the Chicago independent label Vee Jay Records and the New York-based major ABC, John Lee Hooker allowed himself a
brief dalliance with ChessRecords, to whom some of his Detroit sides had been leased a dozen or so years earlier. The sole product of this union was one album: The Real Folk
Blues , a title loaded with ambiguities. For a start, Chess released it as a companion volume to a series of albums by three stalwarts of its 1950s electric-downhome roster: Howlin’ Wolf,
Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson. However, the Williamson, Wolf and Waters Real Folk Blues entries were all compilations of previously uncollected singles, whereas Hooker’s album
was derived from sessions recorded specifically for album release. Moreover, the use of the Real Folk Blues title was little more than a marketing device, since the music on the album
consisted entirely of the kind of rocking small-band electric blues which Hooker had recorded between 1955 and 1964 for Vee Jay, Chess’s principal Chicago rival, providing them with hits like
‘Dimples’ and ‘Boom Boom’ during the late ’50s and early ’60s. The Waters, Wolf and Williamson collections had assembled 45s recorded for Chess’s
traditional core clientele – working-class Southern-born blacks, either relocated to the great metropolitan centres or still resident ‘down home’ – and repackaged them for a
newly developing audience: white teenagers whose interest in blues had been piqued by the success of the Rolling Stones and other long-haired, blues-based white acts. Some of these newfound
customers perceived and experienced blues as a revered ancestor of rock and others as a subset of ‘folk music’, but both factions were linked, above all else, by a shared craving for
‘authenticity’, for a more profound set of human values and a higher degree of emotional truth than were available from either the white or black pop mainstreams of the time. And since
this new audience was considerably more affluent than the blue-collar blacks who were the traditional supporters of the blues economy, what they wanted they got.
Their desire for authenticity was partially rooted in a rejection of the conformist social norms of the ’50s. Spearheaded by the ubiquity of television, the explosive expansion of
commoditized mass culturehad threatened the survival of unique ethnic and regional cultures and identities which youthful cultural dissidents deemed valuable and deserving of
preservation. This resistance to the seeming homogenization and blanding-out of once-vital forms of popular expression often manifested itself as a fear of pop; or rather, a fear of the
implications of a new form of linkage between pop’s two central ideas: the people’s voice and the people’s choice. Broadly speaking, folkies attempted to preserve and protect the
former against the remorseless incursions of the latter. They infinitely preferred the art which people made for themselves to the art which they chose to buy once someone else had created it. By
the same token, their combination of nostalgic tastes and progressive politics represented no implicit contradiction; both were cut from the self-same cloth. Their notion of a ‘popular’
idiom was one of and by the people; by contrast, the commodity culture defined it as that which was most obviously and demonstrably for the people: i.e. the one chosen by the largest
possible audience and voted for with the largest number of dollars. The two cultures had spectacularly collided in 1950, when The Weavers had scored a huge hit with a sentimental version of
Leadbelly’s ‘Goodnight Irene’; unfortunately, Leadbelly himself didn’t live to enjoy either the success and the money, or the manifold ironies of their spectacularly belated
arrival. However, since The Weavers’ overtly leftist cultural and political stance was considered unacceptable in the Eisenhower ’50s, their speedy exile to the blacklists left a vacuum
deftly
brief dalliance with ChessRecords, to whom some of his Detroit sides had been leased a dozen or so years earlier. The sole product of this union was one album: The Real Folk
Blues , a title loaded with ambiguities. For a start, Chess released it as a companion volume to a series of albums by three stalwarts of its 1950s electric-downhome roster: Howlin’ Wolf,
Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson. However, the Williamson, Wolf and Waters Real Folk Blues entries were all compilations of previously uncollected singles, whereas Hooker’s album
was derived from sessions recorded specifically for album release. Moreover, the use of the Real Folk Blues title was little more than a marketing device, since the music on the album
consisted entirely of the kind of rocking small-band electric blues which Hooker had recorded between 1955 and 1964 for Vee Jay, Chess’s principal Chicago rival, providing them with hits like
‘Dimples’ and ‘Boom Boom’ during the late ’50s and early ’60s. The Waters, Wolf and Williamson collections had assembled 45s recorded for Chess’s
traditional core clientele – working-class Southern-born blacks, either relocated to the great metropolitan centres or still resident ‘down home’ – and repackaged them for a
newly developing audience: white teenagers whose interest in blues had been piqued by the success of the Rolling Stones and other long-haired, blues-based white acts. Some of these newfound
customers perceived and experienced blues as a revered ancestor of rock and others as a subset of ‘folk music’, but both factions were linked, above all else, by a shared craving for
‘authenticity’, for a more profound set of human values and a higher degree of emotional truth than were available from either the white or black pop mainstreams of the time. And since
this new audience was considerably more affluent than the blue-collar blacks who were the traditional supporters of the blues economy, what they wanted they got.
Their desire for authenticity was partially rooted in a rejection of the conformist social norms of the ’50s. Spearheaded by the ubiquity of television, the explosive expansion of
commoditized mass culturehad threatened the survival of unique ethnic and regional cultures and identities which youthful cultural dissidents deemed valuable and deserving of
preservation. This resistance to the seeming homogenization and blanding-out of once-vital forms of popular expression often manifested itself as a fear of pop; or rather, a fear of the
implications of a new form of linkage between pop’s two central ideas: the people’s voice and the people’s choice. Broadly speaking, folkies attempted to preserve and protect the
former against the remorseless incursions of the latter. They infinitely preferred the art which people made for themselves to the art which they chose to buy once someone else had created it. By
the same token, their combination of nostalgic tastes and progressive politics represented no implicit contradiction; both were cut from the self-same cloth. Their notion of a ‘popular’
idiom was one of and by the people; by contrast, the commodity culture defined it as that which was most obviously and demonstrably for the people: i.e. the one chosen by the largest
possible audience and voted for with the largest number of dollars. The two cultures had spectacularly collided in 1950, when The Weavers had scored a huge hit with a sentimental version of
Leadbelly’s ‘Goodnight Irene’; unfortunately, Leadbelly himself didn’t live to enjoy either the success and the money, or the manifold ironies of their spectacularly belated
arrival. However, since The Weavers’ overtly leftist cultural and political stance was considered unacceptable in the Eisenhower ’50s, their speedy exile to the blacklists left a vacuum
deftly
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