Kennedy's Blues: African-American Blues and Gospel Songs on JFK

247 Pages·2007·2.72 MB·English

by  Guido van Rijn

KENNEDY’S BLUES

KENNEDY’S
BLUES
AFRICAN-AMERICAN BLUES
AND GOSPEL SONGS ON JFK
GUIDO VAN RIJN
UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI / JACKSON
AMERICAN MADE MUSIC SERIES
Advisory Board
David Evans, General Editor John Edward Hasse
Barry Jean Ancelet Kip Lornell
Edward A. Berlin Frank McArthur
Joyce J. Bolden Bill Malone
Rob Bowman Eddie S. Meadows
Susan C. Cook Manuel H. Peña
Curtis Ellison David Sanjek
William Ferris Wayne D. Shirley
Michael Harris Robert Walser
www.upress.state.ms.us
The University Press of Mississippi is a member of
the Association of American University Presses.
Copyright © 2007 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Frontis: Detail of “With NAACP leaders,” 12 July 1961. Photograph by
Robert Knudsen, courtesy the John F. Kennedy Presidential
Library and Museum, Boston. (KN-18353)
First Edition 2007
(cid:1)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rijn, Guido van, 1950–
Kennedy’s blues : African-American blues and gospel songs on JFK / Guido van
Rijn. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (American made music series)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-57806-957-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-57806-957-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Blues (Music)—History and
criticism. 2. Gospel music—History and criticism. 3. African Americans—
Music—Political aspects. 4. Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917–1963—
Songs and music—History and criticism. I. Title.
ML3521.R54 2007
782.421643’1599—dc22 2007002377
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
FOR MY MOTHER

CONTENTS
Foreword [ ix ]
Acknowledgments [ xix ]
Introduction [ xxi ]
1. JOHN F. KENNEDY, THE MAN AND THE MYTH [ 3 ]
2. JFK SAYS I’VE GOT TO GO [ 19 ]
3. TWISTIN’ OUT IN SPACE [ 47 ]
4. THE WELFARE TURNS ITS BACK ON YOU [ 59 ]
5. MARCH ON, DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING [ 69 ]
6. THE DAY THE WORLD STOOD STILL [ 109 ]
CONCLUSION [ 167 ]
Notes [ 175 ]
Bibliography [ 193 ]
Song Index [ 201 ]
Artist Index [ 205 ]
General Index [ 209 ]

FOREWORD
When Guido van Rijn published his award-winning book Roosevelt’s
Blues in 1997, American historians, blues and gospel scholars, and fans of
the music immediately hailed it as a major achievement. As Paul Oliver
wrote in his appreciative foreword, the strength of van Rijn’s book lay not
only in the fact that he had unearthed a previously unimagined variety
of blues and gospel recordings relating to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the
Great Depression, and World War II, but that he had “undertaken so rig-
orously and sympathetically the formidable task of transcribing and ana-
lyzing the content of large numbers of those records and placing them
so precisely in their historical, social and political contexts.” Thanks to
van Rijn, a once partially hidden transcript of popular black attitudes
toward the Depression, the war, and the president who presided over this
momentous period in U.S. history was restored to the historical record.
In 2004, The Truman and Eisenhower Blues extended van Rijn’s
research into the post–World War II period. While neither Truman nor
Eisenhower could command the almost universal admiration and respect
accorded to FDR, the blues and gospel recordings of the era revealed
black attitudes toward the most pressing issues of the day: the problems
associated with America’s reconversion to a peacetime economy; the awe-
some promise of atomic power and the dreadful specter of atomic anni-
hilation; the perils of the Cold War—and a hot war in Korea; and the
emergence of a mass movement for civil rights in the American South. In
[ ix ]