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Title: Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues by Elijah Wald ISBN: 0-06-052423-5 Publisher: Amistad Press Pub. Date: 06 January, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: great book!
Comment: I just finished this book, and I have to say that it is the best history of blues I have ever read. It was full of facts, but written in a really readable style -- sort of like a conversation with someone very knowledgable about the subject, more than a lecture. It also made me think about a lot of the music I love in a whole new way.
I have been listening to Robert Johnson's music for years, and after reading Wald's chapters on his recordings I went back over them again. I can't say I agree with every single one of Wald's comments, but I heard so much that I had never noticed before. It really opened up Johnson's music, and made me understand what he was doing, and how he fit into the bigger picture.
I have to admit that I am not as familiar as I should be with some of the other people the book talks about, like Leroy Carr and Dinah Washington, but this made me want to go out and get their records, and learn more. And I guess that's really the point of any book on music.
Rating: 2
Summary: Long haul to the Crossroads
Comment: When I saw this book, and the cover picture I was so excited. I couldnt wait to read it. I anticipated some insite into Robert Johnson, and the blues generally. Never judge a book by its beautiful cover....
I read the book, cover to cover. I have been an avid blues fan since 1967, still am, and listen to the stuff and play it on my guitar almost every day. I was familiar with 95% of the performers mentioned in the book. I owned the companion CD and have much of the material on other Lps and CD's. This is an area of interest, passion and comfort for me.
I would really like to meet Mr. Wald and play guitar with him-he is clearly knowledgable and stimulated by the genre.
But in a nutshell, this is a LONG READ, which I eventually found TEDIOUS. All of the five star reviews are accurate regarding its content and meaning, and I don't take issue with Mr. Wald's premise. The information on Robert Johnson, which interested me enough to buy this book was not comprehensive-the liner notes from The Complete Recordings of Robert Johnson are more informative. This has ALL THE THRILL OF A TEXTBOOK, with a bit LESS USEFULL information. But, thanks to Mr. Wald for his efforts on a subject not much delved into since the folk anthropology of the late sixties and early seventies.
Rating: 5
Summary: Six stars. A required book to understand Blues & Culture
Comment: Every time I read this book I am emailing, making long distance and local telephones, going to parties, political meetings, music
performances and other gatherings that I would prefer to miss for
a quiet night at home reading and practicing my many instrument. I am calling and talking to, running out to meet with, scholars of the blues and African American music, performers of blues, jazz, and folk music, people who study culture, ideology, race, and class, crusading that they buy this book.
This book follows the reality of the invention of the blues and how it really spread and what it really is. This book tells the truth and not the ignoramus stereotype of the state of blues culture in the world that Robert Johnson, and for that matter, his parents grew up in. This book tells a story the moldy fig people the Johnson met the devil at the crossroads idiots, etc won't recognize, but if you are African American, you will recognize you grandparents and parents and great grands depending on how old you are and how musical the memory is, whether you come from Mississippi or Los Angeles.
This is a serious serious serious book clean and well written, a book that belongs in every home. This book is marketed as a book about Robert Johnson. However, the central thesis of the book is that blues is a creation of a black public that loved and desired the blues and that defined the reality of the blues and then seeks to find this music's history and how the conflict between it and the nature and business of commercial recording transpired, and how this is totally contrary to the folklorists image of the dustry field hand by day, and blues virtuoso of sad existential songs at night.
To the many researchers and divers into our past this book is sourced enough that if you are quick enough you can get to the primary sources he mentions that will help you be in the next generation of rational thinking papers, books, music collections, and discoveries will come from, at least if you share my hope that real scholarship and knowledge can pierce through the garbage oceans of stereotypes and thinking that serves dominant culture and the place of Blacks in its fantasies and nightmares.
For those who are into the blues as practiced by those on the earth as Blues People as Imamu would have said, this brings things wherethey are for you and where they should be.
As I have said in various places, this book is marketed as a
biography of Robert Johnson, but what this actually is is a condensed criticisms of the views of the blues foisted on blues people by the folk and post folk white blues industry, a concise and factual criticism of previous histories of the blues, and a lot of practical learning in a short readable book.
Not only if you are interested in blues, African American music, butif you are interested in the deformities of the culture by dominance in this society, you need to own this book and know what it teaches.
For those who see the blues as being ultimately represented by
isolated nearly African, primitive delta bluesmen, pouring out theirdeep Negroid souls about the existential nature of black suffering and founding the blues, this will show you that you are a complete fool or at least a victim misled by pervayors of ignorance.
Nice job
Click on the about me blurb above my name and then procede to my comments on the complete Robert Johnson set to see description of the realities of Bob Johnson that this book reflects even though I wrote it before this book came out. Then buy this book because it says so much more than I could have imagined along the same lines.
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Title: Between Midnight and Day: The Last Unpublished Blues Archive by Dick Waterman, Peter Guralnick, Bonnie Raitt ISBN: 1560255471 Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title:Back to the Crossroads: The Roots of Robert Johnson ASIN: B00011V81I Publisher: Yazoo Pub. Date: 20 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $17.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $14.99 |
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Title:The Howlin' Wolf Story - The Secret History of Rock & Roll ASIN: B0000DJZ81 Publisher: Bmg Distribution (VI Pub. Date: 04 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $16.38 |
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Title: Robert Johnson: Lost and Found (Music in American Life) by Barry Lee Pearson, Bill McCulloch ISBN: 025202835X Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr (Trd) Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title:The American Folk Blues Festival 1962-1966, Vol. 1 ASIN: B0000AYL2M Publisher: Universal Music & VI Pub. Date: 26 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $16.38 |
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