‘have a little talk’: listening to the b-side of history

Abstract

forgotten recordings – such as ‘have a little talk with jesus’, the 1952 sister rosetta tharpe–red foley duet documented in this essay – may reveal a more complex account of popular music history than that which can be compiled from recordings that are remembered and passed on. released as the b-side of a red foley and the sunshine boys 45, ‘have a little talk’ is the product of a then-unprecedented collaboration in nashville of a black woman and a white man, people who couldn't have broken bread in a restaurant in that city at the time. yet ‘have a little talk’ is neither a transcendent record nor the record of a transcendent moment. rather, it attests to the multifaceted story-beneath-the-story of the links between country and gospel artists at a time when the former was consolidating its racial identity as ‘white’ and when major labels like decca faced increasing threats from independents putting out rhythm-and-blues. this essay attests to the challenges of writing the ‘b-side of history’ in the absence of a traditional (i.e. written or published) archive. through self-conscious storytelling based largely on oral histories, it attempts to reconstruct the foley-tharpe collaboration as a ‘magical moment’ in us popular music.

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