Big Road Blues: Tradition And Creativity In The Folk Blues

by David Evans

This book analyzes the process of composition, learning and performance of the Southern folk blues of black America. Never before has this musical form been examined so scrupulously. Evans traces the impact of commercialism, especially the phonograph record, on blues history, as well as the various local traditions that produce a given blues tune and text. The author has done extensive field work in Mississippi and provides here a structure for understanding not only the blues but almost any other oral literature from other cultures.

Genres: Music, Folklore

396 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

There is more than one author with this name

David Evans has been a Professor of Music at the University of Memphis since 1978. He directs the ethnomusicology Ph.D. program, the only such program with a specific specialization in southern U.S. folk and popular music. A blues researcher, he has been honored with a 2003 Grammy Award for his album notes to Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton.

Reviews

[David Bird · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is among the finest scholarly works on blues that I have ever come across. Perhaps the most important factor is that Evans sees categories as ways to understand the music and its creators. Rather than imposing an idea of 'originality,' he spent enough time with the artists to understand how they viewed creativity, and the interplay of tradition and originality. His work exudes respect for the tradition.

He establishes a distinction between 'popular' and 'folk' blues, with the former showing the influence of what we would think of as conventional notions of coherence and authorial role, and the latter showing the quite different aesthetic of the oral tradition. Rather than denigrating either sort, however, or looking for a supposed purity, he considers it a spectrum, with individual artists, and individual songs, at different points on it.

Evans recognizes that the juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated verses often creates a subtle unity, especially in the hands of a master. This is in contrast to earlier writers who mistook failure to follow their own preconceptions as evidence of no structure at all. John Fahey, for instance, said of Charley Patton, that his selection of verses showed “disconnection, incoherence, and apparent ‘irrationality,’” and that he selected his verses “at random from a large storehouse of them in his mind.” In other words, he assumes that Patton was smart enough to remember a massive number of verses, but seemingly oblivious to their meaning as he chose them for inclusion in a song. And this is about one of the acknowledged masters of the form, whom Fahey thought worth a monograph.

The centerpiece of the book is an analysis of the song 'Big Road Blues.' Perhaps because rare record collection is something of a competitive sport, and a literate culture tends to give priority to physical objects, there can be a tendency to treat the first recording of a song as the urtext from which later versions flow. Aspiring musicians often attempt to mimic these recordings in every nuance. This work should give pause to any with that perspective. Evans shows that while the song clearly derives from Tommy Johnson, that his recording of it was but a single instance, and that much of his influence happened in performance. The performances were unique. The record may have solidified the elements somewhat, and definitely had some influence among those who never met Johnson personally, but musicians who knew and learned from him incorporate elements not in the record which they say derived from him.

It should perhaps be noted that this is an academic book, and might be a bit dry for those who are looking for devil at the crossroads sort of legends. But for those who want to understand the non-supernatural origins of country blues, this is about as good as it gets.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the most academic book I've read on this subject so far. The guy is clearly a trained folklorist and anthropologist. The author also assumes a basic understanding of music theory. But don't count all of that too much; the guy never loses his common touch and there is a lot worthwhile here. My only issue is that he lost me in the last 100 pages or so. A brief summary of the findings would have been enough.

[Rebecca Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Professor of Musicology David Evans writes about the development of a local blues tradition. In-depth and recommended for the serious blues scholar.