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Professor receives award for book on blues research

By Sachiko Miyakawa

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Not many people get to do what they love for a living. Roberta Freund Schwartz does. She turned her passion for blues music into a career.

Schwartz, associate professor of musicology, recently received the 2008 Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research for her book about the transmission of American blues to the United Kingdom in the 1960s. The Association for Recorded Sound Collections awarded her publication with first place in the category of research of recorded blues, rhythm and blues, and soul music.

Paul Laird, professor and division director of musicology, said honors such as this were not awarded frequently.

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Photo by Alex Bonham-Carter

Dr. Roberta Freund-Schwartz, Music Professor at KU, has received the Association of Recorded Sounds Collections Awards for Excellence. Her book titled, "How Britain Got The Blues: Transmission and Reception of American Blues Style to the British Isles," won the yearly award given to books dealing wth recorded sounds in the category of Blues/Soul R&B. Freund-Shwartz is also teaching classes in Jazz and African American music as well as the very popular, "History of Rock and Roll."

“People decided it’s something worth considering,” Laird said. “It’s wonderful.”

She published her award-winning book, “How Britain Got the Blues: Transmission and Reception of the Blues Style in the United Kingdom,” in 2007.

“I’m especially passionate about African-American music and how strongly that has impacted all the music of the world,” she said. “I like its focus on rhythm.”

Schwartz said her interest in the blues began in her teens, tracing back to her favorite band, Led Zeppelin. She listened to American blues artists whom Led Zeppelin referenced, such as Howlin’ Wolf and Robert Johnson.

“Learning about the music that inspired my favorite group, that got me interested first in the urban blues,” Schwartz said. “The blues of the 1950s and 1960s, then, led me back further into the very early history of the blues.”

Chicago and Delta blues style influenced many British invasion rock bands, including The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Her book focused on how those blues records became popular in the United Kingdom and were accepted by young Britons during the 1960s, when the popularity of the genre had declined in the U.S.

Some of her main sources of information were jazz publications printed in the United Kingdom between 1929 and 1970. She said she also interviewed people who were around the music scene in the U.K. in the 1960s. She traveled the U.K. twice to collect information. She said it took her six years to finish the book.

“A lot of this was extremely unsexy,” Schwartz said.

She said her research revealed that the blues had a niche appeal to some in Britain.

“To the British, the blues were emotional in ways to which they were unaccustomed,” she said. “Blues became the music of the non-conformist — people who didn’t fit in, didn’t want to be a typical consumer. Those who felt out of place in rigid British society, felt a certain kinship with the blues.”

Aside from researching, she said that she also enjoyed teaching at the University, where this semester she’s teaching a course about the history of rock and roll.

“I love music and love to share knowledge of music if I can get people to understand it at more depth,” she said.

David Chase, Olathe graduate student, took a music course with Schwartz last year. He said she was passionate about music and could make any kind of music accessible to him.

“She’s a lexicon of accurate information, but not boring,” he said. “If you want to talk about the blues, jazz or music of our generation, she’s the one you talk to.”

Schwartz said her next book would be about the hokum blues, a type of blues that was popular from 1929 to 1937 and recorded primarily in Chicago.

— — Edited by Brieun Scott

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