained cleariy and firmly separated

from the other. ^^ Even as East Austin's blues scene waned, white artists like

Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan, Kim Wilson, Angela Strehli, and others found

success performing their own interpretations of black music to mixed-race

audi-

ences throughout the city. This continues to be true of the larger Austin blues

scene today; no longer de limited by the boundaries o f the East side, it is a

largely integrated scene where musicians from a variety of racial and ethnic

backgrounds perform in mixed-race bands together In the section tha t follows ,

I examine how black blues musicians in East Austin understand authenticity, a

concept that is closely tied to the musicians' identity and their relationship to

the evolving scene they helped found.

he discourse of authenticity and identity

In his book

Faking It,

social theorist William Ian Miller looks in the mirror and

wonders about the relationship between authenticity and his personal identity.

Am I merely the sum of my roles, he asks, fathe r

i

son + husband + profes-

sorH American

H-

Jew

-H

next-door neighbor i writer

H-

teacher

+

jester? W hat

if I am good enough at some to qualify as the genuine article but am pretty

much a fraud at others? Is it only the roles I am good at for which I can claim

authenticity? ^^ Miller's questions point to broader cultural anxieties over the

connections between authenticity and identity, and the ways in which the two

are inextricably bound toge the r Similarly, architectural theorist H ilde H eynen

observes tha t authe nticity remains one of the important driving forces of our

culture, and it is a category we cannot do without when thinking about

iden-

tity. ^''To explore the relationship between authenticity and identity, I now turn

my attention to the narrators interviewed for this project: professional, work-

ing,

African American blues musicians who reside in Austin. Although some are

adept at performing in other

genres,

such

as

jazz or country, all of the musicians

have spent a majority of their professional careers in the blues, giving them

special insight into issues of authenticity and blues music. Most of the artists

have been playing professionally in Austin for decades, and some, like H enry

Bluesboy H ubbard, have been entertaining audiences for fifty years or longer

The narrators' discourse is notew orthy for the way it defines authenticity in


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is ourse of uthenticity an d identity I 215

as a quality that one can only access through a combination of racial and

class identification, in addition to the lived experiences that are common to

those identity categories. Some of the artists privilege one category over the

other, while others emphasize the interconnections between them. In each case,

the narrators' eftort to work through the meaning of authenticity in the blues is

deeply rooted to their own experiences and identities as black musicians.

Several narrators talked about authenticity by evoking a blac k/w hite racial

binary, not an uncommon way of understanding blues history and performance

considering the genre's complex racial politics. For the narrators who do this,

authenticity is connected to race when they evoke their racial identity and the

history of the black experience in the United States in such

a

way that blackness

becomes a principal signifier of blues authenticity. From this perspective, some

white performers are described as inauthentic, despite their talent or ability to

play and sing the blues, while others are praised for approaching an authentic

presentation (bu t never quite achieving it) .

The narrator who most clearly suggested that authenticity is underwritten

by what amounts to racial essentialism was Henry Bluesboy Hubbard, referred

to by many in the Austin music community simply as Bluesboy. Hubbard was

born in La Grange, Texas, in early 1934, and from his childhood to the present

day, music has remained a central part of his life. A talented pianist and guitar-

ist, Hubbard was first inspired to learn piano at the age of eight when he heard

a song from child star Frankie Sugar Chile Robinson on the radio. He would

go on to teach himself guitar by imitating AM radio broadcasts of the legend-

ary blues guitarist T-Bone Walker, and he was later tutored by fellow Victory

Grill mainstay

T

D.

Bell,

another prominent bandleader in the East Austin blues

scene.^^Hubbard m'oved to Austin in 1955 at the age of 21,where he served in

the Air Force as

a

je t mechanic while stationed at Bergstrom Air Force Base (now

the site of Austin's commercial airport) until 1958. During this time, he started

to play blues professionally as the bandleader for Bluesboy Hubbard and the

Jets in both East and West Austin.

During one interview, Hubbard discussed his friend and one-time studen t.

Bill Campbell. He's

a

guy that

taught to play the blues, Hubbard

said,

and out

of all the white guys that I've taught to play blues guitar. Bill has to be the pur-

est. He

sounds

jus t like

a

black guy when he plays blues.

Sounds

jus t like

a

black

person,

you wo uldn't know it tha t that's a wh ite guy on guitar. Hubbard was

at one time a popular teacher for aspiring white blues players; Austin blues club


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216 I G TCHET

ig

2. Henry Bluesboy Hubbard playing at the South-by-Southwest Music Festival

in Austin in 2010. (Photograph by Roger Gatchet.)

guitar, piano, organ, and he was real good at it, Hubbard said. He could play

black stuff realand you know, sound pretty black. ^^

Fascinated by Hubbard's remarks, particularly his references to a pure

and real black sound that suggest an essential, racial benchmark for measur-

ing blues authenticity, I asked if he felt there were any differences between the

blues performances of white and black players. Black guys has more

soul,

more

feeling, when they play, he responded, and wh ite guys don't automatically

have that. It's sort of like they have to learn to put that in there. And all white

guys don 't do too good at learning it, you know. Hubbard evokes

black/white

binary that demarcates authenticity along racial lines. White players seem to

fall short of achieving authenticity because they have to

learn

how to play the

blues.

By contrast, an innate, authentic feeling for the blues is natural for black


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is ourse of Authen ticity and Identity I 217

and this guy going to run them , now you tell me which one is wh ite and

which one is black. And I can pretty much tell you , you know.It sjust that

much difference. Doing the blues, they're going to be both doing blues.

And I can pre tty much tell you that's a wh ite guy,

man.

That's a black guy.

Because it's that much different. White guys adjust to what comes natural.

And most white guys, country and western comes natural. A black guy

don't want to adjust to country and western, because it don't comenatu-

ral.They have to learn country and western. But when it comes to blues,

a black man pick up a guitar, he's going to play the blues. If he don't do

nothing else, he's going to play the blues. Because that's our heritage. We

come from Africa, our ancestry. So, I don't know what does it, but that's

the way it is.^

Hubbard's claimthat he can hear race encoded in soundhas great rhe-

torical power and implications for understanding the politics of authenticity.

Hubbard is arguing that although the musical or sonic dimension of the blues

is indeed important, it is epiphenomenal to the performer's authenticity, which

in turn is inextricably tied to race and cultural heritage. It is the heritage of

African American blues artists that makes the blues come na tura lly to blacks.

One can play the blues perfectly, one can even play the blues

hiaci

Documents

Gatchet - Authenticity and Blues in Austin