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Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues
Robert Johnson's story presents a fascinating 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 Wald presents previously unpublished studies of what people on Delta plantations were actually listening to during the blues era, showing the larger world in which Johnson's music was conceived.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.
342 pages, Hardcover
First published January 6, 2004
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2653 people want to read
About the author
Elijah Wald
32 books70 followersElijah Wald is a musician and writer, with nine published books. Most are about music (blues, folk, world, and Mexican drug ballads), with one about hitchhiking.
His new book is a revisionist history of popular music, throwing out the usual critical conventions and instead looking at what mainstream pop fans were actually listening and dancing to over the years.
At readings, he also plays guitar and sings...why not?"
His new book is a revisionist history of popular music, throwing out the usual critical conventions and instead looking at what mainstream pop fans were actually listening and dancing to over the years.
At readings, he also plays guitar and sings...why not?"
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February 26, 2025
The Blues And Romantic History
Many Americans have shown a great interest in "roots" music as part of a highly commendable effort to understand our country's life and culture. Much of this interest has, over the years, focused on the blues of the Mississippi Delta and, in particular, on the recordings of singer and guitarist Robert Johnson (1911 -1938). Johnson was an obscure figure in his day and his life and music remain the stuff of legend. He had two recording dates in 1936 and 1937. His music was rediscovered in the 1960s and since that time the sales of his collected recordings have numbered in the millions.
In "Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues" (2004), Elijah Wald offers a compelling study of the blues and of blues historiography focusing on Robert Johnson. Wald tries to correct what he deems to be the prevailing myths about Johnson: that he was a primitive folk artist caught in the Mississippi Delta who recorded and perfected a local traditional form of blues. Wald finds Johnson an ambitious young singer who had studied the blues forms popular in his day. Johnson, Wald argues, wanted to escape the Mississippi Delta and pattern himself on the urban blues singers, in particular Leroy Carr, emanating from the Midwest and Chicago.
Wald finds that Johnson displayed a variety of blues styles in his recordings and that he was largely ignored by black music listeners of his day because Johnson's early efforts to capture an urban blues style were basically copies of more successful singers and because his songs in the Delta blues style lacked appeal to the urban and sophisticated black audience of the time.
Johnson's music only became well-known, Wald argues, with the rise of English rock, and with his rediscovery by a largely white audience. The tastes of black music listeners had moved in a mostly different direction towards soul, funk, rap, disco and did not encompass rural blues singers. The fascination of modern listeners with Johnson, according to Wald, is due to a romantic spirit -- a boredom with the life of the everyday -- and a search for a past full of authentic individuals who knew their own wants and needs and who projected themselves in their art.
Wald's book begins with a history of the blues before Robert Johnson focusing on the commercial character the music had at the outset. He gives a great deal of attention to the Blues queens -- Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey -- and to their smooth-voiced male successors, particularly Leroy Carr, as mentioned above, and Lonnie Johnson. These singers profoundly influenced Johnson's music and his ambitions to become a popular entertainer and not a cult figure.
The central part of Wald's book consists of a brief biography of Johnson -- summarizing the various speculations on his life -- and of a song-by-song discussion of his recordings. In this discussion, Wald discusses the music with a great deal of intelligence and understanding. He shows very clearly Johnson's debts to his more commercially successful predecessors and explains as well the variety of blues styles Johnson encompassed in his songs.
The final portion of the book carries the story of the blues forward beyond Robert Johnson's death. It shows how the music at first evolved into a combo style, again approaching popular music, which took blues into a different direction from Johnson's recordings. The book concludes with a discussion of Johnson's rediscovery, and the discovery of other Delta blues singers, beginning in the 1960's.
Wald clearly knows his material. For all his criticism of the mythmaking cult over Johnson, Wald's love for this music shines through, as he is the first to admit. Upon reading this book, I spent considerable time rehearing Johnson's music and felt I came away with a better understanding and appreciation of it than I had before. The goal of every book about music should be to encourage its readers to return to (or get to know) the songs, or what have you, themselves. The book meets this goal admirably.
There are few books on the blues that manage to be both scholarly, critical, and inspiring and Wald's book is one of these few. I do not find Wald's thesis as unusual as he claims it to be, but it certainly will be worth exploring by listeners and readers who do not have a large background in this music.
In music, a fair and careful historical account will in the long run perform a greater service to the music and the artists than will legends and stereotypes. The Delta singers discussed in this book, Robert Johnson, Son House, Skip James, Charley Patton, were musicians of talent. Understanding their story can only increase the listener's appreciation of the blues.
Robin Friedman
Many Americans have shown a great interest in "roots" music as part of a highly commendable effort to understand our country's life and culture. Much of this interest has, over the years, focused on the blues of the Mississippi Delta and, in particular, on the recordings of singer and guitarist Robert Johnson (1911 -1938). Johnson was an obscure figure in his day and his life and music remain the stuff of legend. He had two recording dates in 1936 and 1937. His music was rediscovered in the 1960s and since that time the sales of his collected recordings have numbered in the millions.
In "Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues" (2004), Elijah Wald offers a compelling study of the blues and of blues historiography focusing on Robert Johnson. Wald tries to correct what he deems to be the prevailing myths about Johnson: that he was a primitive folk artist caught in the Mississippi Delta who recorded and perfected a local traditional form of blues. Wald finds Johnson an ambitious young singer who had studied the blues forms popular in his day. Johnson, Wald argues, wanted to escape the Mississippi Delta and pattern himself on the urban blues singers, in particular Leroy Carr, emanating from the Midwest and Chicago.
Wald finds that Johnson displayed a variety of blues styles in his recordings and that he was largely ignored by black music listeners of his day because Johnson's early efforts to capture an urban blues style were basically copies of more successful singers and because his songs in the Delta blues style lacked appeal to the urban and sophisticated black audience of the time.
Johnson's music only became well-known, Wald argues, with the rise of English rock, and with his rediscovery by a largely white audience. The tastes of black music listeners had moved in a mostly different direction towards soul, funk, rap, disco and did not encompass rural blues singers. The fascination of modern listeners with Johnson, according to Wald, is due to a romantic spirit -- a boredom with the life of the everyday -- and a search for a past full of authentic individuals who knew their own wants and needs and who projected themselves in their art.
Wald's book begins with a history of the blues before Robert Johnson focusing on the commercial character the music had at the outset. He gives a great deal of attention to the Blues queens -- Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey -- and to their smooth-voiced male successors, particularly Leroy Carr, as mentioned above, and Lonnie Johnson. These singers profoundly influenced Johnson's music and his ambitions to become a popular entertainer and not a cult figure.
The central part of Wald's book consists of a brief biography of Johnson -- summarizing the various speculations on his life -- and of a song-by-song discussion of his recordings. In this discussion, Wald discusses the music with a great deal of intelligence and understanding. He shows very clearly Johnson's debts to his more commercially successful predecessors and explains as well the variety of blues styles Johnson encompassed in his songs.
The final portion of the book carries the story of the blues forward beyond Robert Johnson's death. It shows how the music at first evolved into a combo style, again approaching popular music, which took blues into a different direction from Johnson's recordings. The book concludes with a discussion of Johnson's rediscovery, and the discovery of other Delta blues singers, beginning in the 1960's.
Wald clearly knows his material. For all his criticism of the mythmaking cult over Johnson, Wald's love for this music shines through, as he is the first to admit. Upon reading this book, I spent considerable time rehearing Johnson's music and felt I came away with a better understanding and appreciation of it than I had before. The goal of every book about music should be to encourage its readers to return to (or get to know) the songs, or what have you, themselves. The book meets this goal admirably.
There are few books on the blues that manage to be both scholarly, critical, and inspiring and Wald's book is one of these few. I do not find Wald's thesis as unusual as he claims it to be, but it certainly will be worth exploring by listeners and readers who do not have a large background in this music.
In music, a fair and careful historical account will in the long run perform a greater service to the music and the artists than will legends and stereotypes. The Delta singers discussed in this book, Robert Johnson, Son House, Skip James, Charley Patton, were musicians of talent. Understanding their story can only increase the listener's appreciation of the blues.
Robin Friedman
January 30, 2016
This was painful. Like I need some hippy blues nerd to tell me that black people listen to all kinds of music and that white audiences bring their racist baggage to how they hear the music... All his points are valid, but they are so belabored. If you are after "truth" and "authenticity" then this dude is fighting the good fight in the culture wars. If you just dig the blues, and you know it's phony, then this is going to hurt. He should of just written a biography of Leroy Carr instead of gunning for all the claptonclones who'll buy this polemic because the unholy robert johnson is on the cover and in the subtitle. Or maybe not. I just don't care what most blues fans think of the blues, I don't feel the need to convert the hoards of beer bellied white boys from worshiping chicken-choking guitar solos to dancing to barrelhouse piano. I guess if Elijah Wald broadens a few horizons that would be a good thing, though. Maybe the Chicago blues scene would unfreeze and start innovating again if the tiny bit of money it does make wasn't mostly coming from wannabe outlaw bikers who want to hear "sweet home chicago" a million times. Part of the problem... as the author keeps assuring us, he's just like us, he prefers the creepy outsider art obscure deep blues to the stuff that was popular at the time. It's like he's trying to convince himself to stop thinking of his favorites as the most authentic and to recognize how his own whiteness has informed his taste in black music at the same time that he is trying to convince the reader. There's a generational thing happening here too, cuz if you're post-civil rights, like me, then you didn't get into blues when bob dylan went electric at newport, and yeah, okay, sure, I followed british white rockers down their rabbit holes, but Al Green singing Hank Williams didn't confuse my assumptions about race either. I mean, are there really still people who think an illiterate ex-con blues man is more authentic than say Dinah Washington? Knowwhaddimean? Pulling Yakub's white supremacy pins out of our devil brains is painful, and this book brings the pain, so if you can stand being lectured to, this is good.
July 19, 2012
Excellent overview but not so much of Robert Johnson as the history of the Blues in America. The book is divided into three parts: the land where Johnson lived (Mississippi Delta), what we actually know of Robert Johnson's life and to what degree the blues was actually influenced by Johnson who Clapton said, "was the greatest blues man whoever lived".
A primary theme of the history is how blues is perceived by its two primary audiences. First, blues was originally a popular form of music played and marketed to African Americans. In time the high society felt a romantic nostalgia for this primitive folk style with obvious roots in West Africa. Eventually this would lead to the second and primary consumers of marketed blues music today, white people.
There are some major problems with this idea of blues being simply folk music. All of the major early blues artists were professional musicians and the best ones (Lonnie Johnson) were proficient in a number of different styles. No doubt there are strong roots in Africa (the blue notes, slide guitar technique began on a diddley bow, an instrument with strong similarity to instruments played on the West African coast) but the greats no doubt had professional training and acted as professional musicians. Just as musicians are asked to play songs today from standard radio fare the old blues musicians did the same. Also people in the Delta though primarily African American had wide variety in tastes. Thanks to the invention of the phonograph and growing popularity of radio the idea that blues was the only thing they were exposed to is absurd. Other styles (i.e. jazz, jug bands, classical, ragtime, etc.) also influenced these artists. There is proof available that blues artists could well have been trained by classically trained former slaves; the influence of 19th Century Spanish guitar master Tarrega is cited in particular. It wasn't uncommon for the southern aristocracy to train their slaves to perform chamber music and have classical ensembles.
After the blues revival in the 1960s the audience became increasingly white. To this day there are many areas in the rural south where African Americans listen to the blues, but with the mainstream African American audience music evolved and moved on (soul, r&b, funk, hip hop). Whites may have romanticized these rugged rural folk artists singing their days laments but for the general African American audience it came to be associated with places like Mississippi. Not only was it considered old fashioned or countrified, it also came to be associated with the severe oppression old south.
Robert Johnson himself is often viewed by whites as this 'ghost' out of the Delta who hoboed around the country. To a degree this part of his myth is true, he was definitely well traveled and probably received some training in New Orleans. Johnson was a young, talented and very ambitious musician in his time. Outside of Mississippi he had one song that made wide appeal, Terraplane Blues. The remarkable thing about the 36 recordings we have of him are the variety. He's a much more versatile player than many of the other artists from the same region. This indicates he really hadn't found his voice as a musician and had he lived into his sixties may have well been part of the jump blues of the forties, or Chicago Blues of the 1950s & 1960s. We just don't know. One thing you can count on, he had dreams of escaping the Delta and no doubt had his eyes on the wealthier cities to the north.
Finally, Wald points out that Johnson had relatively little if any impact on the blues world in the years after his death. Even today most blues musicians like the idea of listening to Johnson better than actually listening to him. His primary influence has been via the 1960s folk revival and his adoption among sixties rockers (especially the British rockers) as a cult figure, the ultimate Byronic hero of the blues. After all, the man did die at 27 after being poisoned in a Juke Joint by the owner. The owner's wife was amid an affair with the wandering musician. Today he has three grave markers in the Delta and no one is actually sure where he resides. Personally, I like to think Bob wouldn't have it any other way. "You may bury my body, down by the highway side. Baby I don't care where you bury me when I'm dead and gone. You may bury my body, down by the highway side. So my ole evil spirit, can catch a greyhound bus and ride" ~ Robert Johnson, Me and the Devil Blues.
A primary theme of the history is how blues is perceived by its two primary audiences. First, blues was originally a popular form of music played and marketed to African Americans. In time the high society felt a romantic nostalgia for this primitive folk style with obvious roots in West Africa. Eventually this would lead to the second and primary consumers of marketed blues music today, white people.
There are some major problems with this idea of blues being simply folk music. All of the major early blues artists were professional musicians and the best ones (Lonnie Johnson) were proficient in a number of different styles. No doubt there are strong roots in Africa (the blue notes, slide guitar technique began on a diddley bow, an instrument with strong similarity to instruments played on the West African coast) but the greats no doubt had professional training and acted as professional musicians. Just as musicians are asked to play songs today from standard radio fare the old blues musicians did the same. Also people in the Delta though primarily African American had wide variety in tastes. Thanks to the invention of the phonograph and growing popularity of radio the idea that blues was the only thing they were exposed to is absurd. Other styles (i.e. jazz, jug bands, classical, ragtime, etc.) also influenced these artists. There is proof available that blues artists could well have been trained by classically trained former slaves; the influence of 19th Century Spanish guitar master Tarrega is cited in particular. It wasn't uncommon for the southern aristocracy to train their slaves to perform chamber music and have classical ensembles.
After the blues revival in the 1960s the audience became increasingly white. To this day there are many areas in the rural south where African Americans listen to the blues, but with the mainstream African American audience music evolved and moved on (soul, r&b, funk, hip hop). Whites may have romanticized these rugged rural folk artists singing their days laments but for the general African American audience it came to be associated with places like Mississippi. Not only was it considered old fashioned or countrified, it also came to be associated with the severe oppression old south.
Robert Johnson himself is often viewed by whites as this 'ghost' out of the Delta who hoboed around the country. To a degree this part of his myth is true, he was definitely well traveled and probably received some training in New Orleans. Johnson was a young, talented and very ambitious musician in his time. Outside of Mississippi he had one song that made wide appeal, Terraplane Blues. The remarkable thing about the 36 recordings we have of him are the variety. He's a much more versatile player than many of the other artists from the same region. This indicates he really hadn't found his voice as a musician and had he lived into his sixties may have well been part of the jump blues of the forties, or Chicago Blues of the 1950s & 1960s. We just don't know. One thing you can count on, he had dreams of escaping the Delta and no doubt had his eyes on the wealthier cities to the north.
Finally, Wald points out that Johnson had relatively little if any impact on the blues world in the years after his death. Even today most blues musicians like the idea of listening to Johnson better than actually listening to him. His primary influence has been via the 1960s folk revival and his adoption among sixties rockers (especially the British rockers) as a cult figure, the ultimate Byronic hero of the blues. After all, the man did die at 27 after being poisoned in a Juke Joint by the owner. The owner's wife was amid an affair with the wandering musician. Today he has three grave markers in the Delta and no one is actually sure where he resides. Personally, I like to think Bob wouldn't have it any other way. "You may bury my body, down by the highway side. Baby I don't care where you bury me when I'm dead and gone. You may bury my body, down by the highway side. So my ole evil spirit, can catch a greyhound bus and ride" ~ Robert Johnson, Me and the Devil Blues.
March 30, 2008
Outstanding revisionist history of the early blues. Fascinatingly informative throughout. Helps appreciate Robert Johnson, Skip James, Son House, and other icons no less--but also see how Lonnie Johnson and others were much more popular in their day and time, and how the white cult of the blues created the images of early blues and blues musicians . . .
April 22, 2013
This book actually annoyed me. The author's premise is worthy enough - to demystify Delta Blues musicians by asserting that they were professional musicians just as in search of success as anyone else. However, the author's main agenda seems to be telling the reader OVER AND OVER that he's the only one who gets it, which he does with irritatingly faulty logic. He insists that all accounts of Johnson's life are subject to skepticism since nothing is verifiable. Then he insists that he KNOWS Johnson intended to include an extra verse to "Crossroad Blues" because "he can be heard preparing to go into it before the engineer must have signaled he was out of time." Somehow the author who disputes first-hand accounts of those who knew Johnson knows precise occurrences in a motel room recording session over seventy years ago because of a momentary catch he perceives in Johnson's voice. I could go on and on, but the point is simply that the author's intrusive and insistent voice render the book a displeasure to read, even if one agreed with the author's premise.
July 27, 2017
This is far more than a biography of Robert Johnson. It gives insight into the whole Delta Blues scene that gave birth to Johnson's style and thus gives great mini-biographies into great blues men such as Son House, Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Skip James, Elmore James, Howling Wolf, Tampa Red, Muddy Waters, BB King and others. The ability of these great blues men to play other styles than blues, how mainstream they were at the time as well as how obscure Johnson was during his time builds a new history not tainted by the worship cult built behind the influence of Johnson over the years in Rock and Roll. The book does a great job of building a new reality of history while not diminishing the impact of Johnson on Blues and Rock and Roll. An interesting alternate thought exercise is to wonder if Johnson was able to mature into the pantheon of the aged statesmen of blues such as Howling Wolf or BB King how much he would have truly impacted electric blues and Rock.
November 6, 2012
Great exploration of blues and their original place in popular music. However, Wald is obviously fighting some blues scholar group-think that doesn't seem as prevalent anymore. Perhaps this book is what helped show scholars that the popular lonesome, weary, traveled blues player icon was not the only, nor the most common blues singer out there.
I found his assertion that women were the original consumers of blues and women vocalists (like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, etc) were the ones who originally propogated blues especially fascinating. Apparently the 60s revival, spurred largely by white, British, male rockers, pushed guitars and the lonesome male blues singer to the forefront. This says more about Western culture in the 1960s than it does about blues music from the 1920s, I think.
Interesting, thoroughly-research read, if you can get through the condescending bits.
I found his assertion that women were the original consumers of blues and women vocalists (like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, etc) were the ones who originally propogated blues especially fascinating. Apparently the 60s revival, spurred largely by white, British, male rockers, pushed guitars and the lonesome male blues singer to the forefront. This says more about Western culture in the 1960s than it does about blues music from the 1920s, I think.
Interesting, thoroughly-research read, if you can get through the condescending bits.
April 21, 2014
I probably thought I knew the Blues. After all, I was born and raised in Mississippi, and have lived most of my life within 40 miles of HWY 61 and within spitting distance of the Delta. Turns out I didn't know squat, either about Robert Johnson or the Blues in general. This book by Elijah Wald was both a revelation and an education. If you're at all interested in the Blues and how it relates--and more importantly, perhaps-- how it DOESN'T relate to the early roots music of America, you need this book. Wald does a great job of separating fact from legend. The legend remains, of course. Legends are awfully hard to kill, and Robert Johnson at the Crossroads is too good a story. But if you want the real story, or at least as close to it as any of us are likely to get, this book is the place to go.
February 20, 2008
Nice analysis of early blues and our misperceptions of what the early blues musicians were listening to, what they were trying to be, and the target audiences' own account of the history of the blues being so different from the mythology mostly perpetuated by white blues fans 30/40 years after the fact.
June 15, 2018
The author really belabors some stale points, chiefly that are modern perception of the biggest names in the blues world are not reflected by the sales data and feedback from people who were around at the time. Some of the biggest stars and best-selling artists of the early decades of the blues era have been neglected and even forgotten to time—guys like Peetie Wheatstraw, Lonnie Johnson, and Tampa Red have been overlooked for the Robert Johnsons, despite the fact that they sold tons of records and Johnson actually sold very few (he only sat for 3 recording sessions before his murder at age 27, and only recorded about two dozen songs, and only a couple of those registered as modest hits at the time).
While his points are valid, he repeats himself often and supplies reams of data with an academic rigor, which does not exactly make for compelling reading. There were times when I could swear I'd read the exact same paragraph in separate parts of the book, only to dig back and find the other parallel paragraph from a few pages previous and discover that it is saying the exact same thing with only a slight re-arrangement of the words. This is one of the few books that actually made me shout at the pages in frustration, "YOU ALREADY SAID THAT LIKE 5 TIMES, JUST MOVE ON ALREADY!"
He also spends a painful amount of time talking about white blues fans, and talking about white blues fans have a skewed perspective on the blues scene. He keeps coming back to the same point over and over again: modern white blues fans prefer different artists and styles than black blues fans of the historical era. So what? As a white blues fan, I got really tired of him telling me how I perceive blues music and how my perceptions are somehow faulty because I like Leadbelly and Robert Johnson even though they didn't sell many records in the 30s.
All in all, it is thoroughly researched and very informative book, and I feel that I got a lot out of it, but it is far too long for such a narrow subject. The author really should have choose to expand the scope and cover more of the history of the blues (many of the early stars are barely discussed outside the scope of sales numbers, and it basically covers up until just after WWII and then only casually mentions the later stars of the 50s and 60s). Alternately, he could have edited the book down for brevity and it would be compelling reading. The scope he chose could be covered with about 75 less pages without leaving anything important out.
While his points are valid, he repeats himself often and supplies reams of data with an academic rigor, which does not exactly make for compelling reading. There were times when I could swear I'd read the exact same paragraph in separate parts of the book, only to dig back and find the other parallel paragraph from a few pages previous and discover that it is saying the exact same thing with only a slight re-arrangement of the words. This is one of the few books that actually made me shout at the pages in frustration, "YOU ALREADY SAID THAT LIKE 5 TIMES, JUST MOVE ON ALREADY!"
He also spends a painful amount of time talking about white blues fans, and talking about white blues fans have a skewed perspective on the blues scene. He keeps coming back to the same point over and over again: modern white blues fans prefer different artists and styles than black blues fans of the historical era. So what? As a white blues fan, I got really tired of him telling me how I perceive blues music and how my perceptions are somehow faulty because I like Leadbelly and Robert Johnson even though they didn't sell many records in the 30s.
All in all, it is thoroughly researched and very informative book, and I feel that I got a lot out of it, but it is far too long for such a narrow subject. The author really should have choose to expand the scope and cover more of the history of the blues (many of the early stars are barely discussed outside the scope of sales numbers, and it basically covers up until just after WWII and then only casually mentions the later stars of the 50s and 60s). Alternately, he could have edited the book down for brevity and it would be compelling reading. The scope he chose could be covered with about 75 less pages without leaving anything important out.
August 16, 2025
This is easily the best book on Robert Johnson I’ve ever read. Much like Jon Savage did with the Sex Pistols in England’s Dreaming, Elijah Wald examines the life and legend of Robert Johnson by examining in detail the origins, circumstances and environment of Johnson as a musician and performer. The result is, without a doubt, the clearest, most complete and honest look at Robert Johnson to date. Wald does a fantastic job of getting inside Johnson’s head and making educated guesses as to his motivations. It becomes a fairly simple task to understand who Johnson was and what he was all about.
A big part of this is Wald’s informative look at the sources and elements of Johnson’s guitar style. It’s well known that each of the twenty nine songs Johnson recorded were altered versions of songs he had heard and adopted up to that point. While much has been made of the influence of folks like Charlie Patton and Son House, Wald is one of the few writers to discuss the influence on Johnson of recordings by Kokomo Arnold, Leroy Carr or Lonnie Johnson. While it has been common to see Johnson as a lone bluesman walking down a deserted country road, failing to acknowledge that Johnson’s aim was to become a successful and well known recording artist in the sophisticated, big city style is failing to acknowledge the whole story.
Wald also does a fine job of addressing the myth that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil. His theory that Robert saw Skip James and Tommy Johnson using the devil motif to increase their notoriety and emulated them makes a lot of sense. It’s certainly more plausible (and, to my mind, more interesting) than the idea of Johnson waiting around the crossroads for the devil.
Escaping The Delta is accompanied by a CD featuring a couple cool rarities. The first is take one of “Traveling Riverside Blues”, the one Robert Johnson recording not released on CBS Records 1990 Robert Johnson boxed set, The Complete Recordings. I’m sure there’s a reason why it was left out but, oddly enough, Wald doesn’t talk about it in his book. The other song on the CD is Leroy Carr’s “Mean Mistreater Mama”, on which Robert Johnson based his own song, “Kind Hearted Woman Blues”.
Update 8/15/2025: I had to read this again after reading Wald's How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'N' Roll. I'm grateful to Wald.
A big part of this is Wald’s informative look at the sources and elements of Johnson’s guitar style. It’s well known that each of the twenty nine songs Johnson recorded were altered versions of songs he had heard and adopted up to that point. While much has been made of the influence of folks like Charlie Patton and Son House, Wald is one of the few writers to discuss the influence on Johnson of recordings by Kokomo Arnold, Leroy Carr or Lonnie Johnson. While it has been common to see Johnson as a lone bluesman walking down a deserted country road, failing to acknowledge that Johnson’s aim was to become a successful and well known recording artist in the sophisticated, big city style is failing to acknowledge the whole story.
Wald also does a fine job of addressing the myth that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil. His theory that Robert saw Skip James and Tommy Johnson using the devil motif to increase their notoriety and emulated them makes a lot of sense. It’s certainly more plausible (and, to my mind, more interesting) than the idea of Johnson waiting around the crossroads for the devil.
Escaping The Delta is accompanied by a CD featuring a couple cool rarities. The first is take one of “Traveling Riverside Blues”, the one Robert Johnson recording not released on CBS Records 1990 Robert Johnson boxed set, The Complete Recordings. I’m sure there’s a reason why it was left out but, oddly enough, Wald doesn’t talk about it in his book. The other song on the CD is Leroy Carr’s “Mean Mistreater Mama”, on which Robert Johnson based his own song, “Kind Hearted Woman Blues”.
Update 8/15/2025: I had to read this again after reading Wald's How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'N' Roll. I'm grateful to Wald.
December 15, 2013
One of the clearest accounts of the roots and culture of the pre-war blues era in American musical history that I've ever read. Rather than focusing on the sorts of purist romantic myths that have built up around the subject, Wald does extensive research and documents the reality of life as a blues musician in the 20s and 30s, with a specific concentration on the legendary Robert Johnson--who, as Wald points out, was obscure and a poorly-selling artist during his time. Wald believes (with very good reason, as he elucidates over the course of this book) that the modern picture of blues singers as unschooled backwoods primitives was a creation of mid-20th century white folk music revivalists, and that blues singers in the 20s and 30s were entertainers who aspired to popularity and riches, and varied their repertoire accordingly. He demonstrates through a detailed examination of Robert Johnson's work that Johnson's music reflects this reality, pointing out stronger connections between Johnson and hitmakers of his time, such as Lonnie Johnson and Peetie Wheatstraw, than those between Johnson and primitive backwoods folk-singing that the revivalists always played up. In so doing, Wald hits upon a largely universal truth about all artists, visual, musical, literary or otherwise--regardless of one's aspirations to speak the deep truths of one's soul, all art is also to some extent affected by the desire to be popularly recognized and, even more importantly, to make a steady living doing what you love. There's no impurity or contradiction in Robert Johnson's desire to be successful, and by recognizing that desire now, scholars of his music and the musical era he arose from will get themselves a lot closer to the truth, and see the entire picture a lot more clearly, than those who let romantic notions about rural primitivism and selling one's soul to the devil get in the way of honest appraisal and scholarship. By setting all of this straight once and for all in permanent, documented form, Wald has done the world of music scholarship a great service. For anyone who cares about the blues tradition or any of the popular musical forms that have arisen from it (so yeah, basically any modern American musical form), this book is fucking essential. Go read it right now.
January 7, 2023
Not the Robert Johnson book we asked for, but the one we need. Given the title, I kind of figured the book would be about Robert Johnson and his part in inventing the Blues. But the definition of the Blues, of course, is a crowd-sourced dividing rule after the fact of creation that nobody at the time was all that concerned with.
Wald talks about the several elephants in the room of Johnson, and I silently cheered.
Elephant: Had Robert Johnson never existed, the Blues...would have been pretty much the same. By the time Johnson recorded note number one in the studio, Charley Patton was two years dead. Blind Lemon Jefferson was seven years dead. Son House and Skip James were older that Johnson - they mentored him. Memphis Minnie was pushing 40 when Johnson started recording.
Elephant: Had Robert Johnson never existed, Rock music...would have been pretty much the same. Big Joe Turner, Louis Jordan, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup and others were creating proto-rock that became rock and roll - it's pretty easy to imagine Chuck Berry's Maybellene being a Louis Jordan song, in fact. And it's pretty easy to imagine the British working class boys who created the British invasion discovering and emulating Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, and a host of others in the absence of Johnson.
Elephant: Johnson was not a purist who chose to suffer for his art, who eschewed popularity. He wanted to sell records. He could play many styles, and had he lived, might have become a bandleader, or crooner, or jump blues performer a la Louis Jordan, or whatever would have made a good living. Although he only recorded Blues, he is said to have played many styles for many audiences.
Finally, the Delta Blues as a genre that evokes a lone man with a guitar sitting on a dusty porch, is an ex post facto construct. It's a bit of romanticism that the actual players at the time weren't seeking to create. They wore suits, they sought to perform in good theaters, and they were happy to play many styles, with large bands or small combos.
So, yes, the book is about Robert Johnson, and it is about the Invention of the Blues. But that subtitle doesn't mean what one might think.
Wald talks about the several elephants in the room of Johnson, and I silently cheered.
Elephant: Had Robert Johnson never existed, the Blues...would have been pretty much the same. By the time Johnson recorded note number one in the studio, Charley Patton was two years dead. Blind Lemon Jefferson was seven years dead. Son House and Skip James were older that Johnson - they mentored him. Memphis Minnie was pushing 40 when Johnson started recording.
Elephant: Had Robert Johnson never existed, Rock music...would have been pretty much the same. Big Joe Turner, Louis Jordan, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup and others were creating proto-rock that became rock and roll - it's pretty easy to imagine Chuck Berry's Maybellene being a Louis Jordan song, in fact. And it's pretty easy to imagine the British working class boys who created the British invasion discovering and emulating Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, and a host of others in the absence of Johnson.
Elephant: Johnson was not a purist who chose to suffer for his art, who eschewed popularity. He wanted to sell records. He could play many styles, and had he lived, might have become a bandleader, or crooner, or jump blues performer a la Louis Jordan, or whatever would have made a good living. Although he only recorded Blues, he is said to have played many styles for many audiences.
Finally, the Delta Blues as a genre that evokes a lone man with a guitar sitting on a dusty porch, is an ex post facto construct. It's a bit of romanticism that the actual players at the time weren't seeking to create. They wore suits, they sought to perform in good theaters, and they were happy to play many styles, with large bands or small combos.
So, yes, the book is about Robert Johnson, and it is about the Invention of the Blues. But that subtitle doesn't mean what one might think.
June 23, 2009
The premise of this book is blues history as we know it is all wrong. What we take for blues history is a string of musicians picked by a handful of English blues enthusiasts, notably the Rolling Stones and rolled into a the myth of the poor outsider. Real Blues history is far richer and diverse than what we think of when we think of the classical cannon of blues musicians today. Whether you buy into that or not (I do) the book is a must read for any one interested in today's popular music or in the popular and folk music of the last century. He even explain mysteries like why is the Mississippi Delta not the Mississippi River Delta which has been a question on my mind for some time and where exactly is this place located. Most articles and books on the blues assume the general public knows more than some of us do or blues bound authors simply like being arcane turning the blues into a private club where the mysteries are know only to a chosen few. Mr Wald explains it all.
January 25, 2010
Very thorough and well researched history of the blues. The author's primary aim is to separate myth from fact, specifically in regard to Delta blues and Robert Johnson. Mr Wald emphasizes the differences in perspective between black and white blues audiences and recounts the formation of the white blues revivalists' romanticized view of the Mississippi Delta blues. For me, it was a fascinating approach and after reading the book, I've come to question my view of the blues and what I perceive as blues music in general. The book is divided into three sections with part two devoted fully to Robert Johnson, including his influences, the development of his style, the infamous recording sessions in Texas, and the mystery surrounding his death. In addition, Mr Wald critiques and compares all versions of each song from the point of view of a blues fan and musician. Overall, a very enlightening read. Well done, Mr Wald.
May 15, 2013
This is the best book I have read about the Blues. While many of the arguments are just obvious common sense, hell if I had ever connected the dots. It seems like most of the criticism I have read pertaining to the book deal with Wald's addressing the mythologizing that surrounds Robert Johnson (all of which results in the fact that he is held in loftier esteem than a good many other deserving characters). Admittedly, this is something I myself have have been grappling with for a good many years. The myths surrounding Johnson have become so ingrained that we don't even question them. I guess we don't question them because we don't want to . . .
December 30, 2008
This history of the blues places Robert Johnson in the context of his time and the music of his time and place. Therefore, it corrects the widely held impression that Johnson in particular and the Delta bluesmen in general were recognized as tortured geniuses and were popularly acclaimed. At the same time, Wald respects and loves the Delta blues recordings and his chapters on Johnson's sessions are a sensitive track by track appreciation and evaluation.
February 5, 2015
A history of blues anchored on the short life of the iconic Robert Johnson. A very interesting and lucid view on the blues, trying to dispel the myths and focus on what blues really meant to the people who listened to the music across the years, from its origins to the revival of the 1960s and then to modern day.
Well worth the read for anyone who loves this musical genre.
Well worth the read for anyone who loves this musical genre.
October 29, 2008
Anyone with a remote interest in the blues or music in general will find something in this bbok. It does an excellent job of taking a close look at musical inspiration and invention without the distortion of myth getting in the way.
September 29, 2012
Good stuff! Very interesting take on Mr. Johnson and blues in general: how white historians, folklorists and fans look at blues very differently from the black culture that made it popular in the first place. And the man writes good endnotes. Always a plus.
March 5, 2015
This book upended some of my cherished notions about the blues…in a good way. A great book to read slowly, Googling artists and songs as you go. I feel I have a lot more understanding now, not only about the origins of the blues, but also about its amazing musicians.
December 21, 2012
very good!
January 18, 2015
Seeing colossal blues hero Robert Johnson on the cover of Elijah Wald's "Escaping the Delta" made me pause with doubt because what I certainly was not in the market for was another feverish bio of Robert Johnson that focused on the mystical to the exclusion of all else. Most pleasantly, this is definitely not the case with this interesting and readable work.
The book starts slowly as author Wald consumes nearly seventy pages with an exhaustive history of the pop music scene of the Delta region of the American South. Chronicling juke box lists, the careers of artists both well-known and obscure, and emphasizing his thesis over and over again, Wald lays thorough groundwork for the chapters that follow. Once you get rolling, however, the book is a pleasurable read and we get a complete overview of the ingredients that went into the blues, its curious nurturing process, the artists themselves, and the fruits that grew from the seeds of these musical pioneers. We even get a track-by-track analysis of the songs Johnson recorded, a canon of work that has possibly influenced more people than any other body of work in rock and blues history.
Wald's purpose is to shine a light onto the real world of working musicians during the early part of the century and show that the invention of the blues was not what you might have been told. Seminal artists like Ma Rainey, Charley Patton, Son House, and, yes, even Robert Johnson did indeed play the blues, but they also played lots of other music from Bing Crosby to Broadway and even hillbilly songs. The musicians of this era were simply trying to get paid as working musicians, which meant playing what the people wanted to hear. Then, as now, popular music was rarely genre specific, it need only be catchy, danceable, and innocuous. Say what you will about Robert Johnson's work, it is certainly not often described using any of those adjectives and the earthier, acoustic blues Johnson is known for has never had a huge pop music audience, then or now. The author devotes much of his time to pounding this point home, but it's a worthwhile endeavor if you care to see the reality instead of the fantasy.
Wald's knowledge of the artists and songs and his dogged devotion to cutting through the baloney and getting to the facts within the folktales is fresh and largely free of hyperbole. There are plenty of revelations in the book, for instance: I had no knowledge of the true roots of hillbilly music and how popular this music form was among blacks or how white executives suppressed it for the purposes of segregation. Also, we are given a unique behind-the-scenes peek into the milieu of the musicians commonly referred to as blues artists during the early part of the 20th century. It is both fascinating and informational reading for me because Wald demystifies the clichéd image of the tormented blues singer, schooled by Satan, and destined for a life of misery that matched their lyrical tales, myths spread by the single-minded agendas of the record company men who were trying to market a product. The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and scores of others, who were influenced by these artists and their live hard, die young reputation, particularly the infamous Mr. Johnson, helped perpetuate these exaggerations to their fans and thus we have the distortions Wald sought to correct.
You don't have to be a fan of the blues to appreciate the breadth of research and myth-busting that is achieved here. Elijah Wald has put a great deal of research into this book and augmented it with the words of those who were there, living and playing the blues (along with all the other genres of music their audiences wanted to hear). I have read some of the reviews and the angry ones seem to be from fans that have had their romantic world of lonesome crossroads in the middle of the night, tortured souls howling at the moon, and deals with the devil put through the shredder of reality. While that's a lot of hard luck for them; it's good news for those of us who'd rather get the straight dope than the well-worn fairy tales. I believe any fan of popular music will enjoy it and take away a much more informed mind about an art form and an artist long on superstitions, folktales, and legends but woefully short on facts and candor.
The book starts slowly as author Wald consumes nearly seventy pages with an exhaustive history of the pop music scene of the Delta region of the American South. Chronicling juke box lists, the careers of artists both well-known and obscure, and emphasizing his thesis over and over again, Wald lays thorough groundwork for the chapters that follow. Once you get rolling, however, the book is a pleasurable read and we get a complete overview of the ingredients that went into the blues, its curious nurturing process, the artists themselves, and the fruits that grew from the seeds of these musical pioneers. We even get a track-by-track analysis of the songs Johnson recorded, a canon of work that has possibly influenced more people than any other body of work in rock and blues history.
Wald's purpose is to shine a light onto the real world of working musicians during the early part of the century and show that the invention of the blues was not what you might have been told. Seminal artists like Ma Rainey, Charley Patton, Son House, and, yes, even Robert Johnson did indeed play the blues, but they also played lots of other music from Bing Crosby to Broadway and even hillbilly songs. The musicians of this era were simply trying to get paid as working musicians, which meant playing what the people wanted to hear. Then, as now, popular music was rarely genre specific, it need only be catchy, danceable, and innocuous. Say what you will about Robert Johnson's work, it is certainly not often described using any of those adjectives and the earthier, acoustic blues Johnson is known for has never had a huge pop music audience, then or now. The author devotes much of his time to pounding this point home, but it's a worthwhile endeavor if you care to see the reality instead of the fantasy.
Wald's knowledge of the artists and songs and his dogged devotion to cutting through the baloney and getting to the facts within the folktales is fresh and largely free of hyperbole. There are plenty of revelations in the book, for instance: I had no knowledge of the true roots of hillbilly music and how popular this music form was among blacks or how white executives suppressed it for the purposes of segregation. Also, we are given a unique behind-the-scenes peek into the milieu of the musicians commonly referred to as blues artists during the early part of the 20th century. It is both fascinating and informational reading for me because Wald demystifies the clichéd image of the tormented blues singer, schooled by Satan, and destined for a life of misery that matched their lyrical tales, myths spread by the single-minded agendas of the record company men who were trying to market a product. The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and scores of others, who were influenced by these artists and their live hard, die young reputation, particularly the infamous Mr. Johnson, helped perpetuate these exaggerations to their fans and thus we have the distortions Wald sought to correct.
You don't have to be a fan of the blues to appreciate the breadth of research and myth-busting that is achieved here. Elijah Wald has put a great deal of research into this book and augmented it with the words of those who were there, living and playing the blues (along with all the other genres of music their audiences wanted to hear). I have read some of the reviews and the angry ones seem to be from fans that have had their romantic world of lonesome crossroads in the middle of the night, tortured souls howling at the moon, and deals with the devil put through the shredder of reality. While that's a lot of hard luck for them; it's good news for those of us who'd rather get the straight dope than the well-worn fairy tales. I believe any fan of popular music will enjoy it and take away a much more informed mind about an art form and an artist long on superstitions, folktales, and legends but woefully short on facts and candor.
May 27, 2016
Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues by Elijah Wald is a 2004 Amistad publication.
As a long-time fan of the blues and Robert Johnson, I saw the cover and title of this book and snapped it up. Robert Johnson’s short life and the influence he left behind is always a fascinating topic of conversation and I was eager to read a book I thought was centered around the legend.
Why would I think this book was centered around Robert Johnson? Well, Robert’s image is the only one on the cover, and the title suggests the book is about Robert and his music exclusively. So, you can imagine my deep disappointment when I discovered I had been misled.
The book’s purpose is to somehow deflate the importance of blues as a musical genre, suggesting it has been over hyped, wrapped in a mystique it is undeserving of, with Robert Johnson being the ring leader in this misconception.
Mike Bloomfield, of “The Paul Butterfield Blues”, worked with many blues artists in the Chicago area before becoming famous in his own right. Only days before his death in 1981, Mike did an interview in which he praised Robert Johnson’s influence, stating that Robert invented some of the licks that are still used today. Although, influenced by others, Robert created guitar licks that were uniquely his.
Mike wasn’t the only artist that held Johnson in such high esteem, as many rock musicians recorded his work, which gave him his very own rock star status decades after his untimely death.
Was Robert Johnson the only blues influenced artist to make an impression? Not by a long shot. The rumors surrounding his ‘deal with the devil’ and his being murdered at such a young age made him a figure of mystery and as a result his music benefited from some clever marketing over the years. But, his music is what stands out and yes, despite what this author is trying to sell you, Johnson’s music was groundbreaking in ways, unique and even powerful and so it’s no wonder he caught the attention of many other blues based musicians.
But, the author’s opinions about the blues rubbed me the wrong way. First of all, no one form of blues is more authentic or better. Just like with any other genre of music, there are different styles, and the delta blues is only one of many. Were blues musicians in it for the money or fame? Sure. How does that change or lessen their influence or talent? So what if they sold lots of records, but did not manage to remain in the public’s consciousness the way Johnson did? Lots of people in the jazz era are long forgotten although they were quite popular at one time, and that is true of many artists in all forms of music, not just the blues.
As for the fact many bluesmen played other forms of music too… so what? Country singers have covered rock songs and vice versa and Eric Clapton recorded rock, soul, reggae, and pure blues. Some people think he is a rock star and others view him as a bluesman. Both are correct, and one does not cancel out the other.
I could go on about all that is wrong here, but I think my opinion of this book is pretty clear. If you are a fan of Robert Johnson’s or of the blues, skip this book. It’s not what you think it is. The ideas and opinions here aren’t new by any means and at this point it’s pretty redundant.
As a long-time fan of the blues and Robert Johnson, I saw the cover and title of this book and snapped it up. Robert Johnson’s short life and the influence he left behind is always a fascinating topic of conversation and I was eager to read a book I thought was centered around the legend.
Why would I think this book was centered around Robert Johnson? Well, Robert’s image is the only one on the cover, and the title suggests the book is about Robert and his music exclusively. So, you can imagine my deep disappointment when I discovered I had been misled.
The book’s purpose is to somehow deflate the importance of blues as a musical genre, suggesting it has been over hyped, wrapped in a mystique it is undeserving of, with Robert Johnson being the ring leader in this misconception.
Mike Bloomfield, of “The Paul Butterfield Blues”, worked with many blues artists in the Chicago area before becoming famous in his own right. Only days before his death in 1981, Mike did an interview in which he praised Robert Johnson’s influence, stating that Robert invented some of the licks that are still used today. Although, influenced by others, Robert created guitar licks that were uniquely his.
Mike wasn’t the only artist that held Johnson in such high esteem, as many rock musicians recorded his work, which gave him his very own rock star status decades after his untimely death.
Was Robert Johnson the only blues influenced artist to make an impression? Not by a long shot. The rumors surrounding his ‘deal with the devil’ and his being murdered at such a young age made him a figure of mystery and as a result his music benefited from some clever marketing over the years. But, his music is what stands out and yes, despite what this author is trying to sell you, Johnson’s music was groundbreaking in ways, unique and even powerful and so it’s no wonder he caught the attention of many other blues based musicians.
But, the author’s opinions about the blues rubbed me the wrong way. First of all, no one form of blues is more authentic or better. Just like with any other genre of music, there are different styles, and the delta blues is only one of many. Were blues musicians in it for the money or fame? Sure. How does that change or lessen their influence or talent? So what if they sold lots of records, but did not manage to remain in the public’s consciousness the way Johnson did? Lots of people in the jazz era are long forgotten although they were quite popular at one time, and that is true of many artists in all forms of music, not just the blues.
As for the fact many bluesmen played other forms of music too… so what? Country singers have covered rock songs and vice versa and Eric Clapton recorded rock, soul, reggae, and pure blues. Some people think he is a rock star and others view him as a bluesman. Both are correct, and one does not cancel out the other.
I could go on about all that is wrong here, but I think my opinion of this book is pretty clear. If you are a fan of Robert Johnson’s or of the blues, skip this book. It’s not what you think it is. The ideas and opinions here aren’t new by any means and at this point it’s pretty redundant.
November 25, 2015
Robert Johnson has a couplet, from "Me and the Devil Blues," that stands out among the many superb lyrics in his catalogue: "You may bury my body down by the highway side | So my old evil spirit can take a Greyhound Bus and ride." That stands with an image out of the 18th C. Japanese poet, Basho, "far on a journey, my dream hovers over the withered fields." (I'm paraphrasing Robert Hass's translation.) Such a comparison tends -- Greil Marcus must have inoculated this tendency -- to read Johnson's lyrics for their poetry, their images, and for Elijah Wald, no backsliding hyperbolist himself, such tendency is "absurdly misleading." What misleads, to begin with, is ignoring the soliloquized aside Johnson tosses off between these lines, full of the gallows irony of a practiced blues performer: "Babe I don't care where you bury my body when I'm dead and gone." In other words, "Me and the Devil Blues" is a performance, which through sheer luck got down on tape in San Antonio, Texas in February 1937, when Johnson was asked to perform for a second (of two) recording sessions that have come to represent him, amid however much distortion, to posterity. There is so much of the miraculous in our having these 30-odd "sides" at all that listeners have tended to remove Johnson from his context, much to the chagrin of those legatees of his original audience for whom "the blues cult" is a white boys' minstrelsy. For Marcus, the mistake must have been -- in his second book, Mystery Train (1975) -- to see Johnson in terms of the music Marcus was trying to ennoble in his using Johnson to sketch in "the background": a music that ranged from The Band & Randy Newman to Sly & the Family Stone and Elvis Presley. If it was a hunch that the music the Band made behind Bob Dylan had its origin in Johnson, that throwaway of Johnson's on "Me and the Devil Blues" shows it was a pretty sneaky one. And yet I do agree with Wald that insofar as Johnson is used as a prototype for the confessional song-poets of what Dave Van Ronk called The New Song Movement (Newman is Marcus' prototype singer-songwriter), there's something fishy going on. Wald's response to this is to make Leroy Carr the prototype of Robert Johnson. It's a minor point, but I see nothing wrong with it as far as history goes, it's only Wald's penchant for hyperbole that seems unbefitting a musical historian. (He repudiates music criticism.) Wald's knowledge of Thirties popular music -- which he tendentiously refers to as "pop music" -- is encyclopedic. He'd be a good village explainer if he was always certain of what it was he's trying to explain. His motive to inform can get in his own way. But I did enjoy sitting down with the recordings, and the middle section of Wald's book. The third section of the book may have a firmer, more terse formulation in Wald's short book on The Blues. I enjoyed that book a lot, and the windier sections of this less.
May 29, 2013
I've begun to dig into some serious reading on the blues, in preparation to some related writing of my own. Wald's book was recommended to me by the musician and writer Adam Gussow, whose book "Seems Like Murder Here" was part of my research for my previous book.
This is good read, and in the end Wald's point is pretty basic: what most of us (and by "us" I mean people who have come to the blues by way of the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and that host of mostly English rock musicians who "discovered" blues and brought them to a wider audience) imagine the blues to be is not necessarily what they actually were. We tend to think of the Mississippi Delta, with rough edged blues men sitting on the front steps of wooden shacks playing music of pain and suffering. We think of Robert Johnson, but a Robert Johnson of legend.
Wald wants us to think in terms of pop music, played not only by guitar-toting lone males but also by the women blues singers, by polished bands, and by musicians singularly disinterested in staying on the Mississippi front porches. Wald wants us to think not only of the Delta, but also of Texas, Chicago, Detroit, and Kansas City. He makes this point by way of a consideration of how Robert Johnson has been turned into the stuff of legend, and all but canonized by a later generation of rock musicians and folk music purists.
I like the fact that Wald's personal voice comes through with real clarity; he's unapologetically offering a perspective and making an argument against thinly romanticizing the blues genre and all it has come to represent. On the other hand, I wouldn't want this to be the only book I'd ever read on the blues, because even though Wald's perspective is important, it certainly isn't the only one to attend to.
This is good read, and in the end Wald's point is pretty basic: what most of us (and by "us" I mean people who have come to the blues by way of the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and that host of mostly English rock musicians who "discovered" blues and brought them to a wider audience) imagine the blues to be is not necessarily what they actually were. We tend to think of the Mississippi Delta, with rough edged blues men sitting on the front steps of wooden shacks playing music of pain and suffering. We think of Robert Johnson, but a Robert Johnson of legend.
Wald wants us to think in terms of pop music, played not only by guitar-toting lone males but also by the women blues singers, by polished bands, and by musicians singularly disinterested in staying on the Mississippi front porches. Wald wants us to think not only of the Delta, but also of Texas, Chicago, Detroit, and Kansas City. He makes this point by way of a consideration of how Robert Johnson has been turned into the stuff of legend, and all but canonized by a later generation of rock musicians and folk music purists.
I like the fact that Wald's personal voice comes through with real clarity; he's unapologetically offering a perspective and making an argument against thinly romanticizing the blues genre and all it has come to represent. On the other hand, I wouldn't want this to be the only book I'd ever read on the blues, because even though Wald's perspective is important, it certainly isn't the only one to attend to.
September 1, 2013
While I certainly don't mind authors that have a particular viewpoint or opinion, I don't enjoy being lectured. Yes, we get it; bluesmen (and women) wanted to make money, and making money meant playing popular tunes. Leroy Carr and Bessie Smith were popular and Robert Johnson wasn't. Etc...
I think Wald's basic premise is true, that Delta blues sung by someone like Johnson are no more 'authentic' than those rendered by other, more popular artists of the time, I don't need to be hit over the head all day long. I get it. This is a factually accurate and well researched book, but unless you like being hectored, not indispensable. 3.5 stars.
I think Wald's basic premise is true, that Delta blues sung by someone like Johnson are no more 'authentic' than those rendered by other, more popular artists of the time, I don't need to be hit over the head all day long. I get it. This is a factually accurate and well researched book, but unless you like being hectored, not indispensable. 3.5 stars.
August 16, 2010
So - for a book that I had to read for a class, it was pretty good. I didn't read this book from front cover to back cover, but it became an unbelievably wonderful resource when I had to write my papers. It was easy to read and understand and helped me wrap my head around the whole RJ/Delta Blues story in a way that my other class books couldn't.
February 7, 2014
This book ended up being one of my most enjoyable reading experiences, though not in the typical sense. I'll get back to the good stuff later, but I'd first like to comment on what I didn't like.
The book was not terribly well written. Long stretches were repetitive which led to a confusing narrative. Yes, the thesis of the book is clear by the time you are finished. However, it is a meandering journey that seems to go in circles at times. A more concise narrative and a more clearly laid out thesis would have bumped this book up to near 5 stars.
What I DID like (aside from the thesis in general) was how the book can be used in conjunction with YouTube. Almost every example that Wald uses to lay out his thesis is available for free on YouTube. This helps immensely and I can't imagine reading the book without listening the the songs as one reads. The same is even more true for the chapters on Johnson's own songs. Wald is extremely knowledgeable and I would imagine there is something there for even the most die-hard Johnson fan.
In short, it's a music book written by someone who is clearly a fan of the style. There's enough sociological comment here to provide a strong thesis. Using YouTube in conjunction with the reading provides an in depth reading experience that I highly recommend. A warning though, I wouldn't recommend this book for anyone looking for a straight forward biopic of Johnson.
The book was not terribly well written. Long stretches were repetitive which led to a confusing narrative. Yes, the thesis of the book is clear by the time you are finished. However, it is a meandering journey that seems to go in circles at times. A more concise narrative and a more clearly laid out thesis would have bumped this book up to near 5 stars.
What I DID like (aside from the thesis in general) was how the book can be used in conjunction with YouTube. Almost every example that Wald uses to lay out his thesis is available for free on YouTube. This helps immensely and I can't imagine reading the book without listening the the songs as one reads. The same is even more true for the chapters on Johnson's own songs. Wald is extremely knowledgeable and I would imagine there is something there for even the most die-hard Johnson fan.
In short, it's a music book written by someone who is clearly a fan of the style. There's enough sociological comment here to provide a strong thesis. Using YouTube in conjunction with the reading provides an in depth reading experience that I highly recommend. A warning though, I wouldn't recommend this book for anyone looking for a straight forward biopic of Johnson.
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