Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date

2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Music

Committee Chair

Kenneth Kreitner

Committee Member

Kenneth Kreitner

Committee Member

David Evans

Committee Member

Janet Page

Committee Member

Joel Roberts

Committee Member

Lindsay Feldman

Abstract

Although there has been some scholarship in regard to country music in the city of Shreveport, Louisiana, as well as research into the lives of Jimmie Davis and Huddie Ledbetter, no comprehensive research into the city’s rich Black music scene has heretofore existed. Furthermore, the area has been home to a number of Black artists about whom little has been written. This dissertation attempts to document Shreveport’s Black music scene, both in live performance and recording, during a forty-year period stretching from 1948 to 1988. These years interestingly coincide with the opening and closing of an iconic record shop and distribution firm, Stan’s Record Shop, which had a tremendous impact not only on Shreveport but on the entire South. These years also frame an economic boom and then an economic decline for the city, and also are the forty years during which the city had a functioning recording and live music scene. The present work contends that Shreveport was an important Southern city in the recording industry which has been overlooked. In order to document a city’s scene comprehensively, I used daily and weekly newspapers, discographies, recordings, books, interviews, city directories and telephone directories. While the chapters are arranged chronologically, within them are vignettes of Shreveport’s clubs, bands, artists and studios, as well as summaries of civic events against which the Black music scene developed. The dissertation is intended to look at the evolution of Black American music through the lens of a Southern city, and in the hopes that Shreveport will be added to Memphis, New Orleans, Nashville and Muscle Shoals as a Southern recording center.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest.

Notes

Open Access

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