‘Blues in the Trenches’:: John Jacob Niles records African American troops’ songs during the Great War

Hammond, Michael (2018) ‘Blues in the Trenches’:: John Jacob Niles records African American troops’ songs during the Great War. In, Das, Santanu and , Daniel Steinbach (eds.) Cultural Encounters of Great War. Cambridge University Press. (Submitted)

Abstract

This chapter is the first scholarly exploration of the traces of ‘the blues’ as a musical tradition brought to the trenches of the Great War by African-American soldiers. It centres on the work of John Jacob Niles, a ferry pilot for the US Army during the First World War who, during his time in France between April of 1918 to Dec 1919, collected the songs of a number of African American soldiers in the various sectors of the Western Front. The African American soldiers from all parts of the US shared different performance styles and traditions and important cross-pollinations occurred here that foreshadow the country blues recordings of the 1920s and 30s of Charley Patton, Furry Lewis, Bukka White, Geechie Wiley, Ma Rainey, Elvey Thomas, Blind Willie Johnson and notable others. This chapters critical innovation is in its demonstration that this history was filtered through a discourse of the authentic in which Niles and other folk ethnographers of the time were immersed. ‘The blues’ was a hybrid of popular and folk forms and the experience of this music at the front had lasting implications for all who heard it. It laid an important base for the profound impact jazz and blues has had on both US and European popular music and culture to the present day. This chapter contributes significantly both to the history of the Great War by drawing attention to this previously unrecognized aspect of the history of African American troops in the Great War while also filling an important gap in blues and popular music scholarship.

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