Today, we are happy to bring you our conversation with Gregg D. Kimball, author of Searching for Jimmie Strother: A Tale of Music, Murder, and Memory
What inspired you to write this book?
I reengaged with playing American traditional music about twenty-five years ago (I got my start as a teenager and young adult, but then life got in the way.) Since then, I’ve increasingly found myself interested in blending my historical work with musical research and performance. You hear so many early musicians on field recordings that make your ears perk up, but there’s almost nothing known about them. When I and my colleagues at the Library of Virginia began to discovered solid sources about James Lee Strother—his pardon file, newspaper accounts, etc.—it felt like there was enough content for a book. Even better, Strother’s life had some dramatic twists and turns that make for a great story!
What did you learn and what are you hoping readers will learn from your book?
Many things! Writing the book reinforced that music is always tied to larger cultural, economic, and political dynamics. You can’t fully understand Strother’s music without a grasp of how ideas about race, disability, and labor profoundly affected his life. I also came to fully appreciate the tangled nature of cultural transmission. We tend to think about it as a linear process—for example, field hollers gave us blues which then birthed rock and roll, and so on. Culture doesn’t work that way. There are always roots and branches—and dead ends as well.
What surprised you the most in the process of writing your book?
I had imagined the book mainly as a musical and cultural study of a forgotten era of Black music with Strother at its center. As I began to write, personal anecdotes and reflections on my musical experiences and my work with traditional musicians started to pop up here and there on the pages. A couple of folks who read the manuscript early on really liked those passages and urged me to go further down that path. I was a bit reluctant because I didn’t want to make myself the center of the story, but I think it works. That’s when the story truly became “Searching for Jimmie Strother.” It also allowed me to pull the curtain back a bit on the process—and sometimes chaos—of research.
What’s your favorite anecdote from your book?
I found a remarkable story about Strother in the Baltimore newspapers. William F. Stone, a Republican Party heavyweight, published a scathing letter denouncing the Baltimore charities and city for preventing Strother from playing on the streets because of his blindness. I was flabbergasted! Why would the city do this? And why would Stone care? It turns out that Strother’s wife was Stone’s cook! This episode revealed a great deal about views of disability and what was considered begging. On a personal note, I spent several days with Blanche Greene Strother’s grandson and his wife. Strother murdered Blanche, and If not for this terrible incident, Strother would never have recorded in prison. Visiting the sites where these events took place with the family was a profound experience.
What’s next?
I thought I had retired last year, but a very persuasive person convinced me to become the senior historian for the Shockoe Institute, a new national organization headquartered in Richmond dedicated to revealing the enduring impact of American slavery. The project brings my career full circle, since my first book on antebellum Richmond explored some of the same themes. In terms of writing, I’d like to explore my own family’s story. There’s a personal element to it, of course, but I’m thinking about it as an exploration of northern New England’s working class: dirt farmers, factories workers, lumbermen, and mariners—my people! Both of my parents were amateur historians and they passed down many stories—both true and apocryphal.