When a young person finds their purpose, and that purpose is music, it can be a magical thing. There’s so much it can teach about the world; there’s so much it can teach about oneself. Whether it’s the deep dives fandom sends us on, exploring the history of an artist or a scene, or it’s the way lyrics and melodies speak to our inner truths, making us make sense of our emotions, music can be an enriching force on life that most of us experience in one way or another.
For McKinley Robinson, the protagonist in Bennett Kelly’s debut novel Sensation Blues, a newfound love of music — specifically his hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi’s chief export, blues music — takes him from being a teenager adrift, living in his overachieving older brother’s shadow, to studying guitar in a cemetery in the middle of the night, obsessively listening to Son House and Muddy Waters, busking on street corners to save for a guitar amp, cutting class to dip his toes in the Memphis scene. Released this fall, the novel follows McKinley’s journey of music-discovery and self-discovery in the birthplace of the blues.
A journalist based in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Kelly’s vivid prose places us solidly in McKinley’s world, one where realizing his talent becomes his everything, where parents just don’t understand (but one supportive uncle does), and where music made three-quarters of a century before he was born might not provide all the answers, but that’s okay when the questions they’re igniting in his head are this exciting. I caught up with Kelly over email to talk about the book; read our conversation below, and hear more this Saturday, November 16th from 2 to 5 p.m., when he appears at Repo Records at 506 South Street for a book signing event; more information here.
John Vettese: There’s a timeless aspect to the story that I think is very effective. Yes, some of the finer details set it firmly in present day — iPads, cell phones, Kingfish, Paul’s NCAA Football 2014 game on PlayStation — but beyond that, I read it feeling like this story could have taken place in the 90s. Or 70s. Or even the 50s. How did you arrive at that approach?
Bennett Kelly: It happened in a couple ways. One, it seems blues as an artform is just set back in time. A question I’m often asked by prospective readers is if the story takes place in the 1930s or 40s. You could also argue that blues hasn’t been a big part of the popular-music psyche since the 60s, despite it chugging along all the while. So the blues material itself suggests being set back from modern times. Another interesting thing about where it’s set, Clarksdale, Mississippi, is that the physical architecture hasn’t changed much since then, which was pointed out to me during a visit. It’s a time-out-of-place city itself. Then, being somewhat of a Luddite myself, I naturally kept the modern trinkets off to the side for the story. I even have McKinley rewinding cassette tapes in his boombox instead of MP3s. That felt more interesting and practical to me for what they were doing. Things like using a soda can to amplify a harmonica, or the wood blocks to stomp, come from blues history. So it is a modern story, but based on older music, and then just by personal taste, I tended to shy away from the 21st century’s bright lights. And so when some of those modern trinkets do show up in the story, they feel almost intrusive in a playful way. Snapping it back to the present. It’s just kind of fun to bend a fictional world to my whims.
JV: Your journalistic background fed into McKinley’s character development; in the acknowledgements at the book’s beginning you say that interviews on and off the record over the years informed the book. Would you say McKinley’s journey is a composite of real-life things musicians (blues and otherwise) go through?
BK: Yes, certainly. I only took guitar lessons in 7th and 8th grade, so I’m pretty elementary myself. Like McKinley at the start, I’ve got the “Purple Haze” riff down and not a whole lot else. But I’ve been able to interview dozens of musicians in the past few years for the publications I write for, and I draw character inspiration from those musicians and also from biographies and memoirs I read. That all plays into the different musical characters in the book, not just McKinley. And whether or not it’s tangibly in the story, it’s in my head.
Also, I’ll give a shout out to the New Brunswick (NJ) music scene, where I’ve sourced most of my journalism. There I get to interview the present scene but also musicians that made their names in the 70s, 80s and 90s too. So I get perspectives from all phases of the musical journey. New Brunswick is a unique scene because it’s its own little bubble in a sense. Different over generations, but contained geographically and always replenishing in spirit from the churn of collegians and twenty-somethings. And, if anyone reads just the first few pages of Sensation Blues, they might figure out what’s coming next in the series.
Sensation Blues cover art by Brian Langan (@brian_langan
JV: Can you talk about the influence of Paul Robeson and the decision to, as you put it, split him into two characters? Certainly it’s in the name, but I’m picking up more of him in Paul, McKinley’s brother — the athlete and singer who aspires to a career in theatre. Was this a way to highlight a lesser-known aspect of Robeson’s life?
BK: A request to “look up” Paul Robeson (born 1898) is in the acknowledgments. He became an important figure in my post-college education while I was living in Princeton, New Jersey. I didn’t know who he was, but there’s a street named for him, the Princeton Arts Council is named for him, and his Princeton birth home is currently being restored into a civic center. There’s also a Paul Robeson House in Philadelphia, and he’s a Rutgers-New Brunswick alum. And once I began researching who he was, then read works by him and about him, he just became one of my personal vaulted public figures. Naming a main character “Paul Robinson” is purposefully on-the-nose, with some attributes and anecdotes incorporated directly from his early life.
When I was conceiving the characters, I quickly realized I couldn’t make all of Paul Robeson’s life into one character, because it’s just too unbelievable and unwieldy. It would be like if LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick, Denzel Washington, Frank Sinatra, Malcolm X and Hermione Granger were all one person. He was all those things – valedictorian, oratory contest champion, All-American multi-sport athlete, law school graduate, globally renowned singer and actor, and a powerful, uncompromising civil rights figure. All up against the backdrop of racial injustice in Princeton and the U.S. throughout his life. So for the book, I gave Robeson’s musical talent to McKinley, and McKinley’s older brother Paul gets the rest, the athleticism, the academics, the theatre. I even based the Robinson family on Paul Robeson’s family, particularly with Pop being a preacher and an older father like Paul Robeson’s actual father. I’m looking forward to digging more into book-Paul throughout the rest of the series. He’s a bit perfect right now, through the eyes of everyone in town.
JV: The topic of race is something that’s extremely present — knowing that blues is a Black American art form, knowing Robeson’s influence on the characterization, knowing who all the artists are who McKinley is learning about — but it doesn’t really take center stage. Why?
BK: I agree with that somewhat. Race is center stage through the promotion of the blues musicians studied and the Robeson connection. When I link it back to my music journalism, it reflects the distance between being news-oriented, having the subject speak for itself, and allowing that for the reader too, versus being editorial, inputting subjectivism. I tend to trade more on the former. Broadly, authenticity was important to me through this process. And some of that meant not overstepping, and not approaching topics with anything but sincerity or humility. Foremost I wanted to present these figures, the blues musicians McKinley gets into, and particularly Paul Robeson, as important, because they are to me. I hope this book exposes more people to Paul Robeson and that others can learn from his life the way I have. He’s been receiving an overdue public restoration in the past couple years which has been exciting. He was basically targeted in the McCarthy-Red Scare era and public opinion of him never quite recovered, in his time and for decades since. So contributing to some more awareness of him through this book is something I’m proud to do. But it’s just a small contribution.