Kennedy’s Blues: African-American Blues & Gospel Songs On JFK
by Guido Van Rijn

Failing to get the audience out of its seat and on its feet

In this, the third in a series that looks at the impact of US presidents on song, author Guido Van Rijn relates John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s 1,000 days in office through the lens of the Afro-American protest singer. It’s a kind of oral history: 89 songs and speeches by the likes of Martin Luther King, Dorothy Love Coates, John Lee Hooker, Ray Charles, Bo Diddley and Hank Ballard are linked together via Rijn’s analysis and artist introductions.

Sadly, he fails to paint a powerful and evocative picture of an incredibly volatile time. When Kennedy took office there was still overt racial segregation (separate washrooms, restaurants, schools) and resistance to civil rights; in 1963 protesters were set upon by dogs and attacked with fire hoses in Birmingham, Alabama. Instead, Rijn’s stuffy, academic tone will have you throwing aside the book and rushing to put the original source on the record player. The subject matter is part of the problem too. Songs inspired by Martin Luther King and Malcolm X (touched upon slightly here), and the civil rights and black power movements would surely have made far more exciting and pertinent topics of study.

ISBN 1578069572

Reviewed by Lois Wilson
<< Back to Issue 348