The Influences of Hispanic Music Cultures on African-American Blues Musicians

Author(s): Peter Narváez

Source: Black Music Research Journal , Autumn, 1994, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Autumn, 1994),
pp. 203-224
Published by: Center for Black Music Research - Columbia College Chicago and
University of Illinois Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/779484

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 THE INFLUENCES OF HISPANIC MUSIC CULTURES
ON AFRICAN-AMERICAN BLUES MUSICIANS

PETER NARVAEZ

Egalitarian quests for multiculturalism can be offset by the lingering

legacy of "melting pot" ideology. Cultural examinations of ethnicity ex-
emplify 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 musi-
cal identity" (Maultsby 1993). These broad questions should continue to
be addressed, but they also need to be supplemented with queries con-
cerning 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 en-
tertainers reveal that musical interaction between African-American
blues musicians and Hispanic musicians has taken place in at least
primary areas: the Texas-Mexico border region, where downhome bl
guitarists were influenced by the lifestyle of Mexican street singers
their chordophonic musical traditions; and New Orleans, where C
rhythms particularly affected a school of blues pianists who develo
the New Orleans "sound" of rhythm and blues. To a great extent, ho

PETER NARVAEZ is an associate professor in the Department of Folklore, Memorial U

sity of Newfoundland. He has published articles on a variety of cultural topics inc
African-American music, vernacular song, occupational folklore, and folk narrativ
belief. He has also edited two books: Media Sense: The Folklore-Popular Culture Conti
(with Martin Laba; Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1986) and The Goo
ple: New Fairylore Essays (Gaylord, 1991).

203

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204 BMR Journal

ever, 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-de-

rived 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 ne-
glected the realities of living music in small places. The result is that
accurate portrayals of local music cultures, that is, the music that per-
formers and audiences have actually shared in small group contexts, are
few and far between.
Contemporary views of the blues musician illustrate this problem. Af-
rican-American blues originated in localities, but the directions of its de-
velopments and the larger public perception of its identity have been
shaped by the commercial forces of popular culture. We often errone-
ously 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 ob-
served, 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 con-
tained nonblues ballads such as "What a Difference a Day Makes," and

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Hispanic Music Cultures and Blues Musicians 205

even then the company had to defend its decision against the "grum-
bling 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 ex-
istence of performance and repertory variations by overlooking field-
work data gathered in localities. For example, it has been convenient for
academics and music historians to describe certain early African-Ameri-
can singers who sang a variety of song types as having been "song-
sters," transitional, singer-musicians who were precursors to "real"
bluesmen who sing nothing but the blues. Yet on the basis of his exten-
sive 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 musi-
cian" here will be used in similar fashion, meaning anyone who is ac-
knowledged 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

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206 BMR Journal

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, so-
cial and cultural integration among blacks and Spanish colonists oc-
curred 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 Espaia of a new
racial stock, the mestizo, was the result of the lack of miscegenational
stigma involving the Spanish, Native Americans, and Africans. As histo-
rian 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 sur-
prising, therefore, that in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico
made a vain attempt to have slavery permanently abolished in the terri-
tories it was forced to cede to the United States. Similarly, in 1856 an
abortive insurrectionary plot in Colorado County, Texas, in which Mexi-
cans 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

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Hispanic Music Cultures and Blues Musicians 207

any discrimination as coming from the Anglos' rejection of blacks

1966, 4, 20).
Coinciding with the foregoing historical developments, the social and
miscegenational attitudes of Mexicans and blacks have oftentimes re-
sulted 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.

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208 BMR Joural

I'll tell you I love you, sefiorita 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 [seiorita?] you just wait and see.

The life histories of African-American itinerant performers also reve

the acculturative conditions of the Texas-Mexico region. Norman Maso
reported his enjoyment at playing with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels
Laredo, Mexico (quoted in Oliver 1965, 122). On the vaudeville blu
circuit, Al Wynn mentioned that Ma Rainey lived in Mexico: "I wa
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 h
retired to Mexico for some time and was on her way for a comebac
(quoted in Oliver 1965, 131-132).
While "down in Texas," blues singer and jack-of-all-trades Lefty Win
Gordon "used to go 'cross to Mexico" (Odum 1928, 247). Oliver (196
151) reported that "Robert Lee McCoy-'Robert Nighthawk,' born i
Helena in 1909,... was always commuting from Chicago or St. Louis
Memphis and took bands on the road as far as Mexico." Alabama native
Johnny Watson, who would gain later fame on Chicago's Maxwell Stre
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 per
former Earl King "went to Mexico with the Buffalo Booking Agency"
(Broven 1977, 119). Likewise, Bastin (1975) indicated that in the 196
Houston blues pianist Elmore Nixon frequently enjoyed playing before
Mexican audiences across the border. Also in Houston, Mack McCor-
mick (1969, 13) has depicted reformed bluesman "Big Cat" Williams and
"Spider" Kilpatrick playing with Latin-American musicians in a Pente-
costal 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 Mexi-
can and African-American interaction. Whenever and wherever such in-
teractions have taken place, African Americans have been confronte
with a vigorous chordophonic tradition. Since the introduction of th
vihuela de mano (the antecedent of the modem guitar) by the conquis-
tadores, 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 th
Cortes expedition to Mexico in 1519. Geronimo de Mendieta ([1604

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Hispanic Music Cultures and Blues Musicians 209

1973, 39-40) notes the ease with which Native Mexicans became profi-
cient 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 tradi-
tions 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 accompani-

ment 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-play-

ing 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 listen-
ers" (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 itin-
erant 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 prow-
ess 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

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210 BMR Journal

that song were sung everywhere, but the author was soon forgotten."'
Such descriptions of the roving lifestyle of Mexican street singers ap-
proximate 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 south-
ern 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 sere-
naded their white friends in the evenings, while on Saturday, "nigger day,"
when everyone comes to town, they made music on shady street corers.
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 "song-
sters," 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 im-
paired 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

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

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Hispanic Music Cultures and Blues Musicians 211

in the twentieth century, it is evident that many peripatetic guitar-play-

ing cantadores have been afflicted with the stigma of blindness and
might, therefore, have provided such a role model. Mexican sources re-
veal the singing of nineteenth-century corridos by blind minstrels, or cie-
gos (Paredes 1958, 176). Similarly, Alan Lomax in the 1930s collected
border ballads in Brownsville, Texas, from Jose Suarez whom he de-
scribed 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 Pefia (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 comer 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 sing-
ing 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 out-
skirts 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 lan-
guage 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 perform-
ance from Mexican guitarists at his ARC sessions in San Antonio: "[Don
Law] asked him to play guitar for a group of Mexican musicians gath-

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212 BMR Joural

ered 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. Eventu-
ally he calmed down sufficiently to play, but he never faced his audi-
ence" (Driggs 1962). Clearly, this was more than stage fright, for in-
terethnic encounters at hotel recording facilities could not have been
uncommon since commercial record companies often recorded "discos
espafioles" and "race records" on the same days. It is probable, how-
ever, that Johnson's anxieties were prompted by prior contact with the
guitar skills of Mexican cantadores in San Antonio, for they were men-
tioned 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 inspira-
tion to countless musicians-appears to be a likely candidate. While his
recorded repertoire and rhythms are not in keeping with Mexican can-
tadores, 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 Mexi-

can material that was simply not recorded. As fieldwork interviews of
record company employees have indicated, on-location recordists dis-
couraged 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 num-
ber of waltzes, including one entitled "The Mexican Waltz," which Wil-
lis "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

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Hispanic Music Cultures and Blues Musicians 213

sound, transcends repertoire, and the music of Blind Lemon Jefferson

and that of Mexican cantadores shared many stylistic likenesses: the gui-
tar 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 tal-
ented 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 (Pefia 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 Grovenar (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
Lomell 1992, 52-53).
The one-man-band idea of playing the guitar in conjunction with
other musical instruments, in the manner performed by African-Ameri-
can 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).

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214 BMR Journal

New Orleans

Hispanic influences on African-American blues musicians in New Or-

leans 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 pic-
ture." On April 9, guided by a local blues fan, Leadbitter and two
friends encountered Professor Longhair in a "decaying house" on Ram-
part 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 record-
ing artist, but an old man, forgotten by friends, the public, and the music
industry.... The arrival of three Englishmen on his door-step quite shat-
tered 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 en-
thusiasts 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 Or-
leans sense of having a sophisticated, musically literate mastery of a va-
riety 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 cir-
cuit 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

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Hispanic Music Cultures and Blues Musicians 215

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 I 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 main-
tained that he heard Latin rhythms on Mexican radio stations while
working with the Corps in Brownsville, Texas (quoted by Roberts 1993).
Robert Palmer has maintained that Longhair's bass runs are direct adop-
tions 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 effec-
tive, 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

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).

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216 BMR Journal

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 cul-
tures that evolved in Cuba; such Afro-Cuban rhythms have been evi-
dent in New Orleans since the nineteenth century, both through direct
contact with Cubans and through the Cuban-influenced musics of Mexi-
can 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 cir-
cuses 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 Expo-
sition in 1884. The enthusiasm that greeted the band was abetted
through the publication of sheet music which "sold thousands of cop-
ies" (Roberts 1985, 35-36). Recent research by Jack Stewart (1991) pro-
vides historical data indicating that a succession of other Mexican
bands-including La Orquesta Tipica Mexicana (1893), the Mexican Ar-
tistic 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/Af-
rican-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 Quar-

ter at the turn of the century. Apparently they were musical groups that
had members who were Mexicans, Spaniards, and Puerto Ricans, mixed

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 21/2, 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, 21/2, 41/2, 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).

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Hispanic Music Cultures and Blues Musicians 217

with local musicians of all descriptions. Martin also recalls playing guitar-
his first instrument-with many such groups, and his vivid recollection ex-
tended to singing two of the songs which were played by these bands.

Similarly, Charles E. Kinzer's fascinating account of the musically influ-

ential, Creole-of-color Tio family provides more evidence for New Or-
leans-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 tradi-
tions 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 fa-
miliar 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 composi-
tions, 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 familiar-
ity 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

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218 BMR Journal

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 Ma-
hara's Minstrels in the early months of 1900. An exported, diluted form
of the habanera-derived Argentinean tango was beginning to gain inter-
national 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 im-
pressions of Cuban music. Rather, it was a decision prompted by his
observations of public reactions to his orchestra's performances of cer-
tain 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, proud 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 suspi-
cions 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 composi-
tions. (Handy 1941, 101-102)

The more rugged blues compositions of pioneer Chicago boogie pian-

ist Jimmy "Papa" Yancey (1898-1951), described by Palmer (1991, 169),
as exhibiting "the 'Spanish' basses almost exclusively," may have incor-
porated 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 Or-
leans influence in the person of Jelly Roll Morton. Having lived in Chi-
cago 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 Mor-

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Hispanic Music Cultures and Blues Musicians 219

ton's Spanish-tinged compositions, Silvester (1989, 14-

that Yancey "may have heard Morton playing and been i
the experience to the extent that he experimented with s
in his own playing."
Whatever Hispanic influences there might have been in
cago, he has been considered something of an anomaly in
ment of boogie woogie; perhaps this is because his kind o
flourished best in the Crescent City. Clearly, the unique h
lar ethnic mix, and geographic position of New Orleans p
to continuous infusions of Latin and African cultural ideas. New Or-
leans was a gateway to the Caribbean and Latin America where barrel-
house and honky tonk blues pianists coexisted with their jazz and rag-
time counterparts; its cosmopolitan milieu nurtured cultural distinctive-
ness 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 Raebum (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, Bumell
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 vis-
ited 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 g time [i = 2 triplets = g in Tuts's inter-
pretation]. He got lucky and came along with that 'Blueberry Hill' in
these teenaged times. He needed that band behind him to sound good"

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220 BMR Journal

(quoted in Hannusch 1985, 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 common-
place 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
bugalui (boogaloo) might appear to muddy the waters of regional ver-
nacular song. Yet what is so remarkable about Spanish-tinged New Or-
leans 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 mu-
sicians 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 mu-

sic cultures on African-American blues musicians in Texas and New Or-
leans, the other side of this coin remains unexplored. To what extent did
the music cultures of African-American blues musicians affect their His-
panic 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 musi-
cians remains far off, but there are sufficient signs of such developments
in the vital vernacular musical traditions of Texas and Mexico and New

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Hispanic Music Cultures and Blues Musicians 221

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 Blac
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 wi
valuable data.

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 Snak
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. Danc-
ing 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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222 BMR Journal

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