Information AboutSongsters |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT SONGSTER | |
| african-american history | |
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Songsters generally performed a wide variety of Ballads , dance tunes, Reels and Minstrel Songs , a repertoire that overlapped that of white rural singers. Initially, they were often accompanied by non-singing "musicianers", who often played Banjo and Fiddle . Later, as the Guitar became more widely popular, the songsters often accompanied themselves''Oliver, Harrison and Bolcom, "The New Grove Gospel, Blues and Jazz", 1980, ISBN 0-333-40784-9. Songsters often accompanied Medicine Show s, which moved from place to place selling Salve s and Elixir s. As entertainers, songsters had the task of enticing a public, to whom the concoctions were then offered. As these shows declined, and listening to recorded music and dancing in juke joints became more popular, so the older songster style became less fashionable. Songsters had a notable influence on Blues music, which developed from around the turn of the 20th century. However, there was also a change in song styles. Songsters often sang composed songs or traditional ballads, frequently about legendary heroes or characters such as " Frankie And Johnny " and " Stagger Lee ". Blues singers, in contrast, tended to invent their own lyrics (or recycle those of others) and develop their own tunes and guitar (or sometimes piano) playing styles, singing of their own lives and shared emotional experiences. Many of the earliest recordings of what is now referred to as the blues were made by songsters who commanded a much wider repertoire, often extending to popular Tin Pan Alley songs of the day as well as the "authentic" Country Blues . There is a growing view among scholars''For example, Elijah Ward, ''Escaping The Delta'', 2005, ISBN 978-0-06-052427-2'' that the distinction made by experts such as Alan Lomax between "deep" blues singers and "songsters" is an artificial one, and that in fact most of the leading archetypal blues artists, including Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters , performed a wide variety of music in public, but recorded only that proportion of their material which was seen by their producers as original or innovative. SONGSTERS
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