Includes bibliographical references and index.

Adrift on stormy seas -- Richards and Pringle's original Georgia Minstrels and Billy Kersands, 1889-1895 -- The Virginia Jubilee Singers in Bourke, Australia -- African banjo echoes in Appalachia : a conclusion -- War on ragtime and suppression of "ragtime" -- Of the sorrow songs -- The nineteenth-century origins of jazz -- Marshal lullaby -- The scene and the players in New York -- Jelly Roll blues -- William Marion Cook -- Ma Rainey and the traveling minstrels -- Black sacred harp singing from southeast Alabama -- A negro explains "Jazz" -- Paul Robeson, musician -- Conflict and resolution in the life of Thomas Andrew Dorsey -- Fats Waller (comedy tonight) -- "Dean of Afro-American Composers" or "Harlem renaissance man" : the new Negro and the musical poetics of William Grant Still -- Easter Sunday -- Caldonia -- Elder Beck's temple -- T-Bone blues : T-Bone Walker's story in his own words -- The impact of gospel music on the secular music industry -- Singing in the streets of Raleigh, 1963 : some recollections -- Motown calls "the rock & roll kid" -- Respect : 1964-1965 -- Clifton Chenier : "they call me the King" -- The art of the muscle : Miles Davis as American knight and American knave -- Evaluating Ellington -- The P-Funk empire : tear the roof off the sucker -- Hip-hop, Puerto Ricans, and ethnoracial identities in New York -- Daughters of the blues : women, race, and class representation -- Media interventions -- Black artistic invisibility : a Black composer talking 'bout taking care of the souls of Black folks while losing much ground fast -- Stepping out an African heritage -- Rhythm and bullshit? : the slow decline of R&B.