Contributing to Blues with a Feeling: 

Each week, for the first ten weeks of this course, you are asked to provide a transcription of the lyrics of a blues song and a brief commentary on the lyrics. Each student’s contributions will have the capacity to stimulate and enrich other students. And Blues with a Feeling, the resulting anthology of transcribed and annotated blues songs, will be a fascinating and valuable book once the course is over.

Here are the requirements that you must meet in completing these weekly assignments:

• in format, each assignment should consist of two (and only two) single-spaced typewritten pages: the first page contains the words of the song; the second page consists of two paragraphs of commentary.
• the choice of the song is yours, but with several important restrictions:

1. The lyrics must be your own transcription of what you have heard on a recording, and you must identify the recording.

2. The song you choose cannot be a song already represented by two entries in Blues with a Feeling.

3. Up to February 10, you are to choose a song recorded before 1945.Up to March 17, you are to choose a song recorded between 1945 and 1970. For March 24 and 31, you can choose a song recorded at any time.

4. Your song must by common-sense and prima facie criteria be a blues song.

• the transcription page should represent accurately and lucidly the words of the song. Give the title, with the artist’s name and the songwriter’s name in parentheses beneath it; for instance, the song title might be “’Tain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do,” and beneath the title would be “(Bessie Smith/Porter Grainger).”
• the commentary page should consist of two paragraphs. The first should be factual: give the name of the performer, the songwriter, the musical accompaniment, the place and date of the original recording—and your source or sources for these facts (Dixon and Godrich’s book Blues and Gospel Records, liner notes to a CD, and aural evidence are all sources). You also should specify where you found the song and thus where it is available (for instance, your song might be taken from one of our assigned CDs or from a CD or LP in the Music Library or from a CD you found in the public library). You might wish to justify peculiarities in your transcription in this first paragraph. The second paragraph consists of interpretation: you can provide structural, poetic, dramatic, psychological, social insights; you might try to connect the song to other songs or aspects of the blues tradition; you might allude to ideas discussed in class or found in previous student entries in Blues with a Feeling; you might try to bring to bear ideas found in the assigned reading or in other secondary sources you have found.
• you should submit two copies of each assignment, one on paper to me at the start of class each week, and the other as a post to “Blues with a Feeling” on the course web page. Prepare the web-page post in accordance with the instructions on “Using the Web Page” (which can be found on the home page of the website in addition to being part of this course outline).
• the deadline for contributions is the start of each week’s class. No credit will be given for late submissions, but I will read and comment on them.
• I will return each batch of assignments, with a grade out of 5 and comments on each, in class the following week. The marking scale is as follows: 1 = perfunctory; 2 = inadequate; 3 = good; 4 = excellent; 5 = outstanding. Assignments that are more than two pages long will have a maximum grade of 2 out of 5. These weekly assignments will provide 40% of your term grade; in each case, the student will receive a mark out of 40 that is the total of the grades received on his or her best eight weekly assignments. Note that if you produce good assignments for the first eight weeks, you might well decide not to do the remaining two weekly assignments (and perhaps use the time to work on your term paper).
• Of course, you will be able to read and comment upon other students’ weekly submissions to Nothing But the Blues.