#samuel charters

[theshatterednotes]

American poet and music historian Samuel Charters together with musician Sleepy John Estes

[crowandkey-blog]

You sought a bloom and found fruit. You sought a spring and found sea. You sought a woman and found a soul-- you are disappointed.

Edith Södergran, from her poem “The Day Cools,” translated from the Swedish and the German by Samuel Charters (x)

[theunread]

Who can tell me more about the distinction between översättning and tolkning? This from the gorgeous Tavern Books edition of Tranströmer's Baltics, the introduction written by translator Samuel Charters.

[martincolyer]

Five Things Extra: thinking about Sam Charters and a few nice things

Five Things Extra: Sam Charters

I woke up at 5am on the day we were to go to Uppsala to meet Annie, who was going to read some of Sam’s poetry at an evening performance at the English Bookshop, during Uppsala’s yearly Culture Night. Annie had asked me to say something about collaborating with Sam on a book of poems and photographs that we had published near the end of his life.

 I awoke with thoughts going around my head of…

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[myfirstchristmasthemovie-blog1]

Samuel Charters, whose books and field research helped detonate the blues and folk music revival of the 1960s and ’70s, died of myelodysplastic syndrome on  March 18 at the age of 85  [source]

[thebluesmailing]

 LIGHTNIN' HOPKINS AND JEFFERSON

"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 Buffalo, Texas. Hopkins began accompanying Blind Lemon Jefferson on guitar in informal church gatherings. Jefferson supposedly never let anyone play with him except for young Hopkins, who learned much from and was influenced greatly by Blind Lemon Jefferson thanks to these gatherings." Wikipedia

 “He had a crowd of people around him and I was standing there looking at him play and I just went to playing [on] my guitar just what he was playing. So he say, ‘Who’s that playing that guitar?’ So they say, ‘Oh, that’s just a little boy here knocking on the guitar.’ He says, ‘No, he’s playing that guitar,’ says, ‘Where he at? Come here, boy.’

And I went on over there where he was and he’s feeling for me and I was so low he reached down and says, ‘This here is what was picking that guitar?’ They say, ‘Yeah.’ So he said, ‘Do that again.’ So I did the little note again, the same one he done. He said, ‘Well, that’s my note,’ says, ‘that’s the same thing. Boy, you keep that up you gonna be a good guitar player.’ So he went on and commenced to playing; so I went on to playing with him. I was so little and low the peoples couldn’t see me and we was standing by a truck. They put me up on top of the truck and  Blind Lemon was standing down by the truck. And me and him, man, we carried it on...” - Lightnin’ Hopkins quoted in The Bluesmen by Samuel Charters, Oak Publications, New York, 1967. 

[dinosaurdiscs]

Edit: I’ve removed the video at Mr. Charters’ request. The film is scheduled to be reissued by the Document Records label in April of next year, after an exhaustive reformatting and recolorization. Apologies to Mr. Charters and Document Records for failing to receive the necessary permissions before posting this, and to my readers who find this and are unable to view the video. I encourage you all to follow Document Records email list or Facebook page for updates about the coming reissue.

Blues historian Samuel B. Charters made a film documentary titled ‘The Blues’ in the summer of 1962. He traveled through St. Louis, Memphis, Louisiana and South Carolina, and recorded J.D. Short, Pink Anderson and his son “Little Pink”, Furry Lewis, Baby Tate, Memphis Willie B. with Gus Cannon, and ‘Sleepy’ John Estes.

The film has not been distributed since a 1972 UMatic cassette tape, although the recordings have been available on the Folkways label. I imagine he never wanted to distribute the film because some of the editing is questionable, but I think it deserves to be seen. If you are or represent a rightsholder for the film, please feel free to contact me if you disagree.

To this end, I’ve uploaded a video to youtube [edit: link removed], and alternately made it available for download [edit: link removed] on my host server. Sam Charters is one of my favorite blues scholars, and this film is no exception. It captures some of the great country blues artists, albeit largely past their prime, in intimate settings, doing what they do best.

If you’re unfamiliar with Charters’ work, his ‘Country Blues' is one of the first serious works of scholarship on the topic, and still one of the best. His collaboration with his wife, photographer and scholar Ann Charters, title 'Blues Faces' is also important and enjoyable. An archive of his research and manuscripts is held at the Thomas J. Dodd research center of the University of Connecticut Libraries.