Samuel Charters (born
Samuel Barclay Charters in
PittsburghPittsburgh is a city in and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and the second largest city in the state. Its population was 334,563 at the 2000 census; by 2006, it was estimated to have fallen to 312,819. The population of the seven-county metropolitan area is...
,
PennsylvaniaThe Commonwealth of Pennsylvania , often colloquially referred to as PA by natives and Northeasterners, is a state located in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States...
, August 1, 1929; his name also appears as
Sam Charters) is an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
music historian, writer, record producer, musician, and poet. He is a noted and widely published author on the subjects of
bluesBlues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre created within the African-American communities in the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
and
jazzJazz is a musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
music, as well as a writer of fiction.
Charters was born and spent his childhood in Pittsburgh. He first became enamored of blues music in 1937, after hearing
Bessie SmithBessie Smith was an American blues singer.Sometimes referred to as "The Empress of the Blues", Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s, She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era, and along with Louis Armstrong, a major influence on subsequent...
's version of Jimmy Cox's song, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" (Charters 2004).
Samuel Charters (born
Samuel Barclay Charters in
PittsburghPittsburgh is a city in and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and the second largest city in the state. Its population was 334,563 at the 2000 census; by 2006, it was estimated to have fallen to 312,819. The population of the seven-county metropolitan area is...
,
PennsylvaniaThe Commonwealth of Pennsylvania , often colloquially referred to as PA by natives and Northeasterners, is a state located in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States...
, August 1, 1929; his name also appears as
Sam Charters) is an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
music historian, writer, record producer, musician, and poet. He is a noted and widely published author on the subjects of
bluesBlues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre created within the African-American communities in the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
and
jazzJazz is a musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
music, as well as a writer of fiction.
Overview
Charters was born and spent his childhood in Pittsburgh. He first became enamored of blues music in 1937, after hearing
Bessie SmithBessie Smith was an American blues singer.Sometimes referred to as "The Empress of the Blues", Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s, She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era, and along with Louis Armstrong, a major influence on subsequent...
's version of Jimmy Cox's song, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" (Charters 2004). He moved with his family to
SacramentoSacramento is the capital of the U.S. state of California, and the county seat of Sacramento County. Located along the Sacramento River and just south of the American River's confluence in California's expansive Central Valley. With a 2007 estimated population of 460,242, it is the seventh-largest...
,
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
at the age of 15. He attended high schools in Pittsburgh and California and attended
Sacramento City CollegeSacramento City College is a two-year community college located in Sacramento, California. SCC is part of the Los Rios Community College District and had enrollment of 22,197 for the Spring 2008 semester...
, graduating in 1949. After being kicked out of Harvard for political activism, he received a bachelor's degree in economics from the
University of CaliforniaThe University of California is a public university system in the state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University system...
in 1956.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Charters purchased numerous old recordings of American blues musicians, eventually amassing a huge and valuable collection.
In 1951, at the age of 21, he moved to
New OrleansNew Orleans is a major U.S. port and the largest city in the state of Louisiana. New Orleans is the center of the New Orleans Metropolitan Area, the largest metro area in the state....
,
LouisianaThe State of Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state divided into parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
, where he absorbed the history and culture he had previously only read about; he lived there for most of the 1950s. He served for two years in the
United States ArmyThe United States Army is the branch of the United States Military responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military and is one of seven uniformed services...
(1951-53) and began to study jazz
clarinetThe clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet...
with
George LewisGeorge Lewis was an American jazz clarinetist who achieved his greatest fame and influence in the later decades of his life....
, but soon acquired an interest in
rural bluesCountry blues refers to all the acoustic, mainly guitar-driven forms of the blues. After blues' birth in the southern United States, it quickly spread throughout the country , giving birth to a host of regional styles...
. In 1954, he and his wife began conducting field recordings (initially for
Folkways RecordsFolkways Records is a record label that documents folk and world music. It is now owned by the Smithsonian Institution.-History:The Folkways Records & Service Co. was founded by Moses Asch and Marian Distler in 1948 in New York City. Asch sought to record and document sound from the entire world....
throughout the United States, and then in the Bahamas in 1958). Their 1959 recordings of the Texas bluesman
Lightnin' HopkinsSam "Lightnin’" Hopkins was a country blues guitarist, from Houston, Texas, United States.-Life:Born in Centerville, Texas, Hopkins' childhood was immersed in the sounds of the blues and he developed a deeper appreciation at the age of 8 when he met Blind Lemon Jefferson at a church picnic in...
proved instrumental to Hopkins' rediscovery.
Charters began his writing career in 1959 with
The Country Blues. Since that time, his writings have been influential, bringing to light aspects of
African AmericanAfrican Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. In the United States, the terms are generally used for Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry...
musics and culture that had previously been largely unknown to the general public. His writings include numerous books on the subjects of blues, jazz, African music, and
Bahamian musicThe music of the Bahamas is associated primarily with junkanoo, a celebration which occurs on Boxing Day and again on New Year's Day . Parades and other celebrations mark the ceremony...
, as well as liner notes for numerous sound recordings.
From approximately 1966 to 1970 he worked as a producer for the anti-war band
Country Joe and the FishCountry Joe and the Fish was a rock band most widely known for musical protests against the Vietnam War, from 1966 to 1971.-History:The group's name is derived from leftist politics; "Country Joe" was a popular name for Joseph Stalin in the 1940s, while "the fish" refers to Mao Tse-Tung's statement...
. He became thoroughly disenchanted with American politics during the
Vietnam WarThe Vietnam War or the Second Indochina War was a Cold War military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1959 to 30 April 1975...
and moved with his family to
SwedenSweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe...
, establishing a new life there despite not being able to speak the language at first. He divides his time between Sweden (where he has a residence permit to live, though maintaining his U.S. citizenship) and
ConnecticutConnecticut is a state in the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and New York to the west and south ....
. He has translated into English the works of the Swedish writer
Tomas TranströmerTomas Tranströmer is a Swedish writer, poet and translator, whose poetry has been deeply influential in Sweden, as well as around the world....
and helped produce the music of various Swedish musical groups.
Charters is married to the writer, editor,
Beat generationThe Beat Generation is a term used to describe a group of American writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, and the cultural phenomena that they wrote about and inspired...
scholar, photographer, and pianist
Ann ChartersAnn Charters was born on November 10, 1936 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. She is a professor of English at the University of Connecticut and has been interested in Beat Writers since 1956 when as an undergraduate English major she attended the repeat performance of the Six Gallery Poetry reading in...
(b. 1936), whom he met at the
University of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley is a public research university located in Berkeley, California, United States. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley offers some 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines...
during the 1954-55 academic year in a music class; she is a professor of English and American literature at the
University of ConnecticutThe University of Connecticut is the State of Connecticut's land-grant university. It was founded in 1881 and serves more than 28,000 students on its six campuses, including nearly 8,000 graduate students in multiple programs....
.
http://www.lib.uconn.edu/online/research/speclib/ASC/findaids/Charters_A/MSS19980200.html The two have collaborated together on many projects, particularly their extensive field recording work.
Charters is a
Grammy AwardThe Grammy Awards —or Grammys—are presented annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States for outstanding achievements in the music industry...
winner and his book
The Country Blues was inducted into the
Blues Hall of FameThe Blues Hall of Fame is a listing of people who have significantly contributed to blues music. Started in 1980 by the Blues Foundation, it honors those who have performed, recorded, or documented blues.-2009:*Reverend Gary Davis*Son Seals*Taj Mahal...
in 1991 as one of the "Classics of Blues Literature."
http://www.blues.org/halloffame/inductees.php4?YearId=14 In 2000, Charters and his wife donated the
Samuel & Ann Charters Archive of Blues and Vernacular African American Musical Culture to the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center of the University of Connecticut in
Storrs, ConnecticutStorrs is a census-designated place and part of the town of Mansfield, Connecticut located in eastern Tolland County. The population was 10,996 at the 2000 census...
. The archive contains materials collected during the couple's decades of work documenting and preserving African American music throughout the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa. The archive's materials include more than 2,500 sound recordings, as well as video recordings, photographs, monographs, sheet music, field notes, correspondence, musicians' contracts, and correspondence.
http://www.lib.uconn.edu/about/exhibits/Charters/charters.htmhttp://www.advance.uconn.edu/2000/000911/00091102.htmhttp://www.advance.uconn.edu/2003/030224/03022404.htm
Charters' most recent book,
New Orleans: Playing a Jazz Chorus, is scheduled for release in September 2006.
Books by Samuel Charters
- 1959 - The Country Blues. New York: Rinehart. Reprinted by Da Capo Press, with a new introduction by the author, in 1975.
- 1963 - The Poetry of the Blues. With photos by Ann Charters. New York: Oak Publications.
- 1963 - Jazz New Orleans (1885-1963): An Index to the Negro Musicians of New Orleans. New York: Oak Publications
- 1967 - The Bluesmen. New York: Oak Publications
- 1975 - The Legacy of the Blues: A Glimpse Into the Art and the Lives of Twelve Great Bluesmen: An Informal Study. London: Calder & Boyars.
- 1977 - Sweet As the Showers of Rain. New York: Oak Publications
- 1981 - The Roots of the Blues: An African Search. Boston: M. Boyars.
- 1984 - Jelly Roll Morton's Last Night at the Jungle Inn: An Imaginary Memoir. New York: M. Boyars.
- 1986 - Louisiana Black: A Novel. New York: M. Boyars.
- 1991 - The Blues Makers. (Incorporates The Bluesmen and Sweet As the Showers of Rain) Da Capo.
- 1999 - The Day is So Long and the Wages So Small: Music on a Summer Island. New York: Marion Boyars.
- 2004 - Walking a Blues Road: A Selection of Blues Writing, 1956-2004. New York: Marion Boyars.
- 2006 - New Orleans: Playing a Jazz Chorus. Marion Boyars.
With Leonard Kunstadt
- 1962 - Jazz: A History of the New York Scene. Garden City, New York: Doubleday.
External links
Listening
- 1984 interview with Samuel Charters by Don Swaim
Don Swaim is an American journalist and broadcaster.Born in Kansas, Swaim earned a degree in broadcast journalism from Ohio University and worked as editor, writer, producer, reporter and anchor at WCBS in New York and CBS in Baltimore....
at Wired for BooksWired for Books is an online educational project of the WOUB Center for Public Media at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. The website features author interviews, dramatic audio productions of classic literature, readings of poetry, short stories, lectures, essays, and children's literature.Nearly...