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Cotton Pickin' Blues

Blues began with enslaved African peoples' work songs in the cotton fields of the Deep South of America. The Slave Narrative of Mr. Sam Polite, given at 93 years of age, chronicles that life. It was written on St. Helena, a cotton producing Sea Island in the Carolinas, where Mr. Polite was born into slavery. The Sea Island slaves were cut off from the mainland, there were no bridges and they had no boats so the musical traditions were locked ...
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