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Living Blues: Ever Living, Ever Growing iving Blues, a magazine that has long served as a forum for the voices of blues artists, has a story of its own to tell. An exhibition chronicling the Center-published magazine's 30-year history is currently on display in the Barnard Observatory Gallery through November 22. Founded in Chicago in 1970 by a group of young blues enthusiasts, Living
Blues has witnessed many dramatic changes over the past three decades, including a move from Chicago to Mississippi following its acquisition by the Center in 1983. While the face of the magazine has changed greatly over the years, its initial commitment to Susan Lloyd McClamroch, curator, consults with Scott Barretta, editor of Living Blues, about the exhidocumenting African American bition celebrating the magazine's 30th anniversary. blues as a living tradition has Kimbrough's juke joint in Chulahoma, Mississippi, by the noted remained steadfast. blues photographer Bill Steber. Junior's was a popular Sunday Just as Living Blues views the blues as an ever-evolving art form, night excursion for Oxford residents until it burned to the curator Susan Lloyd McClamroch sees the exhibition as a paean ground last April, and the essay provides many local residents to an ever-evolving magazine. McClamroch, a former gallery a visual tour of their shared past. owner who has curated other Center exhibits, views the magazine While much of the exhibition documents the look and general as "not just about documenting the blues, but an agent in the life direction of the magazine, several other features focus on topics of the blues." In constructing the exhibition, she pored over 153 covered by the magazine over the years. One is blues festivals, and issues of the magazine to find the articles and photos that she felt another is the magazine's long-time coverage of blues legend best illustrated the magazine's accomplishments over the years, Robert Johnson. The enigmatic bluesman gained widespread popand with this "graphic evidence" let the magazine speak for itself. The exhibition follows Living Blues from Chicago to Mississippi, spotlighting the magazine's coverage of all facets of blues music-acoustic, electric, country, urban-while chronicling the life of the magazine. The structure of the exhibitionthree display stations organized by decade-highlights the changing style of the magazine from its early typewritten and largely textual features to the highly charged, colorful layouts of the last decade. Illustrating inclusion, in its entirety,
this change most dramatically is the of a recent photo essay of Junior
ularity with the release of his complete recordings in the early 1990s, but Living Blues has long served as platform for cutting edge research on the bluesman. One of the most interesting parts of this exhibition is a police sketch artist's rendering of Johnson, solicited by the magazine prior to the discovery of photographs of Johnson. The breadth of the magazine, indeed blues music, is suggested by the juxtaposition of photos of artists as diverse as the provocative soul-blues performer Bobby Rush and the Reverend Dwight (continued on page 3)