Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Jordan's recording of “Stone Cold Dead in the Market” was a major R&B and pop hit in 1946. In narrating a woman's murder of her abusive husband from a sympathetic first-person point of view, the recording's depiction of domestic violence raises the question of how it achieved mass popularity in a cultural milieu that discouraged frank discussion of this topic. This article accounts for this popularity by tracing the musical and lyrical changes between the hit recording and its sources, the Caribbean folk ballad Payne dead/Murder in the market and calypso performer Wilmouth Houdini's 1939 adaptation He had it coming.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
639 p, Stunning in its sweep, Americas is the most authoritative history available of contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean. From Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, from Cuba to Trinidad and Tobago, Americas examines the historical, demographic, political, social, cultural, religious, and economic trends in the region. (Google);
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
332 p, Introduction : the contours of modern Caribbean politics / Anthony Payne, Paul Sutton -- Liberal economics versus electoral politics in Jamaica / Anthony Payne -- Democracy and disillusionment in the Dominican Republic / Jan Knippers Black -- The Duvalier dictatorship and its legacy of crisis in Haiti / James Ferguson -- Race, politics, and succession in Trinidad and Guyana / Ralph R. Premdas -- The march of militarization in Suriname / Peter Meel -- Revolution, democracy, and regional integration in the Eastern Caribbean / Tony Thorndike -- The Grenadian revolution in retrospect / Courtney Smith -- Political economy and foreign policy in Puerto Rico / Jorge Heine, Juan M. Garcia-Passalacqua -- The odyssey of revolution in Cuba / H. Michael Erisman -- Domestic policy, the external environment, and the economic crisis in the Caribbean / Ramesh F. Ramsaran -- The offshore Caribbean Anthony P. Maingot -- U.S. intervention, regional security, and militarization in the Caribbean / Paul Sutton.;
Simpson discusses the rise in West Indian literature, especially addressing the increase in critical interest from the rest of the world for the abundance of West Indian short story collections that have appeared within the last two decades. The decades of the 1940s and 1950s are examined as the Golden Age of West Indian short stories, and compared to the single author collections that are now supported through popular sales.;
