SOURCE: "Brer Robert: The Bluesman and the African American Trickster Tale Tradition," in Southern Folk-lore, Vol. 48, No. 2, 1991, pp. 141-57.

In the following essay, Siems discusses parallels between African-American folktales and accounts of the lives of famous blues musicians.

Many of the African American musicians who helped to create the blues have left behind colorful tales of their lives and careers. The narratives told by a particular group of mese musicians—male "downhome," or "rural" blues artists—have received a great deal of scholarly attention, primarily because rural artists were thought to be closest to the roots of the blues. Whatever their factual accuracy, me tales told by these men represent artistic oral performances which are at times as entertaining as the bluesmen's music. And as oral performances, the stories of the bluesmen draw heavily on themes and character traits which have existed for centuries in African American narrative...