A black American musician of the post-Reconstruction era who performed a wide variety of ballads, dance-tunes, reels and minstrel songs (a repertory overlapping with that of white rural singers) to his own banjo or guitar accompaniment. Songsters were sometimes accompanied by ‘musicianers’, or non-singing string players. By generally favouring the guitar instead of the earlier banjo and fiddle, the second generation of songsters stands as a link between the older song tradition and the Blues, §2. Some songsters were recorded, among the oldest being Henry Thomas (1874–c1950) of Texas, whose John Henry (1927, Voc.), sung and played on both guitar and reed pipes, was one of the first recorded versions of this earliest of black ballads. Of the same generation was the Memphis blacksmith Frank Stokes from Tutwiler, Mississippi, whose You shall (1927, Para.) may date from before the Civil War. He recorded with Dan Sain (or Sane), an expert guitarist, and as the Beale Street Sheiks they made many recordings, including the old minstrel song Chicken, you can roost behind the moon (1927, Para.). Younger than Stokes, Jim Jackson from Hernando, Mississippi, played the guitar simply but was extremely popular with such songs as He’s in the jailhouse now (1928, Voc.) and Traveling Man (1928, Vic.). Such pieces were in the repertory of every songster, and the tradition was extremely widespread: Papa Charlie Jackson, who recorded bowdlerized versions of the more earthy songs of the black tradition, including Shave ’em dry (1925, Para.), came from New Orleans, whereas the high-voiced, instrumentally brilliant Luke Jordan came from North Carolina; his Pick poor robin clean (1927, Vic.) was outstanding. The great breadth of the songsters’ repertory is indicated by the recordings of Mance Lipscomb and Mississippi John Hurt, and by Leadbelly, who could recall some 500 songs. Lipscomb was not recorded until 1960 and Bill Williams (1897–1975) from Virginia not until 1970; their isolation confirmed the survival of this tradition in the rural South.
D. Scarborough: On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs (Cambridge, MA, 1925)
H.W. Odum and G.B. Johnson: Negro Workaday Songs (Chapel Hill, NC, 1926/R)
S. Calt: disc notes, Bill Williams, Blue Goose 2004 (1970)
M. McCormick: disc notes, Henry Thomas, Ragtime Texas, Herwin 209, (1974)
P. Oliver: Songsters and Saints: Vocal Traditions on Race Records (Cambridge, 1984)
PAUL OLIVER