#before elvis

[xennialwarriorprincess]

Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton. Circa 1955. Colourised by me. Find more here.

[afriblaq]

[afriblaq]

[feralgodmothers]

So I’m still reading Before Elvis, and I’m in the section talking about Lucie E. Campbell,

a hugely influential gospel music composer, teacher, and convention organizer, who was pretty much the only female member in her circle holding a higher positioned rank, and I just read a quote from her speaking on her place there that slaps imo:

Her biography attests to the sincerity, capability, and energy that such status required in an age and space not inclined to feminine direction. Campbell didn’t get there by mincing words. She said, “From whatever viewpoint you evaluate a woman, she is the most influential being in the world. She can lead a man to the highest pinnacle of beauty… or to the lowest depths of shame and infamy. Woman was behind the fall of Adam, the first man; behind the fall of Sampson, the strongest man; the fall of Solomon, the wisest man.”

There is such a fine line when talking about the women in the Bible, especially those who brought men to their ruin - that it often gets crossed super aggressively into misogynistic territory, but THIS ^^^, I personally found to be very powerful. Not even in a the-shoe’s-on-the-other-foot kind of way like ‘haha we can ruin you’, but just how frank and blunt it is regarding a woman’s potential power of influence, in both positive and negative ways.

Absolute legend.

[kammartinez]

The Young Dead | Los Angeles Review of Books

Tim Riley considers Preston Lauterbach’s “Before Elvis: The African American Musicians Who Made the King.”