Books
Abbott, Lynn, and Doug Seroff, To Do This, You Must Know How: Music Pedagogy in the Black Gospel Quartet Tradition (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013).
———, Ragged but Right: Black Traveling Shows, “Coon Songs,” & the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007).
———, Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889–1895 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002).
Abrahams, Roger D., Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore from the Streets of Philadelphia, 1963 (Chicago: Aldine, 1970).
Albertson, Chris, Bessie (New York: Stein & Day, 1972); (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2003).
Alger, Dean, The Original Guitar Hero and the Power of Music: The Legendary Lonnie Johnson, Music, and Civil Rights (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2014). Alyn, Glen, I Say Me for a Parable: The Oral Autobiography of Mance Lipscomb, Texas Bluesman (New York: Da Capo Press, 1994).
Badger, Reid, A Life in Ragtime: A Biography of James Reese Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Barker, Danny, Buddy Bolden and the Last Days of Storyville (London: Cassell, 1998).
Basie, Count, as told to Albert Murray, Good Morning Blues (New York: Random House, 1985).
Bauman, Thomas, The Pekin: The Rise and Fall of Chicago’s First Black-Owned Theater (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014).
Berresford, Mark, That’s Got ’Em!: The Life and Music of Wilbur Sweatman (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010).
Blesh, Rudi, and Harriet Janis, They All Played Ragtime: The True Story of an American Music (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950).
Bradford, Perry, Born with the Blues (New York: Oak Publications, 1965).
Brooks, Tim, Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry 1890–1919 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004).
Charters, Sam, and Leonard Kunstadt, Jazz: A History of the New York Scene (New York: Doubleday, 1961).
Child, Francis James, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1894; New York: Dover, 1965).
Church, Annette E., and Roberta Church, The Robert Churches of Memphis: A Father and Son Who Achieved in Spite of Race (Ann Arbor: Edwards Brothers, 1974).
Crouch, Stanley, Notes of a Hanging Judge: Essays and Reviews, 1979–1989 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
Dixon, Robert M. W., John Godrich, and Howard W. Rye, Blues and Gospel Records 1890-1943, 4th ed. (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1997).
Driggs, Frank, and Chuck Haddix, Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop—A History (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Eagle, Bob, and Eric S. LeBlanc, Blues—A Regional Experience (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2013).
Egan, Bill, Florence Mills: Harlem Jazz Queen (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2004).
Elmore, Charles J., All That Savannah Jazz (Savannah: Savannah State University Press, 1999).
Evans, David, Big Road Blues: Tradition and Creativity in the Folk Blues (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
Fletcher, Tom, 100 Years of the Negro in Show Business: The Tom Fletcher Story (New York: Burdge, 1954).
George-Graves, Nadine, The Royalty of Negro Vaudeville: The Whitman Sisters and the Negotiation of Race, Gender, and Class in African American Theater, 1900–1940 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000).
Govenar, Alan, and Jay Brakefield, Deep Ellum: The Other Side of Dallas (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2013).
Handy, W. C., Father of the Blues (New York: Macmillan, 1941).
———, ed., Blues: An Anthology (New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1926).
Harris, Sheldon, Blues Who’s Who: A Biographical Dictionary of Blues Singers (New York: Da Capo Press, 1979).
Harrison, Daphne Duval, Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988).
Hay, Fred J., ed., Goin’ Back to Sweet Memphis: Conversations with the Blues (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001).
Hill, Anthony D., Pages from the Harlem Renaissance: Chronicle of Performance (New York: Peter Lang, 1967).
Jackson, Bruce, “Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me”: Narrative Poetry from Black Oral Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974).
Johannes, Jan H., Sr., Yesterday’s Reflections II (Jacksonville: Drummond Press, 2000).
Kimball, Robert, and William Bolcom, Reminiscing with Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake (1973; New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000).
Lee, George W., Beale Street, Where the Blues Began (New York: Robert O. Ballou, 1934).
Lieb, Sandra J., Mother of the Blues: A Study of Ma Rainey (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981).
Lomax, Alan, Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of New Orleans Creole and “Inventor of Jazz” Jelly Roll Morton (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1950).
Mahony, Dan, Columbia 13/14000-D Series (Numerical Listing) (Stanhope: Walter C. Allen, 1961).
Major, Clarence, ed., Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of African American Slang (New York: Viking, 1994).
Manis, Andrew M., Macon Black and White (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2004).
Markham, Dewey “Pigmeat,” Here Come the Judge! (New York: Popular Library, 1969).
Marquis, Don, In Search of Buddy Bolden, First Man of Jazz (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978).
Mazor, Barry, Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2015).
Meade, Guthrie T. Jr., with Dick Spotswood and Douglas S. Meade, Country Music Sources: A Biblio-Discography of Commercially Recorded Traditional Music (Chapel Hill: Southern Folklife, 2002).
Muir, Peter C., Long Lost Blues: Popular Blues in America, 1850–1920 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010).
Neal, Jocelyn R., The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers: A Legacy in Country Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009).
Odum, Howard W., and Guy B. Johnson, Negro Workaday Songs (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1926).
Oliver, Paul, Songsters and Saints: Vocal Traditions on Race Records (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
———, Bessie Smith (London: Cassell, 1959).
Ramsey, Frederic, and Charles Edward Smith, eds., Jazzmen (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939).
Russell, Bill, “Oh, Mister Jelly”: A Jelly Roll Morton Scrapbook (Copenhagen: JazzMedia, 1999).
Rust, Brian, Jazz Records A-Z 1897–1942 (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1978).
Scarborough, Dorothy, On the Trail of Negro Folksongs (1925; Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1963).
Scott, Michelle R., Blues Empress in Black Chattanooga: Bessie Smith and the Emerging Urban South (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008).
Southern, Eileen, Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1982).
Stearns, Marshall, and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance (New York: Macmillan, 1968).
Stewart-Baxter, Derrick, Ma Rainey and the Classic Blues Singers (New York: Stein & Day, 1970).
Thygesen, Helge, Mark Berresford, and Russ Shor, Black Swan: The Record Label of the Harlem Renaissance (Nottingham, UK: VJM Publications, 1996).
Waters, Ethel, with Charles Samuels, His Eye Is on the Sparrow (Garden City: Doubleday, 1951).
Wolfe, Charles, and Kip Lornell, The Life & Legend of Leadbelly (New York: Harper Collins, 1992).
Wood, Wayne W., Jacksonville’s Architectural Heritage (Jacksonville: University Press of Florida, 1996).
Work, John W., American Negro Songs and Spirituals (New York: Crown Publishers, 1940).
Dissertations
Bristow, Eugene Kerr, “‘Look Out for Saturday Night’: A Social History of Professional Variety Theater in Memphis, Tennessee, 1859–1880” (diss., University of Iowa, 1956).
Smith, Peter Dunbaugh, “Ashley Street Blues: Racial Uplift and the Commodification of Vernacular Performance in La Villa, Florida, 1896–1916” (diss., Florida State University, 2006).
Articles in journals
Abbott, Lynn, “‘For Ofays Only’: An Annotated Calendar of Midnight Frolics at the Lyric Theater, Part I,” Jazz Archivist 17 (2003): 1–29.
———, “Remembering E. Belfield Spriggins, First Man of Jazzology,” 78 Quarterly 10 (n.d.): 13–51.
Abbott, Lynn, and Doug Seroff, “The Life and Death of Pioneer Bluesman Butler ‘String Beans’ May,” Tributaries: Journal of the Alabama Folklife Association 5 (2002): 9–40.
———, “‘They Cert’ly Sound Good to Me’: Sheet Music, Southern Vaudeville, and the Commercial Ascendancy of the Blues,” American Music 14, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 402–54, reissued in David Evans, ed., Ramblin’ on My Mind: New Perspectives on the Blues (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 49–104.
———, “Sweet Mattie Dorsey: Been Here, But She’s Gone,” 78 Quarterly 8 (1994): 103–12.
———, “America’s Blue Yodel,” Musical Traditions 11 (Late 1993): 2–11.
———, “Bessie Smith: The Early Years,” Blues & Rhythm: The Gospel Truth 70 (June 1992): 8–11.
Albright, Alex, “Mose McQuitty’s Unknown Career: A Personal History of Black Music in America,” Black Music Research Bulletin 11, no. 2 (Fall 1989): 1–5.
Bagley, Julian E., “Moving Pictures in an Old Song Shop,” Opportunity 5, no. 12 (December 1927): 369–72.
Bogert, Brenda, “The Story of Sylvester Weaver—the First Blues Guitarist to Record, Part 2,” Blues News (December 1994): 1–2.
Bogert, Pen, “Louisville Women in the Blues, Part 5,” Blues News (April 1995): 1; “Part 6” (May 1995): 1, 4.
Ellison, Ralph, “Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke,” Partisan Review 25, no. 2 (Spring 1958): 212–22, reprinted in Shadow and Act (New York: Random House, 1964), 45–59.
Evans, David, “Musical Innovation in the Blues of Blind Lemon Jefferson,” Black Music Research Journal 20, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 83–116.
———, “Kate McTell, Part 2,” Blues Unlimited 126 (September–October 1977): 8–16; “Part 3,” Blues Unlimited 127 (November–December 1977): 20–22.
———, “Afro-American One-Stringed Instruments,” Western Folklore 29, no. 4 (October 1970): 229–45.
Garon, Paul, “On the Trail of Sylvester Weaver,” Living Blues 52 (Spring 1982): 16–17.
Govenar, Alan, “Blind Lemon Jefferson: The Myth and the Man,” Black Music Research Journal 20, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 7–21.
Jydstrup, Doug, “Winston Holmes: Kansas City Promoter,” 78 Quarterly 1, no. 2 (1968).
Knight, Athelia, “In Retrospect: Sherman H. Dudley: He Paved the Way for T.O.B.A.,” Black Perspective in Music 15, no. 2 (Fall 1987): 153–81.
Kunstadt, Len, “The Lucille Hegamin Story,” Record Research 39 (November 1961): 3–7.
Marquis, Donald M., “Lincoln Park, Johnson Park and Buddy Bolden,” Second Line (Fall 1976): 27–28.
Monge, Luigi, and David Evans, “New Songs of Blind Lemon Jefferson,” Journal of Texas Music History 3, no. 2 (2003): 1–21.
Niles, Abbe, “Ballads, Songs and Snatches,” Bookman 67, no. 3 (May 1928): 290–92.
Odum, Howard W., “Folk-Song and Folk-Poetry as Found in the Secular Songs of the Southern Negroes,” Journal of American Folk-Lore 24, no. 93 (July–September 1911): 255–94; 24, no. 94 (October–December 1911): 351–96.
O’Neal, Jim, “Guitar Blues: Sylvester Weaver,” Living Blues 52 (Spring 1982): 18–20.
Pridgett, Thomas, “The Life of Ma Rainey,” Jazz Information 2, no. 4 (September 6, 1940): 8.
Rader, Michael, and K. B. Rau, with Dave Brown and Jorg Kuhfuss, “‘The Cornet Screamer’: The Mystery of Gus Aiken’s Recording Career,” Frog Blues and Jazz Annual 3 (2013): 152–62.
Randolph, John, “Lucien Brown,” Storyville 47 (June–July 1973): 176–90.
———, “A Pioneer Race Recorder,” Jazz Journal 10, no. 2 (February 1957): 11.
Rusch, Bob, “Edith Wilson: Interview,” Cadence 5, no. 8 (August 1979): 19–22.
Schafer, William J., “Thoughts on Jazz Historiography: ‘Buddy Bolden’s Blues’ vs. ‘Buddy Bottley’s Balloon,’” Journal of Jazz Studies 2, no. 1 (December 1974): 3–14.
Springer, Robert, “I Never Did Like to Imitate Nobody,” Blues Unlimited 125 (July–August 1977): 19–21.
Stearns, Marshall, and Jean Stearns, “Frontiers of Humor: American Vernacular Dance,” Southern Folklore Quarterly 30, no. 3 (September 1966): 227–35.
Swinton, Paul, “‘A Kansas City Call’ Some Beginnings of K. C. Blues & Jazz: Winston Holmes & His Meritt Record Label,” Frog Blues and Jazz Annual 3 (London, 2013): 115–25.
Troutman, John, “‘Steelin’ the Slide’: Hawai’i and the Birth of the Blues Guitar,” Southern Cultures 19, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 26–52.
Venet, Seva, “The Hawaiian Tinge,” Jazz Archivist 25 (2012): 3–33.
Wilson, Edith, as told to Paige Van Vorst, “My Story,” Mississippi Rag 2, no. 4 (February 1975): 1–4.
Hurwitt, Elliott S., “Abbe Niles, Blues Advocate,” in David Evans, ed., Ramblin’ on My Mind: New Perspectives on the Blues (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 105–51.
Wilentz, Sean, “Delia,” in Sean Wilentz and Greil Marcus, eds., The Rose and the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), 367–70.
Encyclopedia entries
Oliver, Paul, “Smith, Bessie,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Vol. 3, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 2002), 604–5.
Smith, Charles Edward, “Rainey, Gertrude Pridgett,” in Edward James, Janet Wilson James, and Paul S. Boyer, eds., Notable American Women 1607–1950, Vol. 3, P–Z (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1971), 110–11.
City directories
Jacksonville City Directory, 1897, 1902–1905.
Goette’s Savannah City Directory, 1902, 1903, 1905, 1906.
Caron’s Louisville City Directory, 1910.
Macon City Directory, 1912.
Memphis City Directory, 1901, 1908–1909.
Montgomery City Directory, 1902–1907.
Nashville City Directory, 1913.
Newspapers on microfilm
Billboard (“J. A. Jackson’s Page”) (1920–25)
Chicago Defender (1912–32)
Indianapolis Freeman (1899–1920; 1924)
Kansas City Call (1922–26)
Louisiana Weekly (1925–35)
Nashville Globe (1907–18)
New York Age (1914–18; 1922)
Norfolk Journal and Guide (1921–28)
Pittsburgh Courier (1923–30)
Savannah Tribune (1902–10; 1918–19)
Tampa Morning Tribune (1899–1900)
Electronic databases
America’s Historical Newspapers, NewsBank
Black Studies Center, ProQuest
Electronic files
“Unrecorded Interview Material and Research Notes by Alan Lomax, 1938–1946” (PDF file on Disc 8 of Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings by Alan Lomax, Rounder 11661–1888–2, 2005).
Websites
Sheet Music Consortium http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/sheetmusic/
Taft, Michael, Prewar Blues Lyric Poetry: A Web Concordance, http://www.dylan61.se/michael%20taft,%20blues%20anthology.txt.WebConcordance/framconc.htm
Liner notes
Abbott, Lynn, liner notes to Butterbeans and Susie, GHB BCD-135.
Bogert, Pen, liner notes to Sara Martin in Chronological Order, Document DOCD-5395–5398.
Evans, David, liner notes to Female Blues Singers, Vol. 13, Document DOCD-5517.
Rye, Howard, liner notes to Johnny Dunn: Complete Recorded Works in Chronological order, Vol. 1 (1921–1922), RST JPCD-1522–2.
van Rijn, Guido, and Hans Vergeer, liner notes to Smoketown Strut, Agram LP AB-2010.
Interviews
Edwards, Jodie, and Susie Edwards, interviewed by Herb Abramson and others, 1960 (Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, via GHB Foundation).
James, Willis Laurence, interviewed by Marshall and Jean Stearns, August 25, 1961 (Center for Jazz Studies, Rutgers University).
Maddox, Johnny, interviewed by Doug Seroff, October 1, 2014.
Nesbitt, Joseph, interviewed by Doug Seroff, May 27, 1991.
Saunders, Gertrude, interviewed by Frank Driggs, 1968 (UMKC Marr Sound Archives).
Seals, Ernest, interviewed by Marshall and Jean Stearns, March 1, 1961 (Center for Jazz Studies, Rutgers University).
Wilson, Orlandus, interviewed by Doug Seroff, February 24, 1995.
Archival collections
Douglass Business Records Collection, Middle Georgia Archives, Washington Memorial Library, Macon, Georgia.
Hatch Show Print Business Files, Hatch Show Print, Nashville, Tennessee.
John Robichaux Collection, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University.
Correspondence
Bogert, Pen, letters to Doug Seroff, 1993–2003.
Unpublished papers
Bogert, Pen, “African American String Bands and Brass Bands in Louisville 1835–1900,” unpublished paper, presented at “Crossroads” Conference, Middle Tennessee State University, April 19, 1996.
Jackson, Muriel McDowell, “Biography” of Charles Henry Douglass, in-house documentation, Middle Georgia Regional Library, Macon, Georgia.
Monographs
Garst, John, “Delia” (Northfield: Loomis House Press, 2012).
“Library of Congress Music Division Check-list of Recorded Songs in the English Language in the Archive of American Folk Song to July, 1940” (Washington, 1942).
Litrico, Helen Gordon, “The Palace Saloon” (Fernandina Beach, FL: Land & Williams, 1981).
Riis, Thomas Laurence, “Black Vaudeville, the TOBA, and the Morton Theatre: Recovering the History 1910–1930,” 1987.
Starr, Carrie Lightman, “For Marco and Suzanne from Their Grandmother,” June 1, 1971 (Starr Family Vertical File, Tennessee State Library, Nashville).