From Moptops to Longhair

Dear Tim

My own next project is going to be a biography of Professor Longhair. Having spent fifteen years writing about four of the most famous people on earth, I long for a subject about which virtually every prospective reader doesn't already have a set of preconceptions and opinions. Here again I plan to situate the simple narrative of Longhair's life (as well as his rather spectacular posthumous career) in the social and cultural context of New Orleans and the U.S. in the decades after World War Two. On some level, this will be a book about obscurity and influence. A reminder of the fact that, very often, talented, original, and influential artists do not achieve success. (I love the fact that when I meet someone who hasn't heard of Longhair, I can take out my IPod and play them a four-bar fragment of his music, to which they invariably reply: "Oh, that!") And on another level, I am hoping that this book will give me an opportunity to think and write in an unstereotypic manner about what I regard to be one of the great cultural questions of the last hundred and fifty years, namely: "What is this thing that us white people seem to have about black music, black culture, and black sensibility?"

--Jonathan Gould