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CATHY WURZER: I so enjoyed going through your booklet that came with the CD. It had some wonderful photos. And it told stories of people that I think many Minnesotans probably don't even know about. How did you come across doing something like this?

JUDY HENDERSON: Well, I started with interviews of people that I knew when I was a little girl, growing up in St Paul. And then I went to people that they gave names from. And I called, made telephone calls. I did research, what research I could find. There is some, but not a lot.

And the whole purpose of this project was to make sure that we start to record some of this history that's been missed for so long. The intent of the project is to make sure that the history is recorded and mainly to educate, and inform our public, and let them know that this history is available to them.

CATHY WURZER: What did you learn from doing this project?

JUDY HENDERSON: I learned that we're all connected in some way. The engineer that we hired to do this was also connected to one of the performers in some way. And I didn't learn that until near the end of that recording section. And I couldn't believe the connections that people made from the different acquaintances that people had from years gone by.

CATHY WURZER: Now, you began by talking about church music, gospel music.

JUDY HENDERSON: Yes.

CATHY WURZER: I mentioned in the introduction, we were listening to "Precious Lord", as sung by Janice Ref. Church music, is that the beginning that we should begin talking about here, when we talk about African-American music in Minnesota?

JUDY HENDERSON: I started with the spiritual because the spiritual is the foundation of the music of the United States. It is a classical form of music. Classic, in the sense that it's universal. And I started with that because that is the beginning. I wanted to make sure that we started from the beginning, and get to the present day, and make it like a chronology or an anthropology of music. And I liked the order to start from the beginning and then move to the present.

CATHY WURZER: You also talked about jazz. Jazz is covered in this book. And blues, and we're going to be hearing some blues later on. But you know, I thought it was very interesting. You had a little section about what I would call home music. There's a different term that you used. Can you talk about that? We're going to hear a little snippet of that coming up.

JUDY HENDERSON: Well, this particular project is in a series of music that's been produced by the Minnesota Historical Society. And in this, they try to get to performers who are not well known and the real music that happens every day. And one of the helpers with the project, writers of the project, Phil Nussbaum, with the State Arts Board also, suggested, well, let's put a little home music in there. And I went, home music? OK, let's find the home music. And he said lullabies. And I thought, OK, fine. Let's go find the lullabies.

Well, I asked many ladies. I asked young ladies. That was kind of a mistake because I don't know if we're singing lullabies anymore. So I went to some of the older ladies that I knew. And I asked this one particular lady. And I said, would you, Carey, like to do something for me? And she said, well, sure. And so I found that the older generation above 50 years old maybe in touch with the lullabies of years gone by. And she did this one for us.

[SINGING NON-ENGLISH SONG]

CATHY WURZER: That's wonderful.

[LAUGHTER]

JUDY HENDERSON: It was a fun thing to do.

CATHY WURZER: Is that really a song?

JUDY HENDERSON: It's not really. But they would rock the baby and sing this over and over and over again, until the baby was asleep. Because the baby had been fed, and now it's time to go to sleep. And that was the meaning that she gave to me when I asked her, what do these words mean? And she said, well, it just means we fed the baby, it's time for her to go to sleep. And change the diaper, and now it's time for us to go to sleep.

CATHY WURZER: That's a good example of what you were talking about earlier about recording some of this for posterity's sake. Because you're right, I've never heard, I certainly have never heard this. And it's something that should be recorded so other generations can listen.

JUDY HENDERSON: I asked several people, have you heard of this before? I asked my husband because he's a little older than I am. And I said, have you heard that? He says, I vaguely remember something like that. I went, OK. But I don't think people really paid attention to what the mothers were doing with the babies at that time, I'd say 50 years ago.

CATHY WURZER: If you're just tuning in, by the way, we're talking to Judy Henderson. She's a social studies teacher at Eagan High School. But Judy has written a little booklet called African-American Music in Minnesota from Spirituals to Rap. Now the booklet is enclosed with a CD of different songs. And it looks at the history of African-American music in Minnesota. You go, as I mentioned previously, from gospel, to jazz, to home music. And there's also something called drumming, which again, I have not run up against. Can you talk about this?

JUDY HENDERSON: This selection is African drumming. And we wanted to use the rhythms of Africa, which would bring us full circle. And this is found on the second side of the CD or the second side of the tape. There is a cassette that will be purchased also through bookstores. And the "Rumba de Guinea" is a song that Wallace Hill and Foday Bangura suggested that we use. And I went to the studio to tape this.

He said that in the production of, in the process of putting all of the music together, we suggested that maybe we would put African drumming on this recording at the very end, on the second side, which would bring us full circle. And Foday and Wallace did this particular number for us.

And this type of instrumental playing is, I guess you'd say it's characteristic of what you would hear in, maybe I think this one is done through the Latin American sound, the Caribbean sound in Cuba, or Cuba. And he makes different types of usages of voice as well as instrumental patterns, as they go through the piece. And it's different from what you would hear in Nigeria or Senegal.

CATHY WURZER: Well, let's listen.

[AFRICAN DRUMMING MUSIC PLAYING]

(SINGING NON-ENGLISH LYRICS)

Now that was done by DRUMPAC, also known as the Diverse Rhythms of Universal Musicians Percussion Arts Collective. And they perform out of the Minneapolis Drum Center.

JUDY HENDERSON: Right.

CATHY WURZER: And you're right, this comes full circle to what we were talking about. In the book, Judy, you mentioned that there is a blending of African-American music styles in Minnesota. But how could you explain that, after we've heard from gospel to drumming? How does it all fit in?

JUDY HENDERSON: I guess you could say that the blend comes from borrowing from all the different idioms in the African-American experience. Rap uses the rhyme and the syncopation, the call and response. Jazz does the same thing, borrowing from classical forms of ABA and AB rondo form. So it blends itself into, it takes from other influences of other music throughout the world.

CATHY WURZER: What's the legacy of African-American musicians in Minnesota?

JUDY HENDERSON: It's very, very rich. We have people as early as 1920. Tyla Bert is one of the early jazz musicians who claims he didn't play jazz through improvisation, he played it for music. They had bands as early as the early 1910s. We have Nettie Hirsch Sherman. We have the Pettifords in the '40s. We have our own Irv Williams still. And we have Percy Hughes and Rufus Webster, who is on this recording.

They were wonderful people to talk to and to get this information from. And it was like they were reliving this time all over again. Because I think they had a wonderful time. It was still hard work, but they still enjoyed what they were doing. Because music brought a lot of people together. Whether people didn't know that or not, it did bring a lot of people together.

CATHY WURZER: You know, I noticed, though, you didn't include the music of another famous individual here in the Twin Cities. He used to go by the name of Prince. He now is a different situation with his name. But yeah, is there a reason for that?

JUDY HENDERSON: We didn't include rock on purpose. Because hopefully, on the back burner, we will look forward to a future writing. And I said let's save it. Let's save it.

CATHY WURZER: Now, before we go, we have to talk about, we just barely touched on blues. And the Twin Cities has a real hot blues scene anyway. You have Baby Doo Caston on this CD. We're going to hear from Lazy Bill Lucas. Can you talk just a little bit about that?

JUDY HENDERSON: Lazy Bill, from what I've learned, was a very comical and wonderful person to be with. And he was very relaxed in whatever he did. The engineer that we worked with, Ben James, recorded him several years earlier and said that he was quite the fella. He would come in sometimes to sing, and he would not have his teeth in. And he would sing regardless.

And he'd tell him, now I've changed this piece a little bit. And five years later, Ben may have recorded him again, and the piece hasn't changed at all. It was something to see, interesting to see how people thought their music had changed, but really, it hadn't.

CATHY WURZER: Lazy Bill Lucas, "Going Back to the Country".

[LAZY BILL LUCAS, "GOING BACK TO THE COUNTRY"]

(SINGING) Well, I'm going back to the country, where I got my start. I'm tired of city life, it's too hard. I'm going. I can sell you the car. Well, if I can't live independent, then I'll be like a bum. Well, I'm going back to the country, got my.

Lazy Bill Lucas, he is on African-American Music in Minnesota from Spirituals to Rap. It's a new CD put out by the Minnesota Historical Society Press. Judy Henderson has written the booklet that goes with that CD. Judy is a social studies teacher at Eagan High School. And thanks for being with us.

[LAZY BILL LUCAS, "GOING BACK TO THE COUNTRY"]

(SINGING) I'm tired of city life, it's too hard. I'm going back to the country where I got my start. I'm going. I can sell you the car. And if I can't live independently, well it's like a bum. Pay up the tab, boy.