Patrick Joseph O'Connor has been an active blues musician and researcher since the late 1960s. He is a former lecturer in the blues for Wichita State University's Department of Anthropology, and his research has been published in several academic journals.

Of the regional centers for African American blues music, Wichita (in south central Kansas) is not as familiar as Memphis, Houston, or even Kansas City to the northeast, although it was home to a vibrant community of blues performers. That raises the question of the creative, historical, and social context of the city. O'Connor, who is a performer as well as a researcher, fills out the story of the city's blues legacy. His contribution to American musical studies is in recording the experiences of musicians active in the city from the 1920s to the 1960s. O'Connor introduces the transcripts of interviews with the historical an musical contexts of 19th-century migration from Oklahoma to Kansas of African Americans in the quest for freedom and opportunity. The narratives of the musicians take center stage, but O'Connor provides a summative concluding chapter in which he analyzes the patters of life as well as lore apparent in this community of blues performers and their audiences. It opens the door to further analysis of the effects of regional migration and folk-popular influences on African American music nationally.--S. J. Bronner "CHOICE"

...O'Connor's study of our city's blues history offers precious insights into our regional identity.--Jeremiah Taylor "The Shout"

Publisher: University Press of Mississippi

Pub date: 2024-08-30

Length: 282 pages