Black and white musicians shared the same repertoire and thought of themselves as 'songsters' rather than 'blues' musicians.

It began soon after the end of slavery and the Reconstruction era in the United States, when African-American musicians became able to travel and play music for a living.

The songster tradition both pre-dated and co-existed with blues music. His publications include a book and LP giving his educational insight into blues, ‘Blues Fell this Morning’ a book containing his interviews from the 1960 American field trip, ‘Conversation with the Blues’ considered to be the first comprehensive history of the genre, ‘The Story of the Blues’ and a book on the vocal traditions on Race Records, ‘Songsters and Saints’.Look up songster in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.Ī 'songster' is a wandering musician, usually but not always African-American, of the type which first appeared in the late 19th century in the southern United States. He died in Oxfordshire in 2017 at the age of 90. In 1978 he came to Oxford Brookes to join the Architecture department, and continued to research and work in both his fields of interest. The resulting interviews and photographs from this trip were included in an exhibition at the American embassy in London, as well as providing research for further books. In 1960 he won a grant from the State Department and received financing from the BBC to go to the United States and record Blues Artists. He grew up in Pinner, North West London and attended Harrow Art School, where he began his lifelong interest in African American music. Paul Oliver ( - 15 August 2017) was born in Nottingham and was a noted historian of both Architecture and African American music. These have been retained as part of the historical record but do not reflect the views of Oxford Brookes University or its staff. Please note that the catalogue includes the titles of published material, some of which contain overtly racist or racially offensive terms. The audio includes field recordings made by Oliver, including the set of interviews with blues artists from his 1960 US field trip recordings of BBC radio programmes presented by him tapes relating to his research on Texas blues (many of them from his collaborator Mack McCormick) and commercial recordings in various formats (78s, 45s, LPs, CDs). The collection includes papers and documents relating to his research and writing - which extended to journalism, lectures and radio scripts in addition to books - as well as a substantial quantity of audio material and photographs. The Paul Oliver Archive of African American Music consists of material collected and accumulated by Paul Oliver ( - 15 August 2017), an eminent architecture and blues scholar who wrote, edited, and contributed to numerous books on blues music.

Songsters and Saints by Paul Oliver