Samuel Barclay Charters IV (August 1, 1929 – March 18, 2015) was an American music historian, writer, record producer, musician, and poet. He was a widely published author on the subjects of blues and jazz . He also wrote fiction.
31-735: Burse is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: Charlie Burse (1901–1965), African-American blues musician Denise Burse (born 1952), American actress Isaiah Burse (born 1991), American football wide receiver Janell Burse (born 1979), American, women's basketball player Ray Burse (born 1984), American soccer goalkeeper Raymond Burse , college administrator, lawyer and businessman Tony Burse (born 1965), American football player Walter Burse (1898–1970), second president of Suffolk University See also [ edit ] [REDACTED] Look up burse in Wiktionary,
62-508: A short work of fiction, which he described as "a fable"; Things to Do Around Picadilly ; and What Paths, What Journeys: New and Selected Poems . That year he and his wife also established the Sam and Ann Charters Collection of Swedish Art at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois . Charters died at his home in Årsta, Stockholm, Sweden, on March 18, 2015, of myelodysplastic syndrome ,
93-413: A singer and multi-instrumentalist, Burse recorded over 60 commercial sides with Will Shade 's Memphis Jug Band . Burse was described as a "smart mouth" and Roger Brown remarked that he was "boisterous" and "the most irrepressible person I've ever met." This contrasted with Shade, who was businesslike and orderly in managing the band. Yet Burse became Shade's most frequent collaborator and a key member of
124-473: A specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name (s) to the link. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Burse&oldid=995763458 " Category : Surnames Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description is different from Wikidata All set index articles Charlie Burse Charlie Burse (August 25, 1901 – December 20, 1965)
155-628: A type of bone marrow cancer. Charters's first marriage, at the age of 20, ended in divorce. In 1959, he married the writer, editor, Beat generation scholar, photographer, and pianist Ann Charters (b. 1936), whom he met at the University of California, Berkeley during the 1954–55 academic year in a music class; she is a retired professor of English and American literature at the University of Connecticut . The two collaborated on many projects, particularly their extensive field recordings, as in
186-475: A world of band rehearsals, blues records, and a whole consciousness of jazz. . . . The family also played ragtime, also played Debussy, also was involved in hearing Bartok's new music. It was a general musical cultural interest in which jazz was central" Charters first became enamored of blues music in 1937, after hearing Bessie Smith 's version of Jimmy Cox's song, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out". He moved with his family to Sacramento, California , at
217-416: Is unashamedly romantic" ). Charters always thought of blues as containing within it a small and pure strain of folk poetry, something that ran through the lyrics of early artists such as Charley Patton and Blind Willie McTell, but which was lost in the later, more commercialized, blues. "I really got bored with all those damn guitar solos. To me, they all sounded like B.B. King, and what I really wanted to hear
248-534: The Vietnam War and moved with his family to Sweden , establishing a new life there despite not being able to speak the language at first. He divided his time between Sweden (where he had Swedish citizenship, though maintaining his U.S. citizenship) and Connecticut . He helped produce the music of various Swedish musical groups and translated into English the works of the Swedish writer Tomas Tranströmer, who won
279-690: The 1950s, moving back and forth between Berkeley and New Orleans. He served for two years in the United States Army (1951–53) and began to study jazz clarinet with George Lewis . Charters was always interested in politics and had wished to play a role in public life, but because he had run afoul of the House Un-American Activities Committee while in the Army in 1952, he decided that he would have to engage in politics without holding any sort of office. "For me,
310-456: The Barber," one of the first tracks recorded by Sam Phillips at Sun Studios . Memphis nightclub owner Robert Henry credited Burse for inspiring Elvis Presley 's signature "leg shake": "He would watch the coloured singers, understand me, and then he got to doing it the same way as them," Henry said. "He got that shaking, that wiggle, from Charlie Burse, Ukulele Ike we called him, right there at
341-649: The Gray Mule on Beale ." Burse's brother, Robert, performed and recorded on washboard with the Memphis Jug Band and performed on washtub bass with the Will Batts Novelty Band. His sister, Fannie Carter, worked as a burlesque dancer, and her son Robert Carter played guitar with the Memphis Jug Band from at least 1940 on, adding electric guitar on their 1959 session with Alan Lomax. Burse died of heart disease on December 20, 1965, and
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#1732772287042372-459: The Korean War, he received a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1956. In the 1940s and 1950s, though he was mostly immersed in studying and playing jazz, Charters also purchased numerous old recordings of American blues musicians. He eventually amassed a huge and valuable collection and beginning to understand that blues and jazz were connected in
403-761: The Nobel Prize for Literature in 2011. Charters was a Grammy Award winner, and his book The Country Blues was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1991 as one of the "Classics of Blues Literature." In 2000, he and his wife donated the Samuel & Ann Charters Archive of Blues and Vernacular African American Musical Culture to the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center of the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut . The archive contains materials collected during
434-639: The United States and then in the Bahamas in 1958, where he made the first recordings of Joseph Spence ). His 1959 recordings of the Texas bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins proved instrumental in Hopkins's rediscovery. Also in 1959, Charters published his influential book The Country Blues , the first history of blues and an absorbing account of his search for the bluesmen themselves, with a companion album of
465-492: The age of 15. Charters says that he was "playing clarinet, playing jazz steadily all this time; I had my first orchestra when I was thirteen. . . . I had no natural abilities, but I soldiered on, and it was this that directly lead [sic] me to the beginning of the research". He attended high schools in Pittsburgh and California and attended Sacramento City College , graduating in 1949. After completing military service during
496-504: The books as I did—to romanticize the glamor of looking for old blues singers. I was saying, 'Help! This job is really big, and I really need lots of help!' I really exaggerated this, but it worked! My God, I came back from that year in Europe and I found kids doing research in the South. . . . They almost all came to me at some point, they wrote me a letter saying this is what I'm doing". It
527-593: The couple's decades of work documenting and preserving African-American music throughout the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa. The archive's materials include more than 2,500 sound recordings, as well as video recordings, photographs, monographs, sheet music, field notes, correspondence, and musicians' contracts. In 2008, Charters published, A Trumpet Around the Corner: The Story of New Orleans Jazz . In 2014, he published The Harry Bright Dances ,
558-597: The end of their lives, beginning with their rediscovery by Charters. Burse participated in other projects, being photographed with an outfit called the Schlitz Jug Band (named for their sponsor, a beer brewer) in the early 1930s, and recording as Charlie Burse and His Memphis Mudcats in 1939. The Memphis Mudcats updated the traditional jug band lineup, adding drums instead of washboard , bass instead of jug , and saxophone instead of harmonica. He achieved an even more modern, piano-driven sound in 1950 with "Shorty
589-647: The film The Blues (1962). In The Day Is So Long and the Wages So Small , Charters described their musical adventures on Andros Island in the Bahamas in 1958. He had three children: the eldest, Samuel Charters V, was the product of his first marriage and is a marine architect living in New Orleans. The other two, Nora Charters and Mallay Occhiogrosso, reside in New York City. Nora, born in 1973,
620-539: The film reappeared in a package entitled Searching for Secret Heros , created and distributed by Document Records in 2020. Charters's writings have been influential, bringing to light aspects of African-American music and culture that had previously been largely unknown to the general public, as well as publishing poetry and novels. His writings include numerous books on the subjects of blues, jazz, African music , and Bahamian music , as well as liner notes for numerous sound recordings. In 1963 and 1964 Charters managed
651-408: The free dictionary. All pages with titles beginning with Burse All pages with titles containing Burse Corporal (liturgy) , which is required to be stored in a case named a burse Bourse (disambiguation) Bursa Purse (disambiguation) [REDACTED] Surname list This page lists people with the surname Burse . If an internal link intending to refer to
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#1732772287042682-502: The history of black music. In 1950 he boarded a Greyhound bus in Sacramento, California, bound for New Orleans, where he sought jazz clarinet lessons with the great George Lewis. Instead, he found himself searching the streets in Texas for evangelist Blind Willie Johnson, who had recently passed. He returned to New Orleans, Louisiana , where he absorbed the history and culture he had previously only read about; he lived there for most of
713-409: The jug band in subsequent years. Shade and Burse were recorded by blues researchers Samuel Charters in 1956 and Alan Lomax in 1959, and appeared on a Memphis TV special called "Blues Street" in 1958. In 1963, the pair made one of their last recordings, Beale Street Mess-Around . They continued to perform together on street corners or private parties until Burse's death. Their renown revived toward
744-596: The newly formed Prestige Folklore record label. From 1966 to 1970 he worked as a producer for the psychedelic, anti-war band Country Joe and the Fish (all albums except CJ Fish in 1970). He was also affiliated with the European Sonet Records label and in 1970 produced Rock Around the Country , an album by Bill Haley & His Comets , for Sonet. He became disenchanted with American politics during
775-408: The same title to accompany it. During the years of field work in the 1950s that lead to the publication of The Country Blues , Charters always felt overwhelmed with the amount of work required to properly document the music of black Americans and hoped that his writing would encourage others to join him. "I always had the feeling that there were so few of us, and the work so vast. That's why I wrote
806-501: The same tuning. Burse was raised in Sheffield, Alabama by his father—a hotel cook—and mother, along with seven siblings. During the 1920s, he moved to Jackson, where he met his wife, Birdie Crawford, and had three children. He then moved his family to Memphis, Tennessee in 1928. Burse played many musical instruments , including the piano, saxophone and spoons , but was only recorded on guitar, tenor guitar and mandolin . As
837-529: The writing about black music was my way of fighting racism. That's why my work is not academic, that is why it is absolutely nothing but popularization: I wanted people to hear black music, as I said in The Poetry of the Blues . . . . It's where I say, you know, if by introducing music I can have somebody look across the racial divide and see a black face and see this person as a human being—and that's why my work
868-476: Was an American blues musician, best known for his work with the Memphis Jug Band . His nicknames included "Laughing Charlie," "Uke Kid Burse" and "The Ukulele Kid." The "uke" in his nicknames referred to the first instrument he was known for, the tenor banjo, which was commonly called a "ukulele-banjo" in the South. Later photographs show him with a tenor guitar, a similar instrument that he played in
899-557: Was at this point that Charters was asked by Ken Goldstein of the fledgling Bluesville Line of Prestige Records to travel to Memphis to record Furry Lewis, and then Pink Anderson in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Sam recorded a number of other bluesmen during these travels, which in part led to his firing at Prestige. It also led to the creation of "The Blues," the first-ever blues movie shot in the heavily racist American South, shot by Sam and his wife Ann. After disappearing for many years,
930-629: Was buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee . He was survived by his wife Birdie, children Charlie Jr., Lucille and Connie, and seven grandchildren. On May 8, 2019, Mount Zion Memorial Fund unveiled a new headstone for Burse in a ceremony. Samuel Charters Charters was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania , into an upper-middle-class family that was interested in listening to and playing music of all sorts. "I grew up in
961-703: Was great text. . . ." The poetry of the blues, then, Charters thought of as profound human cultural expression that could connect all people who love poetry. Charters had for years been researching the history of jazz, but in the 1950s he also began to study the blues. Noticing that his copy of the bluesman Robert Johnson's recordings were recorded in San Antonio, Charters set out for Texas in 1953 to discover what he could about Robert Johnson and another of his favorite musicians, Blind Willie Johnson. With Charters's search for Robert Johnson began his years of doing field recordings (initially for Folkways Records throughout