The influences of Hispanic music cultures on African-American blues musicians.

Egalitarian quests for multiculturalism can be offset by the lingering legacy of "melting pot" ideology. Cultural examinations of ethnicity exemplify this, for they frequently focus on minority-dominant relations, that is, the "contributions" of an ethnic group to the "majority" culture. Unless the linear, vertical focus of such scholarship is balanced by greater breadth, our perceptions will remain oversimplified and skewed. Recent work by Portia Maultsby has examined the role that ethnicity plays "in the interactions between African-Americans and mainstream society" and how such "interactions affect musical creativity and musical identity" (Maultsby 1993). These broad questions should continue to be addressed, but they also need to be supplemented with queries concerning intersubcultural developments among African-Americans and other ethnic groups apart from the mainstream (see Slobin 1993).

This is my perspective in examining the influences of Hispanic music cultures on African-American blues musicians. I will argue that social history, blues lyrics, musical evidence, and the life histories of black entertainers reveal that musical interaction between African-American blues musicians and Hispanic musicians has taken place in at least two primary areas: the Texas-Mexico border region, where downhome blues guitarists were influenced by the lifestyle of Mexican street singers and their chordophonic musical traditions; and New Orleans, where Cuban rhythms particularly affected a school of blues pianists who developed the New Orleans "sound" of rhythm and blues. To a great extent, however, these Hispanic influences on African-American musicians have been masked by marketing constraints and the zealous efforts of music critics and blues revivalists to maintain generic purity and the image of the "bluesman."

The "Blues Musician" and Localities

In a recent article, Samuel A. Floyd Jr. has called for a "culture-derived approach" to the study of black music, drawn on, among other things, "a system of referencing ... from Afro-American folk music" (Floyd 1993, 1). With regard to various forms of popular and vernacular music, this admirable goal can be difficult to achieve because "emic" folk categories, "etic" analytic categories, and the marketing categories of the music industry often blur. Students and critics of popular music have most often pursued standout commercial successes within mass cultural contexts, an approach that has been largely determined by the music industry. They have accepted commercial mediation and have neglected the realities of living music in small places. The result is that accurate portrayals of local music cultures, that is, the music that performers and audiences have actually shared in small group contexts, are few and far between.

Contemporary views of the blues musician illustrate this problem. African-American blues originated in localities, but the directions of its developments and the larger public perception of its identity have been shaped by the commercial forces of popular culture. We often erroneously equate, for instance, a performer's repertoire with her or his list of commercially released audio recordings, which in many instances are not representative of an artist's actual inventory of performed song. Thus, as folklorist-ethnomusicologist David Evans (1985, 109) has observed, Mississippi singer Johnny Temple "recorded sixty-two issued blues between 1935 and 1949, yet in his live performances in Chicago he could usually be heard playing polkas and Italian music for underworld kingpins." Temple's polkas are not on wax, and his case is hardly unique. For marketing and promotional purposes, the music industry has conventionally delimited musical styles. Jeff Titon (1977, 55) reports that from the 1920s into the 1940s black musicians who sang blues and hillbilly music were rarely recorded performing the latter genre because "record companies wanted blues, for blues sold; if they needed hillbilly music, they might as well turn to hillbillies." In the 1950s, it was unusual that Prestige Bluesville issued "blues" LPs by Lonnie Johnson that contained nonblues ballads such as "What a Difference a Day Makes," and even then the company had to defend its decision against the "grumbling from some reviewers" (Williams 1960).

The "blues musician" is largely an invention of commercial culture. Today, an international blues industry continues to foster stereotypes of blues musicians as being nonliterate, hedonistic, rough-living, down-and-out, alcoholic creative geniuses who play and sing one musical genre. Ostensibly, these performers die young, often as a result of treachery, a heroic image that has received additional support in recent years through the commercially successful promotion of the myth of Robert Johnson (see Narvaez 1993; Titon 1993).

Blues scholarship has also contributed to this image. Although the earlier, unilineal evolutionary understanding of the blues, as an essential but crude stepping-stone in the historical development of jazz, has been discarded by scholars in favor of a view that emphasizes the blues as a music with a distinct, multifaceted development, the "purity" of the form has rarely been questioned. Thus, in developing their own lines of blues evolution, blues commentators have sometimes neglected the existence of performance and repertory variations by overlooking fieldwork data gathered in localities. For example, it has been convenient for academics and music historians to describe certain early African-American singers who sang a variety of song types as having been "songsters," transitional, singer-musicians who were precursors to "real" bluesmen who sing nothing but the blues. Yet on the basis of his extensive fieldwork among African-American singers, Evans has confirmed an earlier 1911 report by Howard Odum that the term "songster" has a much broader usage in the South, observing that "those who perform blues exclusively are called 'songsters,' as are all other people who have a reputation for being good singers, no matter what kinds of songs they sing." In his landmark study, Big Road Blues, therefore, Evans used the phrase "blues singer" to refer to "anyone who sings blues, regardless of what other songs he might sing" (Evans 1985, 108-109). "Blues musician" here will be used in similar fashion, meaning anyone who is acknowledged as being a player and/or singer of blues.

In at least two areas, Texas and New Orleans, Hispanic influences on African-American blues musicians have been apparent. Despite barriers of ethnicity, race, and language, African-Americans and Hispanics in these regions have selectively adopted and syncretized occupational ideas and musical styles.

Texas

Historical conditions in Texas and Mexico have been conducive to the development of musical syncretisms between African Americans and Hispanics. In those areas where Spain utilized large numbers of slaves, especially the West Indies and northern portions of South America, social and cultural integration among blacks and Spanish colonists occurred at a much faster rate than it did in the British colonies. In the North American Southwest, Estevanico, a free black Spaniard, played a key role in the exploration of New Mexico and Arizona (Bennett 1966, 35). The unplanned growth in the huge area of Nueva Espana of a new racial stock, the mestizo, was the result of the lack of miscegenational stigma involving the Spanish, Native Americans, and Africans. As historian Frank Tannenbaum (1968, 36) observed, in certain parts of Mexico blacks have been "in sufficient numbers to leave their mark upon the population."

Sympathetic interracial attitudes have been reflected in the history of border relations. The border's role as a symbol of economic, social, and cultural freedom for African Americans goes back to the 1830s when "fairly large numbers of Negro slaves had escaped from their Texas owners by crossing the Rio Grande and a sizeable colony of ex-slaves had sprung up in Matamoros" (McWilliams 1968, 105). One Colonel Ford wrote in this regard: "The possession of slaves in Western Texas was rendered insecure owing to the contiguity of Mexico, and to the efforts of Mexicans to induce them to run away. They assisted them in every way they could" (quoted in McWilliams 1968, 105). It is not surprising, therefore, that in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico made a vain attempt to have slavery permanently abolished in the territories it was forced to cede to the United States. Similarly, in 1856 an abortive insurrectionary plot in Colorado County, Texas, in which Mexicans were to aid a large number of slaves in fighting their way across the border, led to the immediate banishment of Mexicans in Colorado and Matagorda counties, the enforced use of a pass system for Mexicans in Uvalde, and a wave of general anti-Mexican sentiment. Writing in the mid-1930s, historian Paul S. Taylor has maintained that these actions were catalyzed by "the belief that the [Mexican] peons imperilled the institution of slavery" (quoted in McWilliams 1968, 105-106). The forced or free association of African Americans and Mexicans may also be seen in twentieth-century accounts concerning the proxemics of settlement. Arthur J. Rubel's study of a Texas city, pseudonymously identified as "New Lots," revealed that, through the 1940s, Mexican Americans lived on the north side of the railroad tracks and Anglo-Americans lived on the south side, but a small black enclave co-existed with the Mexicans on the north. While the historical juxtaposition of the two groups was not a matter of free choice, Mexicans in the area were inclined to view any discrimination as coming from the Anglos' rejection of blacks (Rubel 1966, 4, 20).

Coinciding with the foregoing historical developments, the social and miscegenational attitudes of Mexicans and blacks have oftentimes resulted in a familiarity that has found expression in blues lyrics. In 1926, for instance, Texas bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson sang:

   Well my mind leads me to take a trip down south,
   Take a trip down south, it's tough to spend my round.

The fact that Jefferson is thinking of Latin women is made explicit.

   I got a girl in Cuba, I got a girl in Spain,
   I got a brown yonder in Dallas,
   I's afraid to call her name....
   Tell me them good looking womens is on the border raising sand.

The border as an image of sexual freedom for African Americans is alluded to in well-known formulaic lyrics. Just as Six Cylinder Smith lamented in 1930 that "She left this momin', she's border bound today," Memphis Slim in 1940 grieved

   I asked my next door neighbor,
   "Which way did my baby go?"
   She said, "She left for the border,
   Down in Mexico."

Likewise, Charlie Segar (1940), Jazz Gillum (1940), Big Bill Broonzy (1941), and many others have sung the words of the blues classic "Key to the Highway":

   I'm goin' back to the border
   Where I'm better known,
   'Cause you haven't done nothin'
   But drive a good man away from home.

Perhaps there is no blues lyric concerning Mexican involvement that can upstage New Orleans-born, Texas blues singer Frankie Lee Simms's "Rhumba My Boogie," a 1954 macaronic reworking of Jimmy Kennedy and Michael Carr's 1939 "South of the Border (Down Mexico Way)":

   You know south of the border, down Mexico way,
   There was a picture of old Spanish lace,
   I had no dinera, por my mujera,
   But my [ ] esta [ ] por mi,
   Pero mi amiga catch a loco, drank a too much vino,

   South of the border, down on Mexico.
   I'll tell you I love you, senorita I'll tell you,
   South of that border down on Mexico way,
   We do the rhumba boogie, to the break of day,
   Down south of the border down Mexico way.

   I love my baby, she don't like a me,
   But your name is [senorita?] you just wait and see.

The life histories of African-American itinerant performers also reveal the acculturative conditions of the Texas-Mexico region. Norman Mason reported his enjoyment at playing with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels in Laredo, Mexico (quoted in Oliver 1965, 122). On the vaudeville blues circuit, Al Wynn mentioned that Ma Rainey lived in Mexico: "I was asked to join the Ma Rainey organization just as she was forming a new group in about '23 or '24. She was coming out of retirement--she had retired to Mexico for some time and was on her way for a comeback" (131-132).

While "down in Texas," blues singer and jack-of-all-trades Lefty Wing Gordon "used to go 'cross to Mexico" (Odum 1928, 247). Oliver (1969, 151) reported that "Robert Lee McCoy--'Robert Nighthawk,' born in Helena in 1909, ... was always commuting from Chicago or St. Louis to Memphis and took bands on the road as far as Mexico." Alabama native Johnny Watson, who would gain later fame on Chicago's Maxwell Street as "Daddy Stovepipe," went to Mexico in 1937 and played in towns and cities along the Gulf coast (Watson 1960). In the 1950s, New Orleans performer Earl King "went to Mexico with the Buffalo Booking Agency" (Broven 1977, 119). Likewise, Bastin (1975) indicated that in the 1960s Houston blues pianist Elmore Nixon frequently enjoyed playing before Mexican audiences across the border. Also in Houston, Mack McCormick (1969, 13) has depicted reformed bluesman "Big Cat" Williams and "Spider" Kilpatrick playing with Latin-American musicians in a Pentecostal church, a denomination that often makes "a point of picking a site near where Latin-American and Negro areas meet."

Such examples from social history, blues lyrics, and the lives of black entertainers point to a significant and largely unwritten history of Mexican and African-American interaction. Whenever and wherever such interactions have taken place, African Americans have been confronted with a vigorous chordophonic tradition. Since the introduction of the vihuela de mano (the antecedent of the modern guitar) by the conquistadores, all classes in Mexican society have exhibited a widespread use of this and related chordophones. Bernal Diaz del Castillo ([1632] 1916, 250) mentions one Ortiz, a vihuela player, as being a member of the Cortes expedition to Mexico in 1519. Geronimo de Mendieta ([1604] 1973, 39-40) notes the ease with which Native Mexicans became proficient on vihuelas and guitars in the later sixteenth century. Thomas Gage ([1648] 1958, 34-35, 51) cites the guitar's use by Franciscan monks in the seventeenth century. The nineteenth-century research of folklorist Charles F. Lummis revealed guitar playing in the Southwest (Lummis 1892, 1893). Americo Paredes has shown that unlike the a cappella traditions of so much Anglo-American ballad singing, the late eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries along the border were a time when

   On most occasions the common amusement was singing to the
   accompaniment of the guitar: in the informal community
   gatherings, where the songs alternated with the tale; at
   weddings, which had their own special songs, the golondrinas;
   at Christmastime, with its pastorelas and aquinaldos; and
   even at some kinds of funerals; those of infants, at which
   special songs were sung to the guitar. (Paredes 1958, 14-15)

In what sociocultural contexts, however, did blacks meet guitar-playing Mexicans? Some encounters undoubtedly took place on prison work gangs, for as Texas Alexander sang in "Section Gang Blues" in 1927,

   One nigger licked molasses and the white man licked them too,
   I wonder what in the world is the Mexican going to do?

More commonly, African Americans in Texas came into contact with an obvious occupational role model for musicians, the wandering Mexican street singer, the itinerant trovador, cantador, ciego, or guitarerro.

As the traditional descendants of Spanish medieval and renaissance juglares and trovadores, the Mexican trovadores populares or cantadores were, according to Vincente T. Mendoza, those "men of the world" who "as lone individuals, accompanying themselves on the guitar, [sang] with the object of having a monetary collection made among the listeners" Mendoza 1939, 143; see also Merwin 1961, 12-15). As the works of Mendoza, Paredes, and Merle E. Simmons have pointed out, these folk professionals were engaged in the creation and propagation of Mexican ballads, or corridos, in oral or broadside form (Simmons 1957). The itinerant nature of these singers is clear. "They travelled the entire country and from town to town, three days here, three days there" (Mendoza 1939, 143). Similarly, Arthur L. Campa (1933, 9) wrote of the trovador: "Following the path of the trader and of the freighter, the trovador sang as he went--chanting the charms of a senorita left behind, or the prowess of the Indian fighter. At the bailes (dances) and fiestas also, this same trovador was paid to compose, recite, and sing. The community took up his song and gave it her own interpretation; many variants of that song were sung everywhere, but the author was soon forgotten." (1) Such descriptions of the roving lifestyle of Mexican street singers approximate accounts of their African-American counterparts. Harold Courlander (1963, 186) has explained:

   Ballads and other entertainment songs were, as they are today,
   sung on the streets and in establishments such as barrelhouses
   or saloons, wherever people gathered together. Saturday nights
   in the Negro sections of southern cities and towns were always
   festive.... [An entertainer's] songs were of many kinds,
   including ballads, blues, comic songs, and recent "pop" songs
   rendered in his own style. In his repertoire, there may have
   been tunes that had been favorites for a century or more....
   His reward for his entertainment was the coins thrown on the
   sidewalk by his audience. If a minstrel found that he wasn't
   doing well enough, he would perhaps move on to another town
   and try his luck there.

And John and Alan Lomax (1936, x-xi) wrote of a postbellum 

   type of Negro men who earn money through their musical ability;
   here today and there tomorrow, performers for shifting
   audiences.... After the Civil War ... these singers, fiddlers,
   guitar players, and banjo pickers serenaded their white friends
   in the evenings, while on Saturday, "nigger day," when everyone
   comes to town, they made music on shady street corners. To
   their white listeners one of the musicians always passed the
   hat for contributions; their Negro bearers ... preferred to
   walk up ... and lay their money down.... A courageous and
   musically gifted individual might travel lone, leading a
   semi-vagrant life. Many such musicians and "songsters," some
   blind, still wander through the South.

The Lomaxes' reference to blind entertainers is particularly relevant here. The plethora of itinerant blind African-American street-singing blues musicians who have been interviewed, cited by discographers, and discussed by such knowledgeable informants as Angeline Johnson, wife of the legendary Blind Willie Johnson, are often accounted for by the explanation that sightless black males in the postbellum South had few economic options other than becoming preachers or street-singing entertainers and bluesmen (Charters 1957; see Mullen 1970; Reagon 1975). The severe social and economic oppression of these visually impaired persons lends itself to such a deterministic argument, but it does not explain the historical existence of peripatetic musicians. From the sketches of the Spanish painter Francisco Goya in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to the testimonies of fieldworkers in folklore in the twentieth century, it is evident that many peripatetic guitar-playing cantadores have been afflicted with the stigma of blindness and might, therefore, have provided such a role model. Mexican sources reveal the singing of nineteenth-century corridos by blind minstrels, or ciegos (Paredes 1958, 176). Similarly, Alan Lomax in the 1930s collected border ballads in Brownsville, Texas, from Jose Suarez whom he described as "the town minstrel."

   He has been blind since childhood, but his cane guides him
   everywhere through the city, to bars, to dances, to family
   parties, and everywhere his guitar and his ballads make him
   welcome. He says that he does not know how many songs he can
   sing, since new ones that he has not thought of in years come
   into his mind everyday. He knows all the popular songs of the
   day, all the old border ballads, and, whenever anything of
   excitement and import occurs, he makes a new historia for the
   information of his people. His songs concern the bandits of the
   border country, the troubles of the migratory cotton pickers,
   the disasters of the train wrecks, storms and wars and the
   pleasures of mescal. (Lomax 1942, ii)

Blind Mexican-American street musicians in the Southwest have also been noted by Manuel Pena (1985, 51) and Alice Corbin (1928, 4-5). Aurora Lucero-White (1953, 117) comments: "It is not uncommon for a blind or other street singer to appear on a street corner and, either by himself, or together with a companion, to ask for the indulgence of the public in an introductory verse and to proceed forthwith with the singing of a new corrido; or the cantador may appear at the opening of a new store, meat market or pulqueria; perhaps at some small cafe, in the outskirts of a village."

Given the proximity of such cultural models, it might be argued that language has acted as a barrier between black and Mexican. The language of music, however, often strikes a common cultural note. Black songster Horace Sprott's statement, "I used to follow guitars all the time," is understandable since players of a given musical instrument often think of that instrument as a shared expressive vehicle (quoted in Ramsey 1960, 49). Thus, the well-known virtuosity of many Mexican guitarists has often aroused the interest of black musicians. Charters (1973, 15) reported, "I was standing in a club with Lightning Hopkins in Houston and he listened to some Mexican music over the juke box, swallowed some beer and shook his head. 'Always watch out for them Mexicans with the six string guitar. They can do so much on it they'll kill you with it."' It may have been this ambivalent sense of respect for and fear of expertise that prompted Robert Johnson to hide his performance from Mexican guitarists at his ARC sessions in San Antonio: "[Don Law] asked him to play guitar for a group of Mexican musicians gathered in a hotel room where the recording equipment had been set up. Embarrassed and suffering from a bad case of stage fright, Johnson turned his face to the wall, his back to the Mexican musicians. Eventually he calmed down sufficiently to play, but he never faced his audience" (Driggs 1962). Clearly, this was more than stage fright, for interethnic encounters at hotel recording facilities could not have been uncommon since commercial record companies often recorded "discos espanoles" and "race records" on the same days. It is probable, however, that Johnson's anxieties were prompted by prior contact with the guitar skills of Mexican cantadores in San Antonio, for they were mentioned in 1928 in a master's thesis by Charles Arnold, who also notes that Mexicans "are popularly supposed to be naturally musical" (Arnold 1971, 17).

With regard to African-American musicians who adopted Mexican musical styles, the wayfaring Blind Lemon Jefferson (1897-1929)--who grew up on the Mexicia Road of Wortham, Texas, who had affinities for Mexican "browns," and whose unusual guitar style has been an inspiration to countless musicians--appears to be a likely candidate. While his recorded repertoire and rhythms are not in keeping with Mexican cantadores, a European-American musician who played with Jefferson, John "Knocky" Parker, remembered:

   Down there in the Southwest, country music and the black music came
   from the same roots. Now, we didn't have the New Orleans horns ...
   but we all had guitars and we always had the Spanish influence. The
   Spanish motif is stronger in the Southwest and this comes over to the
   blacks a whole lot. The blacks played nice pretty little Spanish folk
   tunes but I can't remember which ones. (quoted in Otto and Burns
   1974, 24)

If Parker is correct, Jefferson's repertoire may well have included Mexican material that was simply not recorded. As fieldwork interviews of record company employees have indicated, on-location recordists discouraged blacks and Mexicans from playing and singing each other's music since they had ready access to the "real thing" (Strachwitz 1974). Certainly other blues musicians who encountered Mexican guitarists had no qualms about playing Mexican music. In 1962, McCormick taped Texas blacks playing guitars and singing in Spanish in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico (McCormick 1975). David Evans's complete repertoire analysis of Crystal Springs, Mississippi, blues singer Mott Willis reveals a number of waltzes, including one entitled "The Mexican Waltz," which Willis "learned in Mexico on one of his trips with a minstrel show" from blues musician Tampa Red (Evans 1985, 202; Evans 1993).

But musical style, as a symbolic system of recognizable patterns of sound, transcends repertoire, and the music of Blind Lemon Jefferson and that of Mexican cantadores shared many stylistic likenesses: the guitar was used in a complex fashion as an accompanying rhythmic device but also as a complementary and independent voice; finger-style guitar picking was employed; instrumental introductions and instrumental breaks between sung stanzas were common; breaks often began with high treble notes, sometimes in harmony, and then descended a scale into final, full chord strums, struck several times and often punctuated with rapid attacks on the bass strings.

More immediate musical links with Mexican players can be heard in the music of Blind Lemon Jefferson's partner, Huddie Ledbetter (1888-1949), a.k.a. "Leadbelly," who migrated to Dallas from Louisiana, met Jefferson in 1912 and played regularly with him for five years. A talented singer and multi-instrumentalist (guitar, mandolin, accordion, and harmonica), at some point Leadbelly encountered Mexican-made bajo sextos and twelve-string guitars, instruments originally from central Mexico which at the time were emerging, along with the accordion, as core instruments of border conjuntos (Pena 1985, 38-39, 54). When he first played these instruments, "his fingers got to 'mashing too hard"' (Wolfe and Lornell 1992, 51), but he soon mastered a technique that, as Texas blues historian Alan Govenar (1988, 19) has noted, was "learned from the bass figures of barrelhouse pianists and from the Mexicans who sold him a twelve-string guitar." A comparison of Leadbelly's twelve-string bass runs with those of accomplished Mexican-American singer-guitarist Lydia Mendoza reveals startling similarities in rhythms and marcato attack; for example, consider her "El lirio" ("The Lily"; 1934) and Leadbelly's rendition of "Sweet Jenny Lee" (1948). Given the popularity of waltz rhythm among cantadores, it is noteworthy that one of the first songs Leadbelly adapted to the twelve-string guitar was "Irene," a waltz he learned from his uncle Bob Ledbetter (Wolfe and Lornell 1992, 52-53).

The one-man-band idea of playing the guitar in conjunction with other musical instruments, in the manner performed by African-American singer-guitarist "Ragtime Texas" Henry Thomas (1874-?) with "quills," or panpipes, represents yet another form of street performance that might be traced to Mexican antecedents. In 1917, one of Eleanor Hague's Mexican informants, Maximilian Salinas, reminded her of "the men one sometimes sees in city streets, playing three or four different instruments, with their hands, head, and feet; for he played a melody and its second on a mouth-organ, which was fastened to the upper side of a guitar on which he played a really sonorous accompaniment" (Hague 1917, 19).

New Orleans

Hispanic influences on African-American blues musicians in New Orleans are intricately intermingled in a cosmopolitan musical heritage that features a complex chordophone other than the guitar--the piano. Interestingly, this unique Hispanic/African-American blues heritage only reached the attention of international music critics in 1970, and it did so through the person of Henry Roeland Byrd (1918-1980), better known as "Professor Longhair." Until that time, as the late British blues scholar Mike Leadbitter (1989) argued, "from the tip of the iceberg called commercial recording," there was "no downhome blues tradition typical of the city." The recollections of musicians and the wonderful sounds of several obscure regional recordings, however, indicated to several European blues enthusiasts that this was "an incomplete picture." On April 9, guided by a local blues fan, Leadbitter and two friends encountered Professor Longhair in a "decaying house" on Rampart Street. Leadbitter later recalled:

   He was down and out, and very sad, as neglect, frustration and poor
   health had taken their toll. The man we met was no longer the big
   recording artist, but an old man, forgotten by friends, the public,
   and the music industry.... The arrival of three Englishmen on his
   door-step quite shattered him and it was great to see a smile return
   to his face as we talked about those old records he made. (Leadbitter
   1989)

This meeting and the ensuing international publicity among blues enthusiasts along with a triumphant appearance at the 1971 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival sparked a resurgence of Professor Longhair's career and a popularity that continued to escalate until his death in 1980. A musician's musician, Longhair was the local mentor of many postwar blues, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll artists, including Huey Smith, Dave Bartholomew, Fats Domino, Alan Toussaint, James Booker, and Mac Rebennack. His moniker came from a club owner in 1948, but Longhair was not a piano "professor" in the usual New Orleans sense of having a sophisticated, musically literate mastery of a variety of piano styles, such as was exhibited by Jelly Roll Morton or Clarence Williams, persons who were associated with the famed jazz bands of the area. Longhair was more representative of the loud, hard driving, pounding bass, traditional blues playing of the barrelhouse circuit in work camps and of the brothels of New Orleans's Storyville, where lone pianists who had learned their craft through aural tradition provided all the musical entertainment. It has been reported that his song "Mardi Gras in New Orleans," first recorded in 1949, still sells about fifteen thousand copies a year; it has been appropriately called an "anthem" of the Crescent City (Dawson and Propes 1992, 58-61).

But it was Professor Longhair's use of Hispanic and Afro-Cuban sounds that makes his piano blues a stylistic standout. One does not have to be an ethnomusicologist to sense the Latin rhythms of his music. Byrd himself described his style as incorporating "rhumba, mambo, and Calypso" (Leadbitter 1989). Calling his style "one of the miracles of American music," Tad Jones (1976, 17) has interpreted his piano playing as a superimposition "of very fast triplets on a syncopated 8/8 rhumba beat." When asked where he obtained this Latin influence, Longhair often attributed it to his stint with the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1937, a time when he "played with a lot of West Indians, Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans, Spanish boys, Hungarians" (Palmer 1991, 169). He also maintained that he heard Latin rhythms on Mexican radio stations while working with the Corps in Brownsville, Texas (quoted in Roberts 1993). Robert Palmer has maintained that Longhair's bass runs are direct adoptions from the Cuban son, and a statement by Al Angeloro seems to verify this:

   There's a classical piece of Cuban music called "Son de la Loma"
   which every band does. It's a particular jam piece written by Miguel
   Matamoros and Professor Longhair did it. There's no question that
   it's "Son de la Loma." He changed it and made it more of a New
   Orleans piece. In fact, I don't even know if he knew that it was
   "Son de la Loma," because New Orleans is America's Caribbean city.
   And the music that has always been flooding into that city has
   become part of the culture. (Quoted in Boggs 1992, 256) (2)

Whatever direct influences Longhair may have had, my inclination is to agree with John Storm Roberts's assessment that "given that the Latin component in earlier New Orleans music seems to have been a good deal stronger than has been generally recognized, Byrd's style probably represented a refocusing of more widespread elements" (Roberts 1985, 136). While obviously some musicians are more influential than others, the "great man" approach to African-American local blues is not effective, for it does not sufficiently take into account community aesthetics. The best folklore studies dealing with blues that have been based on fieldwork, such as those of David Evans (1985) in Mississippi and Barry Lee Pearson (1990) in the Virginia Piedmont, have revealed that regional blues styles have traditionally developed among networks of musicians. Elements of music culture have united these groups of musicians with their audiences. It was commonality rather than idiosyncrasy that made Longhair's music regionally appealing. As Arnold Shaw (1978, 496) has conjectured, "had [Professor Longhair] grown up in Memphis, ... he would not have developed the Latin-inflected blues style that was his unique trademark; New Orleans was a metropolitan musical city."

The Latin inflections that Professor Longhair melded with blues were the remarkable rhythmic syncretisms of Spanish and African music cultures that evolved in Cuba; such Afro-Cuban rhythms have been evident in New Orleans since the nineteenth century, both through direct contact with Cubans and through the Cuban-influenced musics of Mexican and other Latin American immigrants. The constant beat in virtually all traditional Cuban polyrhythmic dance forms is voiced by clave, a 3+2, sometimes 2+3 pattern, played over two measures. (3) Reflecting these patterns, the habanera was the initial Afro-Cuban dance rhythm to have an impact on New Orleans music. It may have traveled there via Cuban immigrants or through "New Orleans musicians [who] worked with circuses active in Cuba" or through New Orleans musicians who were bandsmen during the Spanish-American War (Raeburn 1993b). Sheet music attests to a Mexican link. As Roberts has shown, habanera rhythm gained great popularity in Mexico by the 1870s and danzas employing it were played in New Orleans by the Eighth Cavalry Mexican Band, which performed at the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in 1884. The enthusiasm that greeted the band was abetted through the publication of sheet music which "sold thousands of copies" (Roberts 1985, 35-36). Recent research by Jack Stewart (1991) provides historical data indicating that a succession of other Mexican bands--including La Orquesta Tipica Mexicana (1893), the Mexican Artistic Quintet (1907), and the Mexican National Band (1920)--continued to infuse New Orleans with various kinds of Hispanic music.

Biographical accounts provide more detailed accounts of Mexican/African-American interchange during the pre-blues and early blues period. According to Stewart (1991, 5), jazz tuba player Chink Martin recalled that there were

   large numbers of Mexicans in the Northeastern section of the French
   Quarter at the turn of the century. Apparently they were musical
   groups that had members who were Mexicans, Spaniards, and Puerto
   Ricans, mixed with local musicians of all descriptions. Martin also
   recalls playing guitar--his first instrument--with many such groups,
   and his vivid recollection extended to singing two of the songs
   which were played by these bands.

Similarly, Charles E. Kinzer's fascinating account of the musically influential, Creole-of-color Tio family provides more evidence for New Orleans-Mexican ties, for this Spanish-African-American family migrated to Mexico from New Orleans and resided in and around Tampico from 1859 to 1877. Lorenzo Tio, who was born in Mexico (1867-1908) and spent his youth there, "rose to prominence in New Orleans' Creole-of-color music circles in the late 1880s" as a composer for marching bands. Lorenzo's son, Lorenzo Tio Jr. (1893-1933), carried on the musical traditions of the family and as an early jazz clarinetist "developed the ability to improvise fluently" (Kinzer 1991, 24). Of particular interest here is that one of the jazz bands in which Tio played was that of Jelly Roll Morton, the multitalented New Orleans composer-musician and self-proclaimed "inventor of jazz," whose work often reflected what he called the "Spanish tinge." Morton, who like Martin first took "lessons on the guitar with a Spanish gentleman in the neighborhood," was familiar enough with the blues idiom at the beginning of the century to compose a regional piece that syncretized a blues progression with a Latin beat (Lomax 1993, 78, 5).

   Then we had Spanish people there. I heard a lot of Spanish tunes and
   I tried to play them in correct tempo.... Now in one of my earliest
   tunes, New Orleans Blues, you can notice the Spanish tinge. In fact,
   if you can't manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will
   never be able to get the right seasoning, I call it, for jazz. This
   New Orleans Blues comes from around 1902. I wrote it with the help of
   Frank Richards, a great piano player in the ragtime style.
   All the bands in the city played it at that time. (Morton, quoted in
   Lomax 1993, 78)

While Morton's fame generally rests on his jazz and ragtime compositions, he went on to compose and record many other blues, including "Jungle Blues," "Winin' Boy Blues," "Buddy Bolden's Blues," "Mamie's Blues," "Michigan Water Blues," "Cannon Ball Blues," "Futuristic Blues," and "Tom Cat Blues." Although he was certainly one of the most sophisticated New Orleans piano "professors," Morton's familiarity and mastery of the more downhome blues idiom reflected his close association with New Orleans blues musicians of the barrelhouse circuit.

By 1914, the New Orleans fusions of Hispanic beats and blues received further support through a national craze for vaudeville blues spawned by the success of W. C. Handy's publication of "Memphis Blues" in 1912 and "St. Louis Blues" in 1914. It is interesting to note that these highly arranged pieces based on downhome blues included sections with habanera, "tango" beats. Handy had firsthand experience with the habanera, for he had encountered it while touring in Cuba with Mahara's Minstrels in the early months of 1900. An exported, diluted form of the habanera-derived Argentinean tango was beginning to gain international recognition at the time of "Memphis Blues" and "St. Louis Blues," but Handy's decision to include such beats in these compositions was not based on current dance fashion or on his earlier favorable impressions of Cuban music. Rather, it was a decision prompted by his observations of public reactions to his orchestra's performances of certain Latin rhythms at Dixie Park, an amusement park in Memphis.

   During these nights at the Dixie Park I noticed something that
   struck me as a racial trait, and I immediately tucked it away for
   future use. It was the odd response of the dancers to Will H.
   Tyer's Maori. When we played this number and came to the Habanera
   rhythm, containing the beat of the tango, I observed that there was
   a sudden, proudd and graceful reaction to the rhythm. Was it an
   accident, or could the response be traced to a real but hidden
   cause? I wondered. White dancers, as I had observed them, took the
   number in stride.... Well, there was a way to test it. If my
   suspicions were grounded, the same reaction should be manifest during
   the playing of La Paloma. We used that piece and sure enough, there
   it was, that same calm yet ecstatic movement. I felt convinced.
   Later, because of this conviction, I introduced the rhythm into my
   own compositions. It may be noted in the introduction to the St.
   Louis Blues, the instrumental piano copy of Memphis Blues, the
   chorus of Beale Street Blues and other compositions. (Handy 1941,
   101-102)

The more rugged blues compositions of pioneer Chicago boogie pianist Jimmy "Papa" Yancey (1898-1951), described by Palmer (1991, 169), as exhibiting "the 'Spanish' basses almost exclusively," may have incorporated the influences of vaudeville tangos as well as the New Orleans piano tradition. Roberts has speculated that Yancey's "strong Latin tinge" was an archaism based on his extensive vaudeville experience which only ended in 1925 when Yancey took on a full-time job as a Chicago White Sox groundskeeper at Comiskey Park. Roberts further observes, "This means that [Yancey] was playing professionally during the period when the habanera was at its peak in black music--the period of 'Memphis blues"' (Roberts 1985, 94). In addition, however, Peter J. Silvester has convincingly argued that Yancey probably had a New Orleans influence in the person of Jelly Roll Morton. Having lived in Chicago from 1914 to 1917, and again in 1923, Morton became "one of the most visible models for all up-and-coming pianists in the city." While Yancey's pieces do not have the "broken and staccato rhythms" of Morton's Spanish-tinged compositions, Silvester (1989, 14-15) conjectures that Yancey "may have heard Morton playing and been influenced by the experience to the extent that he experimented with similar rhythms in his own playing."

Whatever Hispanic influences there might have been in Yancey's Chicago, he has been considered something of an anomaly in the development of boogie woogie; perhaps this is because his kind of "red" blues flourished best in the Crescent City. Clearly, the unique history, particular ethnic mix, and geographic position of New Orleans predisposed it to continuous infusions of Latin and African cultural ideas. New Orleans was a gateway to the Caribbean and Latin America where barrelhouse and honky tonk blues pianists coexisted with their jazz and ragtime counterparts; its cosmopolitan milieu nurtured cultural distinctiveness that emerged in musical styles--one of these was a form of blues with the rhythmic underlay of clave. And this musical tradition is a time-honored one. As Bruce Boyd Raeburn (1993a) has observed, "Many New Orleans pianists, such as Manuel Manetta, will play a blues with a kind of rhumbaesque time signature--Manetta does so in demonstrating a 'blues' played by Louis Armstrong with the Ory-Oliver band circa 1917."

Another pianist with blues-rhumba inflections, and one of Professor Longhair's teachers, was Isidore "Tuts" Washington (1907-1984). As he told his story to Jeff Hannusch, Tuts learned his craft by spending his time as a youth with a sizable group of barrelhouse pianists, including "'Black' Merineaux, Fats Pichon, Little Brother Montgomery, Burnell Santiago, Kid Stormy Weather, [and] Hezakiah" (quoted in Hannusch 1985, 8). Washington's great inspiration, however, was Joseph Louis "Red" Cayou whose mentor, Jelly Roll Morton, apparently regularly visited his home. Although he recorded extensively with Smiley Lewis in the 1940s and 1950s, Washington's only solo recording effort was for Rounder Records in 1983 at the age of seventy-six. The eclectic selections on that disc reveal that he was truly a New Orleans piano "professor" and working pianist. He was proud of his musical versatility and felt sorry for the barrelhouse pianists who could only play blues; they had a difficult time making a living in music. Thus, mainstays such as "Misty," "Stardust," and "Blue Moon" anchored his offerings; but the CD also contains a number of blues, and several exhibit the Spanish tinge. It is interesting in this regard that his pride in his rhythm for such pieces led him to criticize the internationally acclaimed Fats Domino: "Fats can't play nothin' but that 6/8 time [2/4 = 2 triplets = 6/8 in Tuts's interpretation]. He got lucky and came along with that 'Blueberry Hill' in these teenaged times. He needed that band behind him to sound good" (12). Tuts's original "Tee Nah Nah," which Smiley Lewis recorded to great regional success, is highly reminiscent of Professor Longhair's classic "Tipitina."

The Crescent City blues sound and its derivatives are so much a part of the international blues scene today that losing sight of their origins does not appear beyond reason. Syncretized blues with Latin beats have been played by Louisiana blues musicians such as Guitar Gable ("Guitar Rhumbo"), Lazy Lester ("Blowin' a Rhumba'), and Edgar Blanchard ("Blues Cha-Cha") as a matter of course, and it has become commonplace for blues pianists and blues bands outside the New Orleans orbit to play blues rhumbas. Thus, blues pianists such as Detroit's Vernon Harrison (a.k.a. Boogie Woogie Red) and Texan-Californian Lloyd Glenn have performed their own rhumbas ("Red's Rhumba," "Conga Rhumba"), and Mississippi's great Albert King authoritatively played blues such as "I Get Evil" and "Crosscut Saw" with rhumba rhythms. Moreover, the simultaneous development of other Hispanic/African-American musical fusions in this century such as Cubop, the Hispanic soul blues of Ray Charles ("What'd I Say," "Mary Ann"), salsa, and the bugalu (boogaloo) might appear to muddy the waters of regional vernacular song. Yet what is so remarkable about Spanish-tinged New Orleans blues is its sense of place. From the title of Jelly Roll Morton's "New Orleans Blues," which on the original recording of 1923 he titled "New Orleans Joys," to Professor Longhair's "Mardi Gras in New Orleans" and "Big Chief," to Dave Bartholomew's "Carnival Day" and the Hawketts' "Mardi Gras Mambo," it is clear that New Orleans blues musicians have often been inclined to use the Spanish tinge when musically identifying their home city.

Conclusion

While this discussion has emphasized the influences of Hispanic music cultures on African-American blues musicians in Texas and New Orleans, the other side of this coin remains unexplored. To what extent did the music cultures of African-American blues musicians affect their Hispanic counterparts? Strachwitz (1970) has reported that pioneer mariachi accordionist Narciso Martinez recorded blues for Victor and Bluebird in the 1930s, and Max Salazar has indicated that "you always had blues in Cuba and you had Cuban singers singing in rumba bands with blues licks" (quoted in Boggs 1992, 258). Thus, a total picture of the musical syncretisms of African-American blues musicians and Hispanic musicians remains far off, but there are sufficient signs of such developments in the vital vernacular musical traditions of Texas and Mexico and New Orleans and Cuba to remind us of the need to research the localities of these regions without ethnocentric, "mainstream" preconceptions.

A shorter version of this article was presented at the 1993 National Conference on Black Music Research, New Orleans, Louisiana, September 30--October 3, 1993. I am grateful to Samuel A. Floyd Jr., Director of the Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College, for encouraging this expansion of a previous study (Narvaez 1978). In addition, I would like to express my appreciation to David Evans (Memphis State University) and Bruce Boyd Raeburn (Curator, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University) for providing me with valuable data.

Originally published in BMRJ vol. 14, no. 2 (1994)

DISCOGRAPHY 

Alexander, Texas. 1927. Section gang blues. Okeh 8498.

Bartholomew, Dave. 1950. Carnival day. Imperial 5064.

Blanchard, Edgar. 1988. Blues cha-cha Troubles, troubles: New Orleans blues from the vaults of Ric & Ron. Recorded 1959. Rounder 2080. Compact disc.

Boogie Woogie Red [Vernon Harrison]. 1991. Red's rhumba. Blue ivory. Blind Pig BP74591. Compact disc. (Original release on Red hot, Blind Pig BP-003.)

Broonzy, Big Bill. 1941. Key to the highway. Okeh 06242.

Gillum, Jazz. 1940. Key to the highway. Bluebird B8529.

Glenn, Lloyd. 1990. Conga rhumba. Old time shuffle. Black & Blue 59.077 2. Compact disc.

Guitar Gable [Gabriel Perrodin]. 1956. Guitar rhumbo. Excello 2094.

The Hawketts. 1987. Mardi Gras mambo. Chess 1591, 1955. Reissued on Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Mardi Gras Records MG1001. Compact disc.

Jefferson, Blind Lemon. 1926. Dry southern blues. Paramount 12347.

King, Albert. 1961. I get evil. Bobbin 135.

--. 1966. Crosscut saw. Stax 201.

Lazy Lester [Leslie Johnson]. 1987. Blowin' a rhumba. Lazy Lester rides again. King Snake KS 007.

Leadbelly [Huddie Ledbetter]. 1953. Sweet Jenny Lee. Leadbelly's last sessions. Folkways FA 2942 D.

Memphis Slim [Peter Chatman]. 1940. Empty room blues. Bluebird B8615.

Mendoza, Lydia. 1992. El lirio. Bluebird BVE-87821-1, 1935. Reissued on Lydia Mendoza: Mal hombre. Arhoolie 7002. Compact disc.

Professor Longhair ]Henry Roland Byrd]. 1985. Rum and coke. Rock 'n' roll gumbo. Dancing Cat DC 3006, 1974. Reissued, Dancing Cat Records DC-3006.

--. 1987a. Big chief, parts 1 and 2. Watch 45-1900, 1964. Reissued on Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Mardi Gras Records MG1001. Compact disc.

--. 1987b. Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Star Talent 808, 1949. Reissued on Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Mardi Gras Records MG1001. Compact disc.

--. 1990. Tipitina. Atlantic 1020, 1953. Reissued on Mardi Gras in New Orleans: Professor

Longhair. Nighthawk Records NHCD-108. Compact disc.

Segar, Charlie. 1940. Key to the highway. Vocalion 05441.

Simms, Frankie Lee. 1954. Rhumba my boogie. Specialty 487.

Smith, Six Cylinder. 1930. Oh oh lonesome blues. Paramount 12968.

Washington, Tuts. 1986. New Orleans piano professor. Rounder 11501. Compact disc.

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(1.) Robb (1952) has reported that at least one legendary Southwestern trovador, "El Negrito," was black.

(2.) Another well-known Caribbean song played by Professor Longhair is "Rum and Coca Cola." On the fascinating history of this piece, see Cowley (1993).

(3.) Pianist Charlie Otwell explains that each of these two basic claves are played with Latin or African variations. When played Latin style, 3+2, which is called forward clave, it "has a note on 1, a note on 2 1/2, a note on 4, and then, in the next bar, a note on 2 and a note on 3." For the African variation of forward clave, "it's 1, 21,4, 4 1/2, and then 2 and 3" (quoted in Doerschuk 1992, 315). Beatrice Rodriguez Owsley is currently investigating the Hispanic influences on New Orleans rhythms (see Owsley 1992).

PETER NARVAEZ has published articles on a variety of cultural topics, including African-American music, vernacular song, and folk narrative and belief. He is the editor of Of Corpse: Death and Humor in Folklore and Popular Culture (Utah State University Press, 2003) and The Good People: New Fairylore Essays (Gaylord, 1991).