In this exciting new book, Paul Garon -– celebrated author of The Devil's Son-In-Law: Peetie Wheatstraw and His Songs; Blues and the Poetic Spirit; and with Beth Garon, Woman With Guitar: Memphis Minnie's Blues -– tells the story of African American migratory workers and the songs they sang: at work, in boxcars and hobo jungles, in jail, in country roadhouses and urban nightspots. Focused on the years 1910-1940, Garon's narrative and the powerful lyrics of 100-plus songs relate in detail the Black hobo experience with racism and other injustice as well as with jobs as varied as turpentining, track-laying, circus work, lumber, agriculture and mining. Here, too, are fascinating digressions on Black Wobblies, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union organizers, and the hobohemian counterculture. This invaluable study comes with a 25-track CD.
"Paul Garon has produced yet another masterpiece of cultural history. The stories and songs he gathers together in this remarkable book disrupt common notions of what we mean by 'freedom' when it comes to black folk. Hoboes represented a significant segment of the black working class, and their constant movements were both evidence of constraints and acts of freedom. And as he so eloquently demonstrates, the men and women who took to the road and their bards have much to teach us about America's 'bottom rail.'"
- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
"The music and the poetry of black workers in motion-hoboing, hitchhiking, timbering, mining, railroading, loving, leaving, fighting back and searching for a new job, a new life and even a new world are brilliantly recorded and explained in this arresting collection."
-David Roediger, author of History Against Misery
"A fascinating book in which Paul Garon has brought together a truly remarkable collection of blues and blues songs, created by African American hoboes and ex-hoboes, which reveals a new dimension of the personal and the experiential nature of the poetic spirit in the blues. The main motivation of the black hobo travelers was to find work, and the author has meticulously researched the nature and conditions of the lumber and turpentine industries, mining, levee-building and other employment that they sought, and about which they also sang. This is not a book solely for blues enthusiasts, for whom it is indispensable, but it is strongly recommended to all who are interested in popular culture, its forms, its expression and meaning."
- Paul Oliver, author of Blues Fell This Morning, The Story of the Blues, etc.
