“All We Know is Blues!”: The Persistence of the Blues in Southern African American Culture
Abstract
While it has often been held that the blues is no longer a significant part of African American life, this article argues that the genre is very much alive for Black listeners in Deep South locales such as the Mississippi Delta and the Alabama Black Belt. From the early 1970s to the present, African American fans in these areas have continued to listen to blues performed by singers unfamiliar to most contemporary white blues listeners, including Z. Z. Hill, Denise LaSalle, Miss Jody, and O. B. Buchana. While the blues style these artists perform has sometimes been labeled soul-blues or Southern Soul, for the fans who have kept it alive over the years, it is usually considered “just straight blues.” This article contends that this postmodern blues form shows strong thematic continuity with the blues tradition while maintaining a stylistic flexibility that aligns it with late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century blues forms documented in recent scholarship.
Publication Title
Mississippi Quarterly
Recommended Citation
Gorrell, N. (2025). “All We Know is Blues!”: The Persistence of the Blues in Southern African American Culture. Mississippi Quarterly, 77 (1), 69-94. https://doi.org/10.1353/mss.2025.a953923
