Since the 1920s, bluesmen have been asked to explain the blues. Many
have done so, and in the process told their own story. ¹ A few outstanding
spokesmen -- Leadbelly, W. C. Handy, Jelly Roll Morton, and Big Bill
Broonzy -- all justifiably remembered for their storytelling as well as for
their songs, provided full autobiographies published in book form. These
essentially collaborative efforts described their lives and their music and
provided a glimpse into the bluesman's world. ²

Since the publication of these pioneering efforts, hundreds of blues
musicians have had their stories published in books, popular magazines,
and specialized blues and jazz journals. ³ We encounter their stories in
print format, but the bluesman's story comes in spoken form and de-
pends on the techniques and conditions of oral expression.

The artist tells his story to someone else in the context of an inter-
view, or less often as part of his onstage act, and his tale reflects the
presence of an audience. The interviewer brings his own set of assump-
tions to the interview and his own reason for being there, just as the
artist has his assumptions and his reason for consenting to tell his story.
Furthermore, both parties are influenced by previous interviews or even a
tradition of the interview with its own unwritten rules regarding appro-
priate questions and answers.

These factors -- the oral format, the interviewer's presence, the art-
ist's goals, and the interview tradition -- conspire to make interviews
rather formalized exchanges between the bluesman and the outside
world. Still, the musician's story is an artistic narrative, the result of the
bluesman's creative effort.

-29-