Southern Studies Musicians

Beginning with the Spring 2009 issue, Southern Studies master’s student I’Nasah Crockett will highlight various alumni and faculty who sing, play, market, or otherwise have something to do with music. This issue’s installment features one current faculty member and two alums. If you are a Southern Studies alum or a past faculty member (visiting or full-time) and you have musical connections, you should expect to hear from us soon.

Spring has arrived, which means that here in the South music festival season is officially under way. In light of the melody-soaked atmosphere, we took a look at Southern Studies faculty and alumni who are involved both in music making and the music business.

“During the 1990s I was part of a blues duo in New York called Satan and Adam,” says Adam Gussow, associate professor of English and Southern Studies. “We began as a street act but were lucky enough to pick up a record producer and a recording contract in 1991, and also get picked
up by major management. We ended up becoming a mid-level regional/national touring act—weekend warriors who played blues clubs in the Eastern U.S. and did a handful of blues and jazz festivals every summer. After working for tips on the street, it was nice to have some industry muscle behind us!” Gussow is happy to report that Satan and Adam have recently reunited and are proudly self-managed. Additionally, since joining the program in 2002, he has managed to link his interest in music making with his academic interests, from assembling and chairing the Blues Today Symposium (also in 2002), to teaching classes in blues and African American studies. “Both my English and Southern Studies courses reflect my experience as a professional blues musician and my academic interest in Southern music as a whole. I’ve taught graduate and undergraduate courses in the blues literary tradition and what I’ll call the “discourse tradition” of the blues—the languages in which scholars, folklorists, and journalists talk about the music.”

Alumnus Mitch A. Palmer (MA 1999) is a lawyer who juggles being a full-time lawyer with being a member of not one, but two New Orleans–based bands, the Happy Talk Band and the Haunted Hearts. The first, he says, is “more of a modern, roots rock band and the latter being a traditional hillbilly string band complete with upright bass and sans drums. I play guitar, steel guitar, banjo, and piano in both.” Over the past five years or so, both bands have played shows throughout the country and at the famed South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas. He’s also part of an organization called the Mystic Knights of Mau Mau, a nonprofit group in New Orleans that puts on the annual Ponderosa Stomp, an American roots music festival. Palmer says that his time in the Southern Studies program was foundational in shaping his music interests. “I came to Oxford from college in New Jersey looking for immersion in things Southern. I think just being in Mississippi and absorbing the state’s music heritage was important. After Ole Miss, I came to Louisiana and haven’t looked back. The musical education here rivals Mississippi and the learning never ends; Southern Studies, in large part, taught me what to look for and how to use it.”

Another Southern Studies graduate who has made his musical fortunes in New Orleans is Walker Lasiter (MA, 1996). “My first two jobs were in the music industry. I answered an ad in the paper that asked, “Can you sell the blues?” Having interned at Living Blues magazine I was sure I could. It turned out to be an advertising sales position at a blues radio station.” After working in promotions at the famed music venue Tipitina’s for about a year, he landed his current job at the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. “As director of grants I am involved with projects that explore the cultural significance of music through interpretive ‘informances’ such as Louisiana Crossroads, where musical performances are paired with scholarly interviews to create entertainment that is also educational. We also offer documentary film and radio grants, and I ave been able to work closely with public radio stations like WWOZ.” Lasiter, ho while in the program sang with a psychedelic band called Heavy Jelly, says that “Through Southern Studies I learned to appreciate music as a cultural expression. My degree has given me the tools to continue to explore indigenous Southern music both through my job and in my spare time.”

These are just three Southern Studies folks who made their livings at least in part through music. In future issues of the Southern Register, we will highlight world-traveling keyboardist and singer Billy Stevens, the impossible-to-categorize songwriter/mandolinist Dent May, guitarist Warren Black, singer-songwriter Caroline Herring bassist Justin Showah, trumpeter and music teacher Jacques de Marche, singer-songwriter Jimmy Phillips, singer-bassist Susan Bauer Lee, blues performer Steve Cheseborough, roots musician Angela Watkins, and guitarist Jake Fussell.

I’Nasah Crockett