Customer Reviews:
definitive history of the blues.......2007-08-21
this is a serious history of the blues treating the blues with the same respect & seriousness given jazz, classical and other forms. it is a wonderful book combining interviews with blues legends like muddy waters and howling wolf with in-depth musical and cultural analysis.
for serious blues lovers or the novice looking for a deeper understanding of the music's roots, the culture that spawned and the incredible musicians who created it.
Bitter Lemon Revival.......2007-03-21
Hi,my name is Steve Kaplan.I play the keytar behind Big Jack Johnson in the movie DEEP BLUES.I just released a cd called "BITTER LEMON REVIVAL".If you liked the movie call 901-355 7210 and order my cd for 12$ plus shipping and handling tot 13.95$ Order today!!! They could pull this ad anytime! Sincerely
Lemon Bitter Kaplan
Great blues DVD.......2007-02-21
For someone wanting to get a feel for some relatively modern Delta blues this is a great documentary. Lots of gritty feel to the setting and characters here. The tracks were recorded with great attention to quality. Of especial interest is the portion about RL Burnside as this was his re-discovery! His music career really took off from here! Also, Jesse Mae Hemphill's solo performance is absolute magic, very powerful.
If you like the blues you can't go wrong with this DVD.
Historical Value to Blues genre.......2007-01-04
Deep Blues was refered to me by an artist who amazed me with his talent one night at the Aligator Soul in Everett WA. Ryan played delta blues very well, I saw several folks in the crowd stop eating their meal to listen to this man in his 30's belting out the blues on his dobro. After his show I talked with him asking him how he came to know delta blues so well. He said he had watched "you see me laughing" and many video's on blues but desired to see "Deep Blues". As a blues artist and fan I had to have this video so I bought it, I have watched it several times over and will continue to draw from the rich history of where it started, learning from many of the artists the main stream has not heard of, simply put Deep Blues is a must for blues fans and aspiring artists alike it will help you keep the blues alive.
If you love the blues, you'll love this.......2006-11-03
This is a great documentary of true Mississippi Delta Blues. I've been searching for this since it was first released in 1992 and finally found it on Amazon. I've had the soundtrack since 1992 and still consider it one of my all-time best blues recordings. If you love the blues, you'll love this and I promise you won't be disappointed.
Customer Reviews:
Blues Traveling.......2007-05-09
Excellent! We bought this book to take a tour of the blues through Missippi. We followed many of the suggested spots and even met some of the people mentioned in the book. Use it as the definitive tour guide to the blues.
Lots of Great information..........2007-03-23
Some of the directions could have been better, like Robert Johnson's grave site. It wasn't really clear how to get to downtown Greenwood, MS, but we eventually got there!
Lots of good information. Stumbled upon MS John Hurt's grave while trying to find Robert Johnsons, so that was a plus.
All blues lovers and enthusiasts should get this book before your journey. Lots of good information about the area, and details about the musicians you want to know more about!
Delta Bible.......2006-02-19
This book is all you need to plan a trip to the true Delta blues spots. book is set up perfectly for a road trip and very honest and detailed. Top Notch!
Great Book.......2005-08-17
If you are going south on a blues trip, you need this book. It is full of great info and directions to many, many graet sites of the blues. Highly recommended.
A review by a 2004 Blues Traveler.......2004-06-30
I highly recommend this book for anybody considering a Blues trip into the Delta. It is the best available resource on the market. Looking at its competitors, they all miss the mark due to either outdated, incomplete, or just plain incorrect information.
I have just completed a Delta blues trip and read the book after I returned. Having actually done such a trip provides a very authoritative vantage point from which to judge any such work.
Our trip was preceded by 6 months of online research into every aspect of the Delta and surrounding areas. Over 100 pages of information were accumulated prior to departure. The trip itself covered nearly a 1400 mile loop by car that began and ended in New Orleans. So many of the stops we made along the way ~ Jackson, Ms.; Greenwood, Ms.; Clarksdale, Ms.; Helena, Ark.; Memphis, Tenn.; all the historic gravesites; the prisons and the plantations were all covered in Steve's book. He certainly did his homework. (For goodness sake, he moved there as part of the overall immersion process, LOL!)
We met Steve in Helena while he was lecturing and playing at the `Blues on Main Street' exhibit opening at the Delta Cultural Center on Cherry St. He is proficient at both. It was there we bought the book that got carried home and subsequently read after the fact.
If you don't have 6 months to do your own research, just buy his book and read it in a week. He covers everything. Then take it with you and use it as a guide on the road.
(p.s. Plan your trip so it somehow involves the WC Handy awards in Memphis in late April, as well as the Beale Street Music Festival that follows that weekend).
Book Description
Transcriptions in notation and tablature plus the original recordings of classic blues by Mississippi John Hurt. Titles include: Shake That Thing * Casey Jones * Got the Blues, Can't Be Satisfied * Nobody's Dirty Business * Avalon Blues * See See Rider * Stack O'Lee Blues. Original recordings included on the CDs.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent way to learn John Hurt's style.......2005-10-12
I was interested in learning the guitar style of Mississippi John Hurt after checking out one of his CDs (Satisfied Blues)from the library. The CD did not come out of my CD player for over a month, and I felt driven to learn his style. This book was extremely useful in helping me learn this style. I have had the book about 4 months and can play about half the songs. The learning process involves following the tab and listening to the CDs over and over. The first song I attempted to learn (Spikedriver's Blues)took some time and a lot of patience. You have to learn to play the alternating base while putting in the melody lines. Now that I have practiced his style for four months, many of the other songs are coming much easier. The book includes the lyrics, so that after learning the song, one can practice singing over the guitar. I have been playing guitar 17 years, and haven't found a particular style that sucked me in so much. The CDs that accompany the book are excellent as well, and include some songs which I haven't found on many of his popular recordings. The songs are excellent. I actually practice more guitar each day, because of this style and this book. I bought an instructional DVD for Mississippi John Hurt as well, but use this book far more often.
great instruction.......2005-07-21
this is a great cd/book combination to learn some wonderful blues tunes. the book is well written and the tablature is very easy to follow. the music isn't easy to play, but it's very well written and anyone who puts their mind to it will be playing some of john hurt's great tunes. the best part of the combination is the cd's. two cd's covering each tune in the book and all done by john hurt himself. it's a great way to learn or just listen. highly recommended.
Bringin' it on home.......2003-07-04
When a guitar player hears Mississippi John Hurt's playing athey are generally struck by the simple beauty of it. To master the Hurt style is quite complex, but this book with its combined CD's (which feature MJH himself!) offer a good roadmap for unlocking the style of this master. Definitely not for the beginner, but one great feature is the way the tablature is presented. It is large and easy to read. To me, this makes a world of difference when attempting to learn a new piece using tablature.
Great fingerstyle blues.......2002-11-13
I've had this book for three years or so. Lately, I've switched from playing mostly acoustic fingerstyle to electric blues, but I still like to get out the acoustic and this book from time to time. It has a bunch of Hurt's best songs, and the skill range is from fairly easy to quite difficult.
Keep in mind that you won't find complete tabs for all of the songs. Sometimes, you get just the 12-bar pattern for the song. Learning the breaks and extras will be up to you. But if you're a fingerstyle player with at least a little experience under your belt, Hurt's songs are a great way to build up your chops.
Not to mention that the book includes two CD's full of Hurt performing his music. If you like his music, then the purchase price is a good deal just for the CDs! The book also has an essay by the author who found Hurt living in poverty and obscurity, and brought him to New York for the early 60s folk-blues revival. And there are some great pictures in the book.
Please keep in mind that if you're a raw beginner at fingerstyle guitar when you get this book (as I was), even the easiest of the songs will seem impossibly difficult at first. The book simply contains tab. It has zero information on how to play the songs; just the tabs. If you're a raw beginner, and you're determined to learn to play Hurt's music, I suggest getting the book, and bringing it to a good teacher. That's what I should have done!
Amazon.com
Co-founder--with folklorist father John A. Lomax--of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress, Alan Lomax traveled the South "from the Brazos bottoms of Texas to the tidewater country of Virginia" in search of the wellspring of American blues. Previously the author of Mister Jelly Roll, Lomax stalks the ghosts of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Big Bill Broonzy and Charlie Patton, among many other blues pioneers. This winner of the 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction is more than just another profile of a musical genre. It's an intimate diary of a purely American art form born of a powerful mix of despair and hope.
Book Description
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, a rollicking memoir of the legendary folklorist's journey into blues country.
The Land Where the Blues Began is Lomax's "singingly well-written cornbread-and-moonshine odyssey" (Kirkus Reviews) across America's musical heartland. Through candid conversations with bluesmen and vivid, firsthand accounts of the landscape where their music was born, Lomax's "discerning reconstructions...give life to a domain most of us can never know...one that summons us with an oddly familiar sensation of reverence and dread" (The New York Times Book Review).
Customer Reviews:
great material, not so great author.......2007-10-09
i put off reading this book for many years, despite my love of early american recorded music, especially blues, because i just can't stand alan lomax.
not that we musicians, musicologists, music-lovers, etc., don't owe him a great debt for documenting music that otherwise would have been lost. we certainly do. but i've been reading about lomax for a long time and he just doesn't seem like he was a pleasant person. he didn't always treat the people he recorded with the greatest amount of dignity; it's known that moe asch, founder of folkways records, was very peeved that lomax pressured lead belly to perform in prison clothes. it's also known that lomax was very selective as to whom he promoted, depending upon how much crap that person was willing to take from him. for example, he put lead belly out there as much as he could because lead belly was grateful to him, while he never even mentions recording the great blind willie mctell (who, in my opinion as a veteran musician, was worlds above lead belly in skill and as a performer/arranger) because mctell was insulted at the paltry sum lomax gave him after the recordings were finished. (mctell had been under the impression that he was recording for a professional record man, and i highly doubt that lomax tried to correct that impression.)
so, when i finally broke down and read this, pretty much all my fears about lomax as a writer came true. i cringed a lot while reading this. for one thing, in my opinion, his constant elegies to the black man hide a latent racism. i mean, he just seems so PROUD of himself that he was a southerner who "got on" with black people. the stereotypes abound, and sometimes he seems to take delight in reflecting them on himself. you'd think that in the '90s he would have thought better of constantly depicting himself eating watermelon and guzzling moonshine, but he doesn't. now, i have nothing against watermelon or moonshine per se, but the way he describes it reminds me of al jolsen at his worst. also, once again as a musician with very eclectic tastes, i am irritated with his constant ax-grinding against modern music. and to lomax, it seems modern music is anything newer than field hollers, spirituals, and charley patton. not only does he denounce white rockers' highjacking of the blues--definitely with justification--but he even devalues early jazz and commercial 78s in general. now, i'm a huge collector of "folk" music: if yazoo, folkways, county, document, jsp, or revenant put it out, i probably have it. i usually find his musical opinions to be narrow, stuffy, and just plain wrong. for example, he casually refers to listening his way through the whole victor and paramount catalogs, and pronounces them repetitive and artificial. well, i've listened to quite a few field recordings of blues, spirituals, and worksongs and i find them VERY repetitive and, when lomax starts asking leading questions, the atmosphere becomes artificial at times as well. in fact, sometimes it's clear to me that the rural artists are just plain putting one over on lomax and he's eating up every bit of it, and moe asch once attested to this as well. i don't devalue the field recordings for this, because, as lomax himself attests to, early rural music was lyrically and musically repetitive in general due the artists' limitations. what made each piece unique was the artist himself, and that shines through as much in the commercial recordings of blind lemon, papa charlie, the hokum boys, etc., as it does in the field recordings of son house, lead belly, young muddy waters, etc. it just seems that lomax is biased against commercial rural music because he doesn't get some abstract feeling from it that he gets from his own field recordings, which is understandable, as he was usually the one who made them. he certainly doesn't give any more technical reason for this. it's his prerogative of course, and i probably wouldn't even blame him for it if he wasn't so condescending.
so why four stars? well, for one thing, this book CAN be charming in a picaresque way, when lomax is not being saccharine or embarrassingly stereotypical. but the main reason is that, underneath all the crap, there are gold mines of historical narrative and anecdotes, and that's always worth the price for me.
Don't heed calumnies of Lomax. His chapters on the Mississippi levee and the great flood of 1927 resonate especially now.......2005-09-01
Land Where The Blues Began is an especially timely read now when the levees have once again broken on the Mississippi river, since a significant part of the book deals with the experiences and perceptions of the levee workers. Lomax also talks about how blues, re-named "rhythm and blues" became the America's national music. The book is a personal memoir, illustrated with transcripts of recorded interviews, not a scholarly tract.
That Alan Lomax didn't acknowledge colleagues, specifically composer John Work is an unscrupulous Swift-Boat-like smear that has lately been perpetrated to hype a recent edition of Coahoma study material.
In LWTBB Lomax wrote: "I have many people to thank for contributions on fieldwork data -- Samuel Adams, John Work, and mainly Lewis Jones, who collaborated on the whole Coahoma County Survey. The Library of Congress Folk Song Archive of which I was then in charge, furnished recording instruments and other equipment, and the records of the songs are now in the Archive. John Faulk and, especially, Elizabeth Harold contributed important interview material. . . [and so on for the rest of the page.] " p. 481
And on p. 496: Much of the sociological material in this chapter was gathered by Lewis Jones and his Fisk University associates, and summed up by him in two unpublished monographs, "The Mississippi Delta" and "An Ecology of Counties," edited by Lewis Jones in the 1940s. These sources, as well as conversations with Jones, are cited and paraphrased here."
There are eighteen references (most highly complementary) to Lewis Jones in Lomax's index, some for entries of multiple pages. The book has numerous complementary references the works of other scholars, as well.
It is lucky that Lomax preserved Work's field recordings in the Library of Congress (don't know if others survived independently) and kept a copy Work's and Jones's unpublished manuscript "stuffed" in a file in his open-to-the public archives, because the material that Work kept at home was lost after his death.
"Stuffed" in the files of the LOC are letters from Work in the 1940s requesting Botkin to send him copies of his Coahoma essay because he has lost them, and a reply from Botkin that he had done so "along with a couple of mimeographed copies."
In 1958 Work wrote the Library again, asking permission to publish his Coahoma material and the Library wrote back saying go ahead, if it was all right with Fisk. More correspondence about the Coahoma study can be viewed on the LOC website.
The copy of Work's essay found in Alan Lomax's archive (not his private papers) was a mimeographed one that the Fisk Librarian said probably went out on interlibrary loan.
According to the New Grove Dictionary of Music, John Work III was indeed a prolific composer of classical music, mostly of choral but also instrumental. He composed 70 arrangements of folk material in which rich textures and use of dynamics added interest to the repetition of the stanza form. His large-scale choral works were not based on folk music. They are strictly diatonic. Work's cantata "The Singers" (text by Longfellow) won a national composers' prize in 1946. Work was also an acknowledged authority on black folk music and published several books on the topic. In the 1950s, he toured Europe conducting the Fisk Jubilee chorus.
As a classical music composer and educator in a school with a mission to "uplift" its pupils, Work had strict standards of what constituted "good" and "bad" folk performance. He prized through-composed dynamic variation, "correct" diatonic intonation (no expressive shifts of half or quarter tones), and felt that songs should always end on the tonic -- all essentially bel canto rather than folk criteria.
Lomax himself tells us that he decided to bypass conventional musical notation altogether and instead spent years developing descriptive parameters he called Cantometrics.
Useful only if you read Lost Delta Found, in part fiction, not scholarship.......2005-08-27
The Lomaxes had a major impact in producing the perceptions of folk music and traditions in this country which are dominant. They were pioneers in the collection and publication (for their own profit copyrighting folks songs that their informants taught them in their own names)of folk music. They also had a lot to do with the promotion of urban intellectuals who claimed to play folk music like Pete Seeger and players of various levels of contact with folk tradition who became involved with them like Leadbelly and Woodie Guthrie.
They were not angels. They were deeply flawed. They tended to find what they wanted to find, and produce what they were looking for. Folklorists I know who have met people the Lomaxes interviewed have reported that the Lomaxes were rude and forceful and sometimes insulting to people they interviewed. For example, they often claimed that as representatives of the government in Washington [They worked for the folklore program of the Library of Congress] people were legally bound to open their doors to them.
The legends and the attitudes produced in this book are comfortable and entertaining, particularly to people who know little but the common sterotypes about Black people, the blues, and the times depicted. However, this book has a lot of untruth in it. The real situation in the time and places depicted can only be understood if we have access to another text, one by Black sociologists and folklorists from Mississippi and Tennessee whose work Lomax hijacked, suppressed, and lost.
The truth and the untruth of this book--still valuable despite Lomax's confusions, fictions, and weaknesses--can only be understood by reading __Lost Delta Found: Rediscovering The Fisk University-Library Of Congress Coahoma County Study, 1941-1942__ by John W. Work, Lewis Wade Jones, Samuel C., Jr. Adams. The editors, blues scholars Robert Gordon and Bruce Nemerov, found the original papers of the two trips to Mississippi that Lomax bases this book on (although fictively he combines them into one trip in the __Land Where the Blues Began__). It is interesting that these papers were "lost" for decades, though they were found by Gordon and Nemerov in the Library of Congress which supposedly lost them and among Lomax's papers after his death.
Gordon and Nemerov point out in their introduction the degree to which Lomax simply took credit for work that Work--the most outstanding African American folklorist of the 20th Century who was also a leading composer and expert of Black religious music and a director of Fisk's Jubilee singers--and the graduate assistants Jones and Adams provided did. They also point out that it was Lomax's pressure and the opportunity to use the portable recording machines Lomax had that led them to set up what was supposed to be a joint study, but was hijacked by Lomax and taken away from the directions the Black scholars wanted.
This book of Lomax's supposed story was published at a time that he claimed the African American scholar's work was lost. Moreover, as my reader review of Lost Delta Found reports, the difference in emphasis from what African American researchers who looked at the communities from the inside is significant.
No doubt, readers whose connection with the blues is superficial will find Lomax's book simply a welcoming bit of the same old stuff. Yet, such readers are in part disabled because their knowledge of the blues is based on the type of fiction, stereotypes, and unrepresentative selection Lomax shows in this book, and is now recognized to have been Alan Lomax's practice throughout his entire career.
Aside from these issues, this book is problematical especially from the point of view of an African American who studies and plays the blues not from outside, but inside the Black nationality.
Lomax keeps trying to to write about how he wants to know what it feels like to be a Black person or compares petty indignities he faced and attempts to say "ahhah, now I know what it is like to be Black." This is something he could never in the slightest degree be able to do.
Of course the logical conclusion is for Lomax to realize that this work should be done by Black folklorists who know how it feels to be a Black person in the South, not by Alan Lomax. Yet, he essentially worked to divert the focus of the project from the topics that African American scholars who knew what it was like to feel black. This book essentially hides the work of Black scholars involved in what was supposed to be a joint project.
Their conclusions were quite different. They had already spent much time in the Delta working on a previous study of Youth in the Delta. The Fisk scholars also had a deep knowledge of the Mississippi Delta since Fisk College supervised and assisted African American school teachers throughout the Delta. Where Lomax sees the blues and the delta issuing from old ways, the Fisk scholars reported on how the Delta had attracted a new, younger, more dynamic population that the rest of the Black Belt South. Where Lomax sees compliance and fear in the face of segregation, the Fisk scholars found a growing militance among the youth.
Lomax's story is an artificially put together fiction manufactured out of his memories, notes, and perhaps wishful thinking 50 years after the fact. It centers on Alan Lomax and not on the people of Mississippi. He combines incidents that took place on a longer trip in 1941 with incidents that occured on a shorter one in 1942. People known to John Work and his team for years are recreated as people that Lomax discovers just walking down the street in Memphis or Clarksdale.
The other thing I get from Lomax is how alien this book reads to me as a Black person. Lomax's approach is that he is always explaining Black culture and Black people to white people, so that reading this book from within the culture, I feel a bit excluded.
While he tries to show the connections between the Delta culture and Africanism, his view of Africa is too general to deal with a large continent. Africa has a lot of countries and different cultures. Africanism can't simply be generalized. To be useful different cultures can be identified or at least discussed. One could say that Lomax's approach might be excused in the 1940s when he made these trips, but this book was written in the 1990s. For example, in _Deep Blues by Bob Palmer_, Palmer speculates that an important factor differentiating musical traditions in the Mississippi Delta from the the Southeast is that much of the Delta's Black population descended from Bantus and not West Africans, something Lomax is unaware of.
Lomax also discounts the point of view of his colleagues from Fisk by claiming educated African Americans don't appreciate the importance of the folk culture that he, Alan Lomax, understands. Of course, this did not prevent Lomax from more or less forcing Work to surrender much of his own recordings to the Library of Congress with little attribution.
Lomax really does not inform the reader that John Work--whom he terms a "composer"--had done extensive research as part of this study and for years before this trip with some of the individuals. As an outsider, Lomax constantly got in the way of collection and did not understand nuances and his team understood. Nemerov and Gordon note that in the interview with Muddy Waters that has been published on the CD of their trip to Stovall Planation, Lomax's cuts off Work who has begun a sensitive and knowing conversation about Muddy's music with comments shut things down.
In fact, Lomax used the open door with white Mississipians that the Library of Congress provided and their posession of a precious portable recording machine to force Work to donate transcripts and recordings from his own work to the Library of Congress. Nor does he mention the special graduate seminar on the material from the research that Work and Charles S. Johnson organized at Fisk between the 1941 and 1942 journeys, a seminar that brought Black and white folklorists and sociologists from all over the country and promised to launch a new day of African American research into Black folklore, had that and so many things not been disrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War.
In fact, Lomax doesn't give an image of himself as a serious, detached scholar, trying to build up data for general scholarly discussion and knowledge. He sounds like the kind of paternalist southern white boy who "knows Black folks," wishes he could be "Black on Saturday night" and who is always looking for moonshine and where Black folks are juking. Of course, this may appeal to many white pseudo blues fans who are basically in the same category.
Work, Jones, and Adams are more concerned with impact on folklore that the real social and economic and cultural changes going on in the Delta had.
To be sure there is a lot of valuable and wonderful information in here. A lot of it is taken from interviews and other work done by the Fisk team and blended in to place it in the fictional sequence Lomax creates in his book to place himself at the center of things. There are some good folkways described, and good contexts for a number of the songs that have previously appeared in other Lomax productions without much backgrounds.
After four decades reading Lomax, I was surprised at some very good prose, although he gets too purple to be accurate. He also tends to quickly leap to comparisons of Black Mississipians and the their culture to the most stereotypical and paternalist images of Africans, images few Africans would find acceptable.
If you are interested in Blues, African American folklore, etc, this is a book to be read, but not without reading the Nemerov and Gordon edition of the Fisk studies. Serious blues studies like Kubrik's _Africa and the Blues_ or any of the work of David Evans are also good.
It is unfortunate that the discourse about Blues falls so strongly in the hands of people who are not Black and see writing about blues largely a discourse between white people where black people are not subjects of their own stories, but objects for interpretation or enjoyment by white people who are assumed the only audience.
This too shall pass.
Begin At the Beginning.......2004-06-19
A critical first step in your Blues education. An excellent read, but may contain more information than the casual Blues fan wants to know. What I would call a "serious" blues text. Along with a detailed search for the source of the blues, there are fascinating portions that illuminate racial divides and prejudices. Check out Lomax's adventures in Memphis, told in first person, for a disturbing portrait of "cracker law enforcement"...seems almost unbelievable...almost.
Skip the Book, Buy the CD Instead.......2004-06-05
Alan Lomax's contributions to American music are enormous. His field recordings and archives are the foundation of the American Songbook. But he's a terrible writer, and this book is practically unreadable. There are some great interviews with Delta singers and musicians, but they're embedded in page after page of Lomax's lousy prose. If you really want to know about this music, skip the book and buy the CD, which is a phenomenal collection of blues, gospel & work songs Lomax recorded in the South in the 1930s and 40s. The music says it all much more authentically and eloquently than Lomax's words can possibly convey. God bless him, but he should have stuck to the tape recorder and thrown his typewriter away.
Product Description
This superb fingerpicking reference book features 101 authentic, traditional blues fingerstyle licks for guitar. The goldmine of licks is divided into the following categories: Four-beat licks; Eight-beat licks; Introductions and turnarounds. The licks are written in both standard notation and guitar tablature, and recorded at a moderate speed on the companion CD. This is not a method book for beginners, but a nice collection of licks for guitarists who have some fingerstyle ability and want to do some exploring. Another GREAT guitar book from Red Dog Music Books.
Average customer rating:
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Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame: Legendary Musicians Whose Art Has Changed the World
Manufacturer: Quail Ridge Press
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ASIN: 1893062201 |
Book Description
Robert Johnson's story presents a fascinating paradox: Why did this genius of the Delta blues excite so little interest when his records were first released in the 1930s? And how did this brilliant but obscure musician come to be hailed long after his death as the most important artist in early blues and a founding father of rock 'n' roll?
Elijah Wald provides the first thorough examination of Johnson's work and makes it the centerpiece for a fresh look at the entire history of the blues. He traces the music's rural folk roots but focuses on its evolution as a hot, hip African-American pop style, placing the great blues stars in their proper place as innovative popular artists during one of the most exciting periods in American music. He then goes on to explore how the image of the blues was reshaped by a world of generally white fans, with very different standards and dreams.
The result is a view of the blues from the inside, based not only on recordings but also on the recollections of the musicians themselves, the African-American press, and original research. Wald presents previously unpublished studies of what people on Delta plantations were actually listening to during the blues era, showing the larger world in which Johnson's music was conceived. What emerges is a new respect and appreciation for the creators of what many consider to be America's deepest and most influential music.
Wald also discusses how later fans formed a new view of the blues as haunting Delta folklore. While trying to separate fantasy from reality, he accepts that neither the simple history nor the romantic legend is the whole story. Each has its own fascinating history, and it is these twin histories that inform this book.
Customer Reviews:
Robert Johnson -- Still not the whole story.......2007-05-07
Escaping The Delta should be one of the first books a blues novice reads as it helps fill out the outline of the music, the role of the delta and the music of Robert Johnson who did escape the delta only to be drawn back to die in its mystery and danger. There was a lot more to say about Robert Johnson and the delta at the time this book was written: very little original oral history research has been done in recent years (with the exception of the recent Howlin' Wolf book), very little extensive research into European blues magazines (the only first person interviews of the classic blues musicians -- few were done in America) has been done because full collections are hard to find (if they exist), and the author failed to interview the only people alive who really knew Robert Johnson (Honeyboy Edwards,Robert Lockwood Jr., and Robert Townsend for example). Thus little new light is shed on Johnson's life, even where he is actually buried (in Little Zion church on the Money Mississippi road outside of Greenwood) and why he is there and not thrown into the river as most bluesmen would have been. With all respect to Mr. Ward who has written an excellent book, I did all of that research in the process of researching the lives of Alex "Rice" Miller (Sonny Boy Williamson II) and Robert Lockwood Jr.. I did have the opportunity to communicate with Ward about his Josh White book (Sonny Boy Williamson II played on his last album). There is more to say on the history of the blues and the delta as well as Robert Johnson.
Not What It Says It Is.......2007-01-12
This volume is a book about something. But its not about Robert Johnson, its not about escaping the Delta, and its hardly about the blues. It is more a rambling chronology of popular music, and the ways in which Blues is nested into that overall context. It is as much or more about musicians other than blues musicians. And when it focuses on "blues musicians", it goes to great and repeated lengths to demonstrate they were not really "Blues" musicians at all. We understand them to be such today, the author labors, because Blues sold. In fact, the author repeats, the "Blues" musicians we have come to revere liked to play, and did play, other kinds of music as much or more than blues, including ragtime, tin pan alley, fife and drum and spirituals. See? They weren't really blues players at all. They were versatile musicians forced into this genre by the music business, many of them preferring to play something other than blues. Huh.
Further, the author posits that latter day (white?) blues musicians are not really playing the blues either. They are acting "as if", affecting musical styles and inflections that are not their own. Sort of make believe blues performing. Imitating the blues musicians of yore, and not authentically expressing themselves in their own right. Despite Fred McDowell's and John Lee Hooker's assertion that "the Blues is a feeling", the author would apparently have us believe that it was only THEIR feeling, not one available to others.
Suffice it to say, the author and I do not share a fundamental view of what the Blues is. Would I buy, read, or reccommend this book. No, no and no. It isn't what it says it is. And what it is is superficial in its depth of understanding of Blues expression, and how and where that happens.
Wonderful!.......2005-12-04
This was a great book and a must-have in any music biography library. It's more than a music biography though. Many of us in this day and age have a mythical idea of who Robert Johnson was, we've all heard the story of how he learned to play guitar by selling his soul to the devil at the crossroads and other such lore, but this book cuts through all that and gets down to the real brass tacks: Robert Johnson was anything but popular in his time, when bands like the Mississippi Sheiks were much more popular.
The historical information in the book is fascinating, it strips away all of our romantic notions about juke joints and mythological bluesmen and shows the real Delta of the early part of this century: gritty, unbelievably impoverished and depressed, dangerous and frightening. Truly the land that begat the blues.
This book is truly excellent.
A Refreshing Insight.......2005-08-24
Elijah Wald's book is outstanding in the sense that he not only gives an insight to the music, but also the the personalities of second-generation bluesmen, with a strong emphasis on Robert Johnson. Mr. Wald has speculated somewhat on what has not been recorded, but much of this is corroborated in one way or the other, mostly based on interviews. The opinions and memories conveyed might have been warped, twisted or recolletions embellished, nevertheless, I strongly believe that this shall stand the test of time and stay as one of the alternatives to the romantic and platonically idealized view of the "bluesman".
I did not read the book as an academic work, but as an in-depth story of Robert Johnson, his predecessors and successors. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Mr. Wald's approach was objective and far from the forced devotion that some hardcore fans of delta blues have shown. As art creates its heroes after they have lived, the concept of the delta bluesman is stereotypically formed in the minds of most people. This is especially emphasized in liner notes, booklets in box sets, and even in some books. Yes, they might have been hard-drinking, womanizing, dangerous people who have shown the delicate side to their personalities in their music and lyrics, but the fact that first and foremost they were entertainers of high calibre is frequently overlooked.
Robert Johnson has only one recorded solo, his lyrics do not have consistency, but John Hammond has selected Johnson for the famed concerts in 1938. The music had already changed by the time the British Blues Explosion took place, but the neo-bluesmen had to find some heroes to identify themselves with. Bluesmen who had died young, hoboed from town to town, drank and smoked excessively and played around with women fitted perfectly with their conception of life, which evolved into sex, drugs and rock'n roll.
I believe that Mr Wald's book is invaluable for uncovering this mystique about the bluesmen, and helping us blues lovers in accepting these people as "people" first.
A Book Above All Others.......2005-04-26
Elijah Wald has put together not only a wonderful testimony to Robert Johnson but has created an excellent introduction to the birth of the blues. After having enjoyed the read, I now have an excellent reference book to all the blues artists (and their songs) that I've known and many he introduced to me for the first time. Elijah's passion for the blues is very apparent and he has enhanced my blues passion all that much more. "Satisfied and tickled too"
Amazon.com
Chasin' That Devil Music has the feel of a documentary about the making of a thrilling motion picture. The main focus is on the Delta blues singers of the early 20th century--artists such as Charley Patton, Tommy Johnson, Son House, and Blind Lemon Jefferson who've achieved near-mythic status in blues circles. In addition, many of the articles gathered in this splendidly illustrated volume capture the process and people involved in tracking long-lost recordings nearly as elusive as the performers who made them. Here, for example, is the story of author/blues scholar Gayle Dean Wardlow's three-year hunt for the death certificate of Robert Johnson, the celebrated Mississippi bluesman and a figure whose legend has grown greater with each year since his much-debated death in 1938. The text here is nearly as raw in spots as the music that sparked it, but, as with those sounds (which can be heard on a terrific CD sampler included with the book), enthusiasts will find Chasin' That Devil Music riveting. --Steven Stolder
Book Description
Chasin' That Devil Music - Searching for the Blues presents the results of extensive research by a blues scholar who has researched the artists on old 78 RPM records to uncover their stories. Includes rare interviews and the actual songs which are on the CD included with each book.
Customer Reviews:
Definte, interesting, scholarship, good CD.......2004-01-21
Whatever you think of Wardlow's own views, this is the kind of definite real scholarship someone who wants to become really knowledgeable about Mississippi blues and its economic and cultural milieu. Despite what various comments are, Wardlow's writing is not overly intellectual, rather it is very factual. It is record collectors and blues lovers like Wardlow in the late 1950s and early 1960s that laid the basis for their being original Delta blues records (and their peers in old time "white" music)to be reissued and who "found" so many of the original blues stars. Wardlow provides a lot of good basic information about the recording practices for the music, and the situations of lots of blues players you may or may not have heard of. These are all articles where he announced his or others work making the discovery. \
One thing to read is his article that clearly illustrates that Robert Johnson never said, thought, or was rumored to have sold his soul to the devil. No one who knew Johnson ever said that. One informant took the story that Tommy Johnson told and told a credulous folk nik "blues expert" this in the 1960s, the rest has become a minor industry.
The CD provided is fun and provides some players most havent heard of. The Western Swing tune about selling the soul to the Devil has beocme part of my performance repertpor!
A Valuable Piece for Blues Fans.......2002-09-20
I agree with Lampic's review in that the author comes across as egocentric while compiling the history of the Mississippi Delta blues, offering some inappropriate and disrespectful comments while interviewing seventy-five-year-old bluesmen. Regardless, the content of this book is very important and valuable to anybody who is as passionate about the music from this era as me.
We are all familiar with Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton, Skip James, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Elmore James, and Son House. These names give us the true definition of Mississippi Delta blues and have now obtained a well-deserved legendary status, becoming subjects of countless music compilations and biographies. But they weren't the only blues singers from the Delta. The author recognizes this and gives us strikingly vivid and detailed accounts of the lives and contributions of the lesser-known bluesmen; namely, Ishmon Bracey, King Solomon Hill, and Tommy Johnson (although Tommy Johnson has recently been a subject of intrest after the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" phenomenon). These men have long been overlooked and their music was shadowed by that of Skip James and Robert Johnson during the blues revival of the 1960s.
One particularly interesting portion in this book is the re-examination of Robert Johnson's death, which has been the subject of many-a-legend. Wardlow rehashes the search for Johnson's death certificate and offers his own ideas, based on his own research and interview sessions, about how Johnson really died.
We also learn the fates of many of the other performers, which is often heartbreaking--these men are my heroes, and it's so sad to learn that many were victims of alcoholism and extreme poverty.
The accompanying CD is an excellent item indeed. Not only do we have audios of Wardlow's interviews, but many previously unreleased (or thought to have been lost) recordings from Skip James, Tommy Johnson, King Solomon Hill, and Ishmon Bracey (among others). What's even more remarkable is that these came from Wardlow's own private collection of blues 78s--I'd love to see this guy's record library!
Wardlow also includes an extremely comprehensive discography for each bluesman, arranged by catalog number for Paramount and Yazoo. This list alone is worth the price of the book--I now have a basis for building my own collection (although I tend to stick to the cheaper and less fragile CD releases, rather than trying to track down the original 78s!)
If you look beyond the writing style and the occasional arrogance, this book is excellent for its historic information and accompanying music collection.
"They forgott,but I know better".......2002-01-29
Am I the only one who noticed that this is not a book about ancient blues masters but a monument to its author? Come on,folks,read between the lines - Wardlow talks to old blues musicians just to add his own (patronising) remarks how they forgott everything and he knows better.The argument about King Solomon Hill is nothing but one big ego-trip,he was frustrated for 18 years because his theory was ridiculed at the time,so now he can point that he was right the whole time.Wardlow never mentioned why he got hooked on blues music in the first place (except that he found that old 78 records were collectors items) but through the whole book (collection of articles) shows his white-boy-turns-blues-knows-it-all attitude,treating blues music with intellectualism typical for someone who collect recording dates and musician's names,just so he can later point that he knows those dates and names better than old musicians who recorded them.True,if its not for Wardlow and people like him,many of these names would be completely forgotten,but I find his writting style annoying and CD is the best thing about the whole book.
The mystique of early rural blues.......2001-08-22
This book IS a reprint of previously published articles, not all of them written by Wardlow (for instance, an interview with Wardlow by other reporters is included), but apparently most of these articles have never appeared in book form. They are fascinating for a reader interested in learning more about how people like Charley Patton and Robert Johnson, long dead, are more celebrated today than would have been imaginable, let alone possible, in their own times. Wardlow was one of the early "investigators" who unearthed obscure recordings and salient information about the musicians who made them. This book is largely an account of that difficult process. Now, when it's relatively easy to hear the complete recorded works of Son House, Blind Willie Johnson, et. al., it's hard to imagine what blues fans had to go through to hear this music 40 years ago. Wardlow's book is a revelation and an inspiration also. The "free" CD is wonderful, too, and worth the price of the book itself.
Blues Masterpiece.......2000-07-04
Gaylon is one of the world's top authorities on pre-war blues and his book is true masterpiece. After collecting for 25 years I still learned a lot from this great book.
Amazon.com
Blues fans have long held up Robert Johnson's small but potent body of work as a slender pillar on which much modern blues and rock rest, and the songs themselves remain astonishing paradigms of the blues' most primordial style, the country blues of the Mississippi Delta. Yet, for decades after his murder in 1938, details of Johnson's life and clues into the genesis of his music consisted of little more than the evocative themes and settings of the songs themselves.
This brief but absorbing meditation on Johnson's life and art, originally published in 1989 in anticipation of the first release of his complete recordings, benefits from the detective work of earlier blues scholars, most notably Mack McCormick, who began piercing the veil surrounding Johnson's life in the '60s. By the '80s, reminiscences from the bluesman's contemporaries, more solid evidence of his shadowy lineage, and even the belated discovery of photographs added more dimension to McCormick's "phantom" Johnson. Yet, possibly by his own design, Robert Johnson remained more outline than flesh, still explained more lucidly in the fevered nightmares and earthy imagery of his songs than by the scattered details of his life.
Guralnick succeeds in conveying the power of Johnson's music and delineating both its origins and, ultimately, singular genius. His debts to delta blues avatars Charley Patton and Tommy Johnson are solidified, yet, more crucially, Guralnick roots Johnson's artistic growth in the specific context of this rural corner of Mississippi, at this particular moment between the world wars. He also frankly addresses the potency of Johnson's myth and an early death that only glorifies the brief, bright arc of his work. No less crucial is Guralnick's ability to convey the dark beauty of the music itself, giving Searching for Robert Johnson a broader sweep as an essential blues primer. --Sam Sutherland
Book Description
Robert Johnson, while probably the most influential of all blues guitarists, is also one of the most obscure. Recognized as an influence on musicians like Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones, Johnson was poisoned by a jealous husband in 1938--at the age of twenty-seven. This untimely death, his supposed bargain with the devil that enabled him to play guitar, and the ferocity and tormented originality of his work have given rise to a legend that has inspired a Hollywood movie and numerous stories. Peter Guralnick's extended essay about the life of the man and the myth, and of the place and time that produced both, illuminates much of the obscurity around Johnson without forfeiting any of the mystery.
Customer Reviews:
worth reading.......2007-01-10
Excellent book. Interesting prospective not only of Robert Johnson, but of his contemporaries.
Vivid description of the blues great.......1999-08-14
The 96 pages of this book are pack full of information about legendary bluesman Robert Johnson. Virtually everything that is known about Mr. Johnson is vividly detailed in this work. Makes for excellent reading.
searching for robert.......1997-01-30
It is to bad that someone so capable of telling a good tale could take a dive with such vivid subject matter at his disposal. It is extremely over priced for such a dismal read. Anyone who has purchased the Box set has read pretty much the same info given in this minute pamplet of wash. We need a vision of this man not a paint by numbers acount of times,places and song verses. Then again If you do not know the tale of johnson then this is the book for you. let me also highly recomend Robert palmers book Deep Blues. Also the finest attempt to give an acurate portrayal of such a god is the book LOVE in VAIN by Alan Greenberg...
Average customer rating:
- A blues historian turned investigator
- Another terrific mystery from Ace Atkins
- Murder Mystery With the Soul of Blues
- Nick Travers is back in "Dirty South" by Ace Atkins
- Atkins is the real deal.
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Dirty South
Ace Atkins
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ASIN: 0060004630
Release Date: 2005-03-29 |
Book Description
A gritty and atmospheric thriller by a talented young writer.
Tulane professor and problem solver Nick Travers is minding his own business when a friend from his college football days asks a favour. Teddy Paris is a record producer and his biggest rap star, a kid from the projects named Alias, needs help. Somebody has ripped off Alias's assets. Always ready to bail out a buddy, Nick dives in, but the closer he gets to unmasking the villain, the more danger he unleashes until his own life is on the line.
Customer Reviews:
A blues historian turned investigator.......2005-01-31
This novel started out well enough, but then seemed to drift between scenes, some of which seemed a little surreal. It took a while to connect the scenes and characters. This is another indestructable character who seems to stick his nose into various hazards and walk away alive.
Nick Travers becomes involved with an old football buddy who is in hock to an evil loanshark. Things are complicated by money missing from a the trust fund set up for a teenage musician. Travers is trying to get the loanshark off his buddy's back, and trying to track down the missing money.
The novel did not hold my interest very well, and I found myself skimming to get to the end. A lot of wheelers and dealers, some of whom get whacked. There seems to be a lot of name dropping, both people and places.
Another terrific mystery from Ace Atkins.......2004-12-12
Many authors incorporate music into their books; fewer can write with the rhythms and poetry of music itself. Ace Atkins proves with Dirty South he is one of the latter.
His latest book reads like a blues song brought to life. Moving to a lush, languid beat, it is a raw but fluid journey through the streets of New Orleans and the often troubled lives of his characters.
Of all the day jobs amateur detectives pursue, Nick Travers has perhaps the coolest of all: blues tracker. A former football player now a college professor, Travers spends his time tracking down the dying legends of the blues and recording their artists' stories as part of an oral history project.
All Nick is trying to do this time is help an old teammate who's in some serious money trouble, but he finds himself up to his ankles in alligators, fighting to save both himself and his friend.
Atkins has increased the energy of his plotting in Dirty South, taking Travers on a thrill ride through the ghettos of the Big Easy to the bayous of rural Louisiana. This is a trip you'll want to take.
Murder Mystery With the Soul of Blues.......2004-10-24
Dirty South starts out with the premise "What would you do if you only had twenty-four hours to save the life of a friend?" That's the rap teaser. Rhythm and blues takes its time, and unlike rap, it sings about real things. As fictional blues legend JoJo says, "Rap doesn't elevate us...Money, money, money. Trashy women. That's not music. Glorifies people being ignorant. Blues is music."
Tell it to fifteen-year-old rapper named Alias, who started life abandoned by his mother, a drug addict and prostitute and got a dose of reality when his friends conned him. When you come from nothing, become a millionaire with a lakefront mansion in your teens, then have respect, women, money, song and fame yanked away from you because of cross-town rivals, you sing the why-me blues.
JoJo and Ace Atkins's hero, Nick Travers, aren't listening. The old man, who sits nightly drinking beer on his porch with his wife Loretta, waxes cautionary about rap: "That music is against God. Makes thugs into heroes, women into things, and money above all."
This is not just a mystery. Atkins makes this novel about rap sound like a 1930's blues song mourning popular culture, yet acknowledging its siren's smile of groups such as Alias that lures children, rappers and the rap culture are elevated into understanding as opposed to glorification. This mystery sings truth to power.
Nick Travers is back in "Dirty South" by Ace Atkins.......2004-10-03
"'Kids will listen to anything these days. Man, when I was a kid, we all wanted to be Muddy Waters. The way he sang about women and whiskey. Made me want to play that ole blues.'"
"'Not much has changed,' I said."
"'Except plenty," he said. "That music is against God. Makes thugs into heroes, women into things, and money above all.'" (Page 119)
Nick Travers's old friend JoJo doesn't think much of rap music. Neither does Nick but that doesn't stop him from helping his friend and ex New Orleans Saints football teammate Teddy Paris. Teddy has a major problem and will be dead within twenty-four hours if Nick doesn't help. Nick has a history of being able to find things and in this fourth novel (Crossroad Blues, Leavin' Trunk Blues, Dark End of the Street) of the series; he may have finally used up all of his luck.
Teddy Paris has a rap star prodigy working for his label, Ninth Ward Records. As the age of 16, the young star goes by the name of ALIAS. While he might be street wise, he was set up and conned out of more than $700,000. With his company already on the edge of financial collapse, Teddy needs that money back to pay off a cross-town rival who wants ALIAS and his money making income for himself. Teddy is trying desperately to keep ALIAS out of his competitors clutches for business and personal reasons and is also trying to stay alive as the rival has threatened death if he doesn't get his money. So, Teddy needs Nick, who has a few ideas to find and recover the missing money.
Nick has done this sort of thing before by tracking down missing royalty money for some of the old blues singers and this is fairly close to doing that. But normally, he hasn't had this kind of deadline and with no one else to help, Nick never thinks twice but jumps into the mess with both feet. There isn't anything he won't do to help his former teammate and his immediate goal is to buy a little time. He starts looking for the players who took the money along with the reluctant ALIAS. Before long, as secrets are exposed, the trail twists and turns in violent and unexpected ways with the hunters becoming the hunted before a final violent confrontation in speedboats out on Lake Pontchartrain.
As always, Ace Atkins spins a dark tale of greed and murder in and around New Orleans and the Deep South. Unlike James Lee Burke who has written about the same areas, Ace Atkins never sways the reader's focus away from the ugliness by pretty prose concerning flowers, the skies above, or the muddy waters. One isn't given a respite in Atkins' books, as once he draws you into the muck and mire of the human soul, he does not let you go before the last dark page.
The world Nick Travers inhabits while rooted firmly in the present constantly reminds one of the past especially in regards to the music of the blues. Throughout the series, the blues has been a constant companion, if not a character into its own right, and that is true in this novel as well. Through well placed snippets of information, the author and his signature character remind the reader that the rap of today, in all its forms, was built on the back of the blues.
While JoJo and his wife Loretta and a few select others make another reappearance, one gets the feeling that this every well might be the final Nick Travers mystery. A story arc branching across four novels is complete, some loose ends are tied off and by the end, Nick has finally dealt with old ghosts that have bothered him throughout the series. If this is the end, it was one heck of a ride and great knowing you, Nick.
Book Facts:
Dirty South
By Ace Atkins
www.authortracker.com
William Morrow
2004
ISBN # 0-06-000462-2
Hardback
Kevin R. Tipple © 2004
Atkins is the real deal........2004-07-15
Since retiring from professional football, former New Orleans Saint Nick Travers has divided his time between teaching blues history at Tulane University, researching an oral history of the blues, and performing favors for friends in trouble, favors which usually place him in grave danger. In this, the fourth book in the series, amateur PI Travers is approached by ex-teammate turned record producer Teddy Paris, and asked to find a con artist who bilked the up and coming young rap star known as ALIAS out of several hundred thousand dollars. Travers proceeds to do what he does best, asking questions that eventually provoke violent responses. His pursuit of the truth leads him to the dark heart of New Orleans, where he witnesses some sad extremes of human behavior from friends and enemies alike.
Reader's reactions to Dirty South may depend on whether they've read previous adventures. For those familiar with the series, the current installment may feel like a holding action, wherein Atkins takes stock and engages in some extended character development, positioning his cast for future stories. For those new to the series, the book might be perceived as a curious hybrid of a Robert B. Parker and a James Burke novel, if only in subject matter and themes. In either case, readers will find themselves in the hands of an accomplished stylist, one whose straightforward, understated prose will transport them from their own milieus to that of modern day New Orleans. They'll also pick up some interesting tidbits about Travers' beloved blues music in the bargain.
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The Search for Robert Johnson
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The Life and Music of Robert Johnson: Can't You Hear the Wind Howl?
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Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues
