Bluegrass: A History (Music in American Life)
by Neil V. Rosenberg
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Paperback (01 September, 1993)
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Reviews (5)

Bluegrass (and baseball) History
Rosenberg draws from his experiences working with Bill Monroe and other bluegrass musicians in this compelling and intriguing history of bluegrass music.The early chapters sketch out an interesting history of folk music genres that laid the foundation for bluegrass.Rosenberg then provides special attention to Monroe's role in helping to create a new sound.I especially appreciated the metaphor between playing bluegrass music and playing baseball.Rosenberg explores the symbolic and literal connections throughout the book to provide a great way to understand how the music (and game) is played.

The story and glory of bluegrass - straight from the heart
Bluegrass music's greatest practitioners have always been plain-as-burlap folks who wouldn't give a hoot about dissecting and intellectualizing the music that pops out of them as naturally as sweat. As an appreciator of real deals, I wouldn't have it any other way. However, I'm glad that folklorist/musical historian Neil V. Rosenberg has been around for several decades now, poking his scholarly nose into the fascinating haystack that is bluegrass and putting the needles into cultural perspective. This sweeping and heartfelt book, Rosenberg's crowning achievement as the planet's foremost bluegrass oracle, will stand as the last word on the subject for a long, long spell.

Unlike rock 'n' roll, whose Big Bang genesis one fateful day in Memphis reverberated like a sonic boom, bluegrass had more fitful beginnings. The music's raw ingredients had been fermenting in Appalachia for untold years in the form of homemade "hillbilly" music before a shy Kentuckian named Bill Monroe began distilling them in the 1930s into a distinctive musical form. Monroe deliberately crafted the sound and personality of bluegrass and, much more round-aboutly, gave it its name. As the central figure in bluegrass, Monroe's patriarchal spirit looms magnificently large over Rosenberg's history, which, after all, is ultimately Monroe's story.

Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, arguably the next most important innovators in bluegrass, also figure prominently. In the 1940s, the two had been underpaid sidemen in Monroe's Blue Grass Boys band before abruptly striking out on their own in 1948 and becoming Monroe's main competition. Heavy turnover was a fact of life with the Blue Grass Boys, but the mercurial Monroe was outraged by the pair's defection and didn't speak to them for over twenty years. Transformed in the Sixties by television ("The Beverly Hillbillies") and movie ("Bonnie and Clyde") exposure into world-wide icons, Flatt & Scruggs achieved fame and commercial viability the likes of which bluegrass - including its inventor - had never known. Rosenberg's delineation of the famous Monroe/Flatt & Scruggs "feud" is one of the best things in the book.

Rosenberg's writing style can be stiff and he tends to exaggerate the significance of certain events, such as the use of a bluegrass soundtrack on an obscure experimental art film called "Football As It Is Played Today." Also, his laborious investigation into how the term "bluegrass" came to be applied specifically to the music is a bit of a yawn. The book is thorough almost to a fault, but it's petty to criticize Rosenberg's leave-no-stone-unturned work ethic. He has written the definitive bluegrass bible and clearly done it from the heart. If you appreciate true country music, of which bluegrass is the truest, this book will both delight and enlighten you, as it did me.

447 pages (including index), extensive notes, bibliography and discography, 40 pages of photos.

Excellent History of Bluegrass
If you're interested in the history of bluegrass music, I would recommend that you begin with this book.Rosenberg is an engaging writer and a fine historian.He also performed with Bill Monroe and has continued to maintain a strong presence in bluegrass music.The work rightly focuses on Monroe's early contributions to bluegrass music, and Rosenberg demonstrates how the musical structure and context is linked to major social issues and cultural expressions in American life.The connections that Rosenberg makes between bluegrass and baseball are fascinating and right on the money. ... Read more

Isbn: 025206304X
Sales Rank: 157172
Subjects:  1. Bluegrass    2. Bluegrass music    3. Folk Music    4. Genres & Styles - Country & Bluegrass - General    5. History & Criticism - General    6. History and criticism    7. Music   

Bluegrass Breakdown: The Making of the Old Southern Sound
by Robert Cantwell
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (01 September, 1992)
list price: $18.00
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Reviews (8)

It's that good
Someday maybe someone will write The Greatest Bluegrass Book Ever. Until then, this is the one.OK, it's not perfect...there are twenty-odd sentences (scattered about like annoying but harmless litter) that date the book.Otherwise, the love for and insight into the music is timeless.I was surprised to find myself in a state of breathlessness after reading some of the passages.It's that good.

"Academic psycho-drivel"??
I get the impression from several of the reviews I've read here that the posters frown on the academic study of bluegrass.This book certainly isn't for everyone.No book HAS to please an audience, nor does every book HAVE to be interesting from cover to cover. Cantwell does have a tendency to ramble at some points, but the information contained in this book is still worth the read.

Bluegrass Breakdown is a book for those interested in bluegrass from an ethnomusicological standpoint.Cantwell advances interesting theories regarding the African contribution to bluegrass to how bluegrass is identifiable through its use of the characteristic "high lonesome wail".Cantwell's goal here is clearly to explore cultural attributes and effects of bluegrass, and this is something I believe he does well. If you're looking for a book that's an easy to read, tail-wagging history of bluegrass, go for Cantwell's colleague Neil Rosenberg.Cantwell isn't your man.

Cantwell's writing is purely academic, again a style of writing that isn't for everyone.I don't believe Cantwell goes out of his way to discuss his bluegrass performance merits or intellect here. I found Cantwell's inquiries mostly unbiased and thorough, including those dealing with Bill Monroe.I don't believe Cantwell went out of his way to point out Monroe's 'hypocrisies' on any level, rather he constructed his writing to portray Monroe as a paradox, a 'mystery' man who's very hard to explain in the space of a few pages.

For all his interesting theories, Cantwell loses a star for stereotyping.His description of "Appalachian folk" at the Grand Ole Opry as "plain", "overweight" and "lacking in proper dental hygiene" (the book was published in '86) is annoying.This may be a part of Cantwell's research experience, however it's a cheap shot at a blanket statement about an entire culture of people.I thought good researchers were trained to avoid this kind of writing.Other than that, this book is something definitely worth the read ... particularly if you're up for the challenge.

No feel or love for the music
There are some things you've got to know to love, and other things you've got to love to know. Bluegrass music is one of the latter. And my feeling is that, while the author clearly knows quite a lot ABOUT bluegrass music, he doesn't KNOW bluegrass music. He treats it (very skillfully) as a sociologist treats some group of people he's studying but internally feels disdain for.

I got this feeling the most clearly in Cantwell's discussion of two important areas: Bill Monroe and gospel music. About Monroe, Cantwell delights in pointing out his shortcomings and hypocracies. Everybody admits that he had both. But what doesn't come out in this book is Monroe's love for the music, for the people, and for the lifestyle that the music comes out of. Sure, what neither Monroe nor Earl Scruggs did was truly original; but the fact that they popularized it and shared it with millions of others (yes, making money along the way) doesn't make them evil people.

Even worse is Cantwell's treatment of gospel music. I came away with the distinct feeling that most bluegrass musicians use gospel music as a tool to dupe the suckers. While I admit that there may be some bluegrass musicians who so use it, it has been my experience that many (perhaps most) bluegrass musicians I play with feel gospel songs deeply; we sing and play gospel music to express how we really feel about God, and we want to share that with others.

In summary, this book is very learned, and the author clearly knows a lot and expresses it skillfully, but it leaves you feeling completely flat and uninterested about the music. If you're looking for a critical book that helps you know many facts about bluegrass music, this is it.

On the other hand, if you're looking for a book that helps you to really know bluegrass music and to love it better, I would suggest instead reading "Bluegrass: A History" by Neil V. Rosenberg. Rosenberg is a guy who not only knows his subject well (the book being apparently just as well researched and painstakingly footnoted as Cantwell's) but Rosenberg clearly has the kind of love for the music and the people that it seems Cantwell lacks. Rosenberg's book is the kind you treasure and re-read. ... Read more

Isbn: 0306804956
Sales Rank: 739277
Subjects:  1. Bluegrass    2. Bluegrass music    3. Genres & Styles - Country & Bluegrass - General    4. History and criticism    5. Music   

When We Were Good: The Folk Revival
by Robert Cantwell
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Paperback (01 February, 1997)
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Reviews (3)

Cantwell stares into the well.....
Cantwell's insights are extremely valuable in the on-going evaluation of this area of America's cultural expression. Informed opinions are the best we can do in the study of the artifacts of the human experience in America.Cantwell's ideas have come to permeate,and dominate, the criticism of this long overlooked and misunderstood area of American music.His essay on Harry Smith is a revelation.

How did music become "FOLK" music?
Cantwell is an academician but sometimes even scholars can put together a fascinating book.The music we call "Folk" music more or less surfaced in the folk revival of the late 50s and early 60s but what was its prehistory and how did "Folk" music come to be what it is perceived to be today?In a music inherently archival and conservative, why is it generally aligned with the left end of the political spectrum when it gets political?Why is a solo singer with a guitar a "folk" musician but a solo piano player not?

Cantwell traces the music and events that led to the Folk Revival from the first commercialization of non-academic music (minstrel shows, for example) through its contacts with Broadway and concert singing (Paul Robeson, John Jacob Niles, etc.) through and its affiliation with communists, campers, beatniks and folklorists.The writing is dense and Cantwell doesn't always provide clear enough landmarks to help you follow his arguments, but his conception of the complexities that lay behind the folk revival is remarkable.

Thick, thick prose masks a compelling story
I approached this book with high hopes, and found myself sorely disappointed.It had gotten such great press when it came out -- with big write-ups in the "New York Times" and elsewhere -- but frankly, I found the style and grammar so convoluted that I could hardly understand it.Cantwell's overly-academic prose is so dense and thicketed that halfway through I realized I had absolutely no idea what his book was about.Something about the American folkrevival... but what exactly was he trying to say?Cantwell, a former '60s folkie who teaches American Studies at UNC Chapel Hill, applies a nearly impenetrable acadamese to his history(?)/analysis(?)/deconstruction(?) of the folk revival, but seems unable to rise above the terminology and crowded syntax he's adopted.His writing has a piled-on, house-of-cards style, full of incredible run-on sentences and needless verbal transpositions that make practically every sentence, paragraph and chapter difficult to follow.In short:arrrrrrgh!!!The most frustrating aspect is the boggling lack of narrative skills: Cantwell sets out to tell stories and convey experiences, but inevitably gets balled up in unreasonably convoluted, digressive rhetoric.Maybe I'm just a big dummy and can't understand all that smart-feller, egghead stuff...or maybe this guy needs a more forceful editor. ... Read more

Isbn: 0674951336
Sales Rank: 638051
Subjects:  1. Ethnic    2. Genres & Styles - Folk & Traditional    3. Music    4. United States - 20th Century (1945 to 2000)   

Ethnomimesis: Folklife and the Representation of Culture
by Robert Cantwell
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (01 December, 1993)
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Reviews (1)

Trenchant Study of Folklife Festival
This book is fascinating but somewhat over-written.Cantwell started out his research by working on a history of the Festival of American Folklife.When this project was curtailed due to foreseen circumstances, he reworked his research into a review and critique of the festival.The book examines the festival in terms of ways in which participants, performers, producers, audience members, and others in the cast of characters act out their various roles on the mall in Washington DC.Cantwell focuses his study on the idea that the festival provides a way to break stereotypes about other people.He develops his argument to emphasize that stereotyping can involve a range of factors including arbitration of meanings as well as enagements with "the other."Throughout the book, he makes deep inquiries into the salience of stereotyping within American history and culture.The book is best when Cantwell writes interpretive descriptions of what he observed at the festival and what he has researched in archives and libraries.At times, however, the bulky theoretical apparatus and the over-blown jargon detracts from the rich, sensitive insights that the writer makes about American (folk)life.Despite the opaqueness of many sections, this book is an amazing study of festivity in American life. ... Read more

Isbn: 0807844241
Sales Rank: 663896
Subjects:  1. Festival of American Folklife    2. Festivals    3. Folklore    4. History    5. Holidays (non religious)    6. Social Science    7. Sociology    8. Sociology - General    9. United States    10. Washington (D.C.)   

Can't You Hear Me Callin' : The Life of Bill Monroe, Father of Bluegrass
by Richard D. Smith
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Hardcover (01 July, 2000)
list price: $32.00
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Editorial Review

The legendary mandolinist and bandleader Bill Monroe wove his personal vision through more than 60 tireless years of recording and performing, inventing almost single-handedly the music that is now known--in a nod to his first band, the Blue Grass Boys--as bluegrass. In his thoughtful biography Can't You Hear Me Callin', Richard D. Smith argues that "no single artist has had as broad an impact on American music." As evidence, he highlights dozens of country and rock & roll musicians, both white and black, who were inspired by Monroe's powerful mandolin playing on the Grand Ole Opry's weekly broadcasts. (Chuck Berry's "Maybelline," for example, is an almost note-for-note copy of Monroe's instrumental "Ida Red.") Until now, however, Monroe's hesitation to reveal personal details has kept his personality as mysterious as one of the foggy mountaintops he sang about in his signature high lonesome tenor.

Bluegrass audiences required a rural, Southern authenticity from the "Father of Bluegrass," and Monroe was slow to deny their exaggerations. Smith, however, dismisses many of the backwoodsy stories that grew up around the Monroe myth, instead emphasizing truer biographical elements: loneliness, fear of abandonment, compulsiveness with women. Perhaps the book's main scholarly step forward is the depth of interviews and research the author conducted with the women in Monroe's life. Indeed, Smith remarks that "without exception," none of Monroe's platonic or romantic women friends had been interviewed before. These women reveal a second Bill Monroe, relaxed and gentle in private despite his imperious manner onstage.

Much of the book relies on the archives of the late Ralph Rinzler, a Smithsonian folklorist whose plans to write a Monroe biography were thwarted by his untimely death. Taking up where Rinzler left off, Smith employs solid scholarship and thorough fieldwork, yet he remains clearly in awe of his subject, ranking him as a "true giant of American music" on the level of Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Hank Williams, and Charles Ives. Can't You Hear Me Callin' is the first published attempt at a comprehensive, critical biography of Bill Monroe. Surely, it won't be the last--a testament to the enigmatic genius whose every note extended one of our most emotive and demanding musical genres. --Edward Skoog ... Read more

Reviews (20)

Currently the "Definitive" Bill Monroe Biography
This work is meticulously and exhaustively researched and includes wonderful stories and insights into the personality of the "Father of Bluegrass".So many other reviewers have remarked here about how interesting (and sometimes previously unrevealed) many of the stories are, in particular with regard to his need to be with many women.But one of the great attributes of this book is giving some insight into Mr. Monroe's music - his genious of a gift for "pulling music out of the air" and his innovation in turning the previously muddling mountain rhythms of his youth into a driving force of nature that was propelled forward by the bark of his Lloyd Loar Gibson F-5.The stories behind the creation of "Little Georgia Rose" and "Can't You Hear Me Calling", among others, were unknown to me, and I found fascinating and frankly poignant.

I consider this the definitive biography of one of the absolute giants of American music.

A GREAT START!
While this won't be the definitive work on Monroe it's the one that had to be written before anything further can be done. Someone once wrote that a biographer should be sympathetic to his subject. Smith might have overdone it a bit but I personally don't think it got in the way as much as some other reviewers. I think what he did do,however, is spend too much time trying to define what made Monroe tick. On the VERY positive side he didn't stoop to a chronicle of the endless "Monroe Stories" that circulate. (I knew one of his many banjo players quite well and he could entertain you for hours with "Monroe Stories"). Hilarious at a cocktail party, but that's where they belong. I think overall it's a great book and gave it only four stars because much more work needs to be done to define Bill if that's even possible but this is a great step in that direction.

But the road takes such a terrible toll...
This is without a doubt one of the best biographies I've ever read.I have been listning to Monroe's music for many years but until reading this book I knew very little about Monroe the person.After reading a well researched biography ,you should get the feeling that you really know something about the person.I now think I know what drove Monroe in the pursuit of his music.Very few people are as inspired and dedicated as he was and even if we were, fewer still would be able to stay the course as he did.
This book also shows what a hard life of sacrifice these entertainers lived, in order to pursue their dreams and at the same time provide us with so much enjoyment.As hard as this lifestyle might seem to us,I guess they felt it sure beat ploughing for a living. It seems so ironic that these people who are adored so much by their fans actually live difficult and lonely lives.
In addition to getting to know so much about Monroe;this book gives a great insight into the workings of the music business as well as the impact on all the friends, family and co- workers of the "stars".
I guess the most striking thing thing that I got from reading this book is that while these people sacrifice everything for their careers,we owe them so much gratitude for the enjoyment they put in our lives.
The words that Bill's son James had inscribed on on his father,s monument says it all:
"Walk softly around this grave for my father Bill Monroe rests here as the blue moon of Kentucky shines on." ... Read more

Isbn: 0316803812
Subjects:  1. 1911-    2. Biography    3. Biography / Autobiography    4. Biography/Autobiography    5. Bluegrass music    6. Bluegrass musicians    7. Composers & Musicians - Country & Folk    8. Folk Music    9. Genres & Styles - Country & Bluegrass - General    10. Genres & Styles - Folk & Traditional    11. Monroe, Bill,    12. Music    13. United States    14. Music / Folk & Traditional   

Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music (Cultural Studies of the United States)
by Benjamin Filene
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (01 June, 2000)
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Reviews (3)

Strong and Engaging, and Very Readable
Benjamin Filene's account of the origins of the category of "American roots music" is inexorably aimed at peeling away discursive layers within that very term itself to reveal the historical continuities and disjunctures at the heart of it. As Filene puts it: "What makes the formation of America's folk canon so fascinating, though, is that just as isolated cultures became harder to define and locate in industrialized America. the notions of musical purity and primitivism took on enhanced value, even in avowedly commercial music. Twentieth-century Americans have been consistently searching for the latest incarnation of 'old-time' and 'authentic' music." And Filene shows deftly how these categories are heavily inflected with racial and class issues.

But Filene's work begins much earlier, with the early 19th century effort in the US and later in the UK to collect and collate British folk song texts and sometimes the tunes that went this them. He demonstrates that this effort was thoroughly infused with romanticism--an attempt to record and preserve a "better" culture before capitalism, greed, irreligion and science came along. This grew from the German philosophical fascination with the 'Kultur des Volkes,' and into an impulse to forge a British national culture based on the English peasantry---even sometimes as found in the American Appalachian population (!)---and of course, an undertone, made explicit here and there--of racial purity.

This is especially significant in that popular interest in anything like folk song appears to have begun for African-American forms before Anglo ones--but was apparently stopped by the mythic valorization of whites as true folk. It seems that Anglo songs edged out other types as the basis of this new mythic canon that was forming, even as the Fisk singers and blackface minstrelsy became more popular in the 1870's. In fact, Filene argues convincingly that the way in which Black folk songs (spirituals) were collated preserved an idea of Black passivity and the exotic gaze in whites. Of course blackface minstrel performances reinforced this. The only other challenge was Lomax's collection of cowboy ballads, which he unsuccessfully tried to peg to the spirit of English rural culture. In the 1920's attempts at using a more racially and geographically inclusive cultural building with rural songs, white, black, and latino, were undertaken by poet Carl Sandburg.

Most of the book deals with the legacy of the cult of authenticity created and shaped by the Lomaxes from their field recordings and artist promotion. Their zeal for collecting and promoting their ideas of "true folk singers" cannot be underestimated, and in doing so, they shifted the canon away from whiteness, or so it seemed.Filene's account of The Lomaxes and Lead Belly perhaps best demonstrates the role of exoticism in producing authentic "American"ness at that particular time.The tours undertaken by the Lomaxes emphasize Lead Belly's virtuosity and expansive knowledge, but simultaneously construct him as a primitive, exotic "Heart of Darkness" figure that lay at the core of authentic American folk-song, and by extension lay at the periphery of contemporary, decadent, urban white Modernist America.When they started to get not only recording techonology, but official government and Library of Congress support, that added an entire new dimension of national culture building, as well as "documentary"-style authoritativenessto their work--as they literally began constructing a usable musical past for the United States.

In fact, Filene's analysis fits perfectly with Jacques Attali's theories on music, insofar as Lead Belly's music could be said to be a constructed and promoted by Lomax as a sublimated form of `animal nature' (ancestor) and racialized `primitive violence' (demon), exhibited in spectacle for the consumption of middle-brow and high-brow white audiences. Filene connects this racialized legacy of "authenticity" with the commonly found ideology that "roots" musicians even today are expected to be overly emotive,premodern, and non-commercial. In other words, they must perform "Otherness" for their predominantly white, bourgeois audiences in order to be authentic. To be fair, this impulse waxed strong in 1930's American. James Agee and Walker Evans. Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath," a number of popular magazines--, all played into this impulse. To be popular though, you couldn't be too successful, or you might compromise your authenticity. Sound familiar? The paradox of Roots music and Leftist politics, in the 1930's, both together in the Popular Front.

Moreover, it is perhaps speculative, but nonetheless provocative,to note thatLead Belly's popularity took place in the wane of the Harlem Renaissance (and into the 1940's), and quite possibly signaled for white consumption a sign of (or the `return' of) a more racialized `authentic n*ggerness' inscribed in black bodies, in contrast to the earlier"New Negro" and the later post-WWII racial agitators.For future artists, like Muddy Waters, the legacy of transformation took more commercial, but similar sets of turns. As Waters grew in popularity, his music shifted from Mississippi delta through country inflection--from acoustic to electric, in an attempt to adopt to urban styles...and then pressure to go back again to his more "primitive" beginnings for sales purposes. From the influence of Lomax to the commercial propagation of Leonard Chess and Willie Dixon, Filene follows Waters through his career to see the larger effect of "roots" discourse upon him and perceptions of him. We get an especially big eyeful when Filene takes extra time out to analyze Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie Man", just one of many popular songs invoking pagan, magical, feral and occult tropes to signify both danger and desire for the listening subject. Waters influence on the Rolling Stones and The Beatles is noted, and we begin to see how folk constructions of authenticity gain a larger influence in Rock and Roll, even as black artists in that genre fail to catch fire with white youth as strongly as later white rock musicians did--or as even strongly as white folk artists like Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger.

Later parts of the work demonstrate the emergence of folk institutionalism in Washington, from the Federal Writers Project, the Resettlement Administration, and the Library of Congress all contributing to this effort within the framework of New Deal politics, and the growing idea that folklore always has a functional element to play in a given society. Rather then "vestigial," folklore becomes "germinal." The search for musical folklore takes these institutions to the city for perhaps the first time in "roots" discourse. And also to war, as government agencies came under increasing pressure to turn all aspects of policy towards the effort in WWII. At the same time, a push to professionalize folklore in academia gained ground as well--graduate programs in folklore were established, thus created a contentious political history for every field of culture impacted by contemporary folklore studies, no less than in American Studies. Richard M. Dorson, an early Americanist, was also an early "Folklore" specialist, and worked tirelessly to construct methodologies for subsequent use. Lomax, too, became an academic--an early methodologist in 1960's ethnomusicology. And with the establishment of Folklore in the Academy of Letters, the annual Folk Festivalis born, largely again, through the aegis of the Smithsonian---yet another example of government sponsorship and cultivation of Kulturvolk as national basis, continuing to the present day. The modern day so-called "folk revival" is born as well through the efforts of Pete Seeger, who carried on the functionalist tradition of the Lomaxes in his efforts. Folk cultures have literally become American cultures--in the sense that they may even suck all the air out of that category, leaving little for other than these constructed myths.


I appreciate the way that Filene goes about his project, using a combination of comparative visual analysis of photographs, and album covers, as well as musical and lyrical analysis. His willingness to take into account close readings of song collections (like 'American Ballads', 'Our Singing Country', and 'American Songbag'), and productions of early government/corporate partnerships in radio programming (such as "We Hold These Truths") speak to the power of his interdisciplinary method. And in uncovering more than just two periods of attention to folk music (the 1930s and the 1960s) he demonstrates a longer, more resilient undercurrent of American modernity and its self-renewal.

Clamoring for more from Filene
This is a historically thorough yet immensely enjoyable work.Filene's take on "roots music" is refreshing--honest and free of gushing hyperbole; just cynical enough without ever becoming acerbic.

The stories Filene chooses to tell are illuminating and often funny--Leonard Chess faking his way through Blues hitmaking; Leadbelly being marketed as a country bumpkin in overalls when he preferred to wear suits.

There are so many more stories to be told, though--musicians to discuss, angles of the folk boom to expand, that I wish Filene would write more--perhaps another volume.

The Roots Behind Roots Music
Most books about popular music fall into one of two categories.You haveyour pretentious rock n' roll critic who writes in impenetrable and crypticprose (Hello Anthony DeCurtis and Robert Christgau) or you have purelyacademic writings that miss the heart of what is often music felt at a gutlevel.Then along comes Benjamin Filene.Filene offers up a brilliantdiscussion of the ways in which folk music became a part of our Americanconsciousness.Profiling the careers of such artists as Leadbelly, MuddyWaters, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan, "Romancing the Folk" presentsan extremely lively, readable and well thought out discussion of the wayfolk music was presented to the American public and ultimately accepted asa valid art form in its own right.In doing so, Filene breaks from thestale world of traditional popular music writing and gives you a fine readwhile you listen to "Blood on the Tracks," "GoodnightIrene," "Hoochie Coochie Man" or "Talking Union." ... Read more

Isbn: 080784862X
Sales Rank: 526816
Subjects:  1. Ethnic    2. Folk music    3. Genres & Styles - Folk & Traditional    4. History & Criticism - General    5. History and criticism    6. Music    7. Popular Culture - General    8. Popular music    9. United States   

Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes
by Greil Marcus
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (01 May, 1998)
list price: $12.95
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Editorial Review

While focusing on a select group of musicians performing privately in a briefwindow of time, noted music and culture writer Greil Marcus cuts to the core of theAmerican musical legacy to study it as a slightly blurred snapshot, full of shadow andmystery. Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes centers around thenow legendary recordings made by Bob Dylan and The Band in 1967, and how thismusic signaled a change in American music by capturing the essence of the momentwithin the context of a rich folk tradition. During these casual sessions they recordedmore than 100 songs, some originals, but most borrowed from barely remembered folk,blues, and country musicians.

This music they derived from had been part of the American fabric in an anonymous waythat can only be explained as folklore and myth, and they breathed new life into it whileadhering to its legacy. Though never intended for release, these recordings molded intothe tradition of music as oral history, and appropriately, a few tapes were passed hand tohand, then some were pressed as bootleg records, which then spread like rumors. Thisfolk revival conjured up a collection of timeless stories that many had heard in a slightlydifferent form without ever knowing who started them. Just as Dylan did with theBasement Tapes, Marcus's exhilarating book extends beyond music and into thepsyche of America, making the present more clear by putting the past into focus. ... Read more

Reviews (25)

Silly !
I know this book revolves around an abstract idea linking Bob Dylan`s basement tapes to an old , lost America ( the invisible Republic ) , but , oh dear , where do I begin ?

" Invisible Republic " is one of the worst books I`ve ever read , I just hope people don`t take Greil Marcus`s ludicrous theory on the basement tapes to be gospel ( no pun intended ) . This is a classic case of an author`s ego winning out to common sense .

It`s hard enough to read a book , if you`ve lost all faith in the author`s integrity , thanks to the laughably tenuous links that he uses to back up his theory , but when you have to wade through reams of portentious , almost unreadable prose , to reach the same conclusion , it`s almost torture . This book is full of pretensious , self-indulgent nonsense that only very gullible people could believe , but I suppose any Bob Dylan book sells , and Greil Marcus is fully aware of this .

One of the best books on Dylan and American music
I don't understand some of the other customer reviews of this book. Were the basement tapes created in a vacuum, or werethe ghosts of American folk music floating around that basement in Big Pink ? And could this book be more timely with the epochal Smithsonian 1997 re-release of the Harry Smith Anthology ? This is exactly the book I wanted and Marcus was the only one who could do it.Admittedly some of the ideas are far-ranging, perhaps far-fetched, but we have to give the creative critic the same artistic license we give the artist. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't but when it does it gives you a lot to think about and really helps to place Dylan within the context of the history of American music.And even since Dylan turned his back on the folk movement you can still hear echoes to this day of the influence of the Smith Anthology in his music. The way he absorbed it and reconfigured the songs (which are essentially the canon of American folk music)for his own purposes throughout his career, particularly during the making the tapes which may be his finest work, are key to understanding the timeless quality of his music. And how about that bravura opening section, the best description I've read of what was at stake during the first electric tour with The Band ?

Don't listen to the whining--approach prepared/open-minded
Greil Marcus gets a lot of flack, which is understandable since truly goodwriting never gets greeted with apathy. I personally would rather be flayedalive however than spend time with the sort of people who whine about howsupposedly prententious and wrong-headed he is. Marcus is a myth-maker, andto comprehend the book you simply can't just walk in unprepared and thencomplain afterward. It's assumed that you'll have heard at least theofficial Basement Tapes release, (And the full 5-cd set is easier to comeby than most people think--I even got mine off of ebay.)and have knowledgeof the lodestones of American roots music. As the title suggests, Marcus isdiscussing more than just Dylan. Those who complain that the basement tapesdon't deserve Marcus' analysis and are too slight miss the point entirely.Popular music tells a huge amount from our culture--a song like "BlueSuede Shoes" and the background behind it may tell you more about195o's America than a history book. Marcus analyzes the music Dylan made in1967 by delving into what shaped it and how what shaped it shaped ourculture. He follows the strand of thoughts that criss-crossed Dylan's mindwhen the Basement tapes were created--thoughts on the country's presentstate and its past, the remembered bits of old folk numbers belonging to avanished America,etc. He shoots back and forth through time and acrosstopics following these strands and by the end he has revealed that thebasement tapes reflect and showus--in all their mystery,silliness(especially that), simplicity,and complexity--a rich picture ofAmerica, both past and present. Now if you can't handle theunconventionality or daring of Marcus' approach--how his way of writingabout the music reflects the sprawling, limitless potential of teh musicand its influences--then please stop your bitching and find somethingsimpler. A 100 years from now, when historians wish to document andexperience our culture, one of the most powerful tools they have will bethe music of the day. You haven't understood all of the old, weird Americaif you haven't listened to singers like Dock Boggs, and those in the futurestudying our time will gain immeasurable insight from simply listening tothe basement tapes. Greil Marcus' book is joined at the hip to those tapes--it both explains and adds to their mystery, and thosewise enough to seehow the tapes reflect the times will see the same about this book. ... Read more

Isbn: 0805058427
Subjects:  1. 1941-    2. 1961-1970    3. Basement tapes    4. Dylan, Bob,    5. General    6. Genres & Styles - Folk & Traditional    7. Genres & Styles - Pop Vocal    8. Genres & Styles - Rock    9. Music    10. Popular music    11. Songbooks - Popular    12. United States   

Bound for Glory
by Woody Guthrie
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (01 February, 1995)
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Editorial Review

The original road novel--even though it takes the form of autobiography. If Guthrie didn't actually invent the footloose, no- strings-attached American hero (remember this guy Twain who wrote something about lighting out for the territory?), he certainly solidified the 20th-century version. Guitar slung over the shoulder as he sprinted to boost himself aboard freight trains, a man of the people equally at home with urban intellectuals, Guthrie incarnated for generations of Americans the artist as free spirit. This is the book that created the legend. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

Interesting account of legendary folksinger
Heard the taped version of BOUND FOR GLORY, the
autobiography of Woody Guthrie . . . he was the legendary
folksinger who traveled all over the US during the years
after the Great Depression--by boxcar, thumb and foot . . . the
songs he wrote and sang ("This Land Is Your Land," "Hard
Traveling," etc.) have become national treasures . . . I liked
this, in large part because of the narration of his son Arlo . . . my only regret is that I didn't get to hear more of the elder Guthrie's songs; rather, just small snippets were played.

Bound for Glory
I read this book many years ago, and I easily recommend it to anyone.You don't have to be a fan of folk music (I'm not particularly), or ascribe to any particular ideology to ejoy it.Woody Guthrie is a very intelligent and insightful but writes in a straightforward plain English without any of the pretense of some of the Beat road stories.

a great way to get to know woody
I enjoyed reading this book. Woody writes with a unique perspective and style. This book along with his fictional/ autobiographical-Seeds of Man are must reads to get to know this uniquely american hero (but Joe Kleins biography-Woody Guthrie, a life is the best way to really get to know Woody.) ... Read more

Isbn: 0452264456
Subjects:  1. 1912-1967    2. American composers    3. Biography    4. Biography / Autobiography    5. Biography/Autobiography    6. Composers    7. Composers & Musicians - Country & Folk    8. Genres & Styles - Folk & Traditional    9. Guthrie, Woody,    10. Musical Instruments - General    11. United States   

Deep Blues : A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta
by RobertPalmer
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (29 July, 1982)
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Editorial Review

This superb documentary vividly illustrates the enduring vitality of country blues, an idiom that most mainstream music fans had presumed dead or, at best, preserved through more scholarly tributes when filmmaker Robert Mugge and veteran blues and rock writer Robert Palmer embarked on their 1990 odyssey into Mississippi delta country.What Arkansas native and former Memphis stalwart Palmer knew, and Mugge captured on film, was that the blues was not only alive but still intimately woven into the daily lives of rural blacks.

Palmer, a former rock musician and Memphis Blues Festival cofounder best known for his bylines in The New York Times and Rolling Stone, had already chronicled the saga of Southern blues in his seminal book that provides the film's title.He's an astute guide, and Mugge underlines this role by pairing him with British rocker Dave Stewart (Eurythmics), whose avid interest in the music makes him an effective foil.

The film's real triumph, however, rests in the team's success in capturing modern day blues survivors and inheritors playing in the bars, juke joints, and barns of delta country.Palmer, who had returned several years earlier to the delta to capture these artists for his scrappy Fat Possum label, introduces us to the now-amplified but still elemental blues of R.L. Burnside, the late Junior Kimbrough, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Roosevelt "Booba" Barnes, and other keepers of the faith.Mugge, whose profiles of Al Green, Sonny Rollins, and other musicians probed their cultural and artistic contexts with intelligence and sensitivity, captures both the music and the milieu in crisp color footage. Deep Blues thus triumphs as a testament to the blues' deep roots and an unintentional eulogy for Palmer, who would pass away in the mid-'90s just as the gut-bucket music of Burnside and Kimbrough served notice that the blues were alive and kicking. --Sam Sutherland ... Read more

Reviews (33)

True Blues
Any fan of the Blues would be in Blues heaven viewing this incredible and wonderful documentary. Although the film was made in the early 90's, you will feel like you are taking a trip back in time, to the early beginnings of this powerful genre of music. The culture of the creation of the Blues, seems to have remained the same, as we tour Mississippi and get a taste of the different styles and wonderful performances by the musicians that not only keep it alive, but show us that it is still the heart and soul of the area.

Director Robert Mugge and guide Robert Palmer, who writes about the Blues(also joined by Dave Stewart for a while) take us right to the front porches, and inside the local juke joints for some fabulous performances. Palmer does a great job of filling us in on the history, but the real treasure of this film is the music. There are quite a few performances in this film that runs about an hour and a half, some even played on homemeade instruments, featuring several styles of the Blues.
The camera does and excellent job of getting up close and personal with the musician's emotions as well as the amazing way these artsits have with their instruments.

A few of the performances we are treated to are:
"Jr. Blues" - Jr. Kimbrough,"Daddy, When Is Momma Coming Home" -Big Jack Johnson (this was an extraordinarily moving song)"You Can Talk About Me" - Jesse Mae Hemphill, and "Heartbroken Man" -Roosevelt 'Booba' Barnes. There are many more performances that are just facsinating to watch and listen to. The musicians will move you, make their instrusments speak and cry to you, and give you a great taste of true Blues.

This film is an absolute treasure for fans...enjoy...Laurie

can the impact of "deep blues" be measured?
Bankrolled by rockstar superstar Dave Stuart and presented by Robert Palmer, author of the superb book of the same name, this film was a very timely voyage into the blues of missisipi. Timely because a number of the cast have died since this film was shot, including the presenter.

Traditional old blues haunts such as Memphis, Clarksdale and Greenville are visited, and fine artists relatively unknown at the time were recorded such as Big Jack Johnson, Booba Barnes and Lonnie Pitchford. Delta old timers Jack Owens, Bud Spires and Booker T. Laury also turn in fine, spirited performances. But for me the highlight is the attention given over to the more obscure "hill country" blues of north missisipi, featuring Jessie Mae Hemphill, R. L. Burnside and the late great Junior Kimbrough and his original juke joint in Holly Springs. Here the music extends from country blues to "drum and fife", a hypnotic musical form that predates blues all the way back to the revolutionary war, but which now faces extinction since the passing of Othar Turner (not featured here, but a close friend of Hemphill). The bonus items are very welcome, especially the extra performances by honkytonk genius Booker T. to the drunk audience comprised of Stuart and Palmer, and Lonnie Pitchford's demonstration of the diddly bow. Also included are extra audio tracks that were originally only available on the soundtrack album (now deleted).

This film helped to revive not just interest in country and acoustic blues in general, but the careers of all of the artists featured. This film is well shot, sounds great, and shares the passion and emotion of some great bluesmen and women. After this, try the "Feelin' Good" CD by Jessie Mae Hemphill. Not only is that a beautiful album, but Jessie's an invalid now who desperately needs the cash!

Sincerity!
Probably the best music video to ever come around in the late 80s/early 90s.----This is really what the REAL blues is all about!! Not someone prancing about in a Versace suit brandishing a gold-plated Gibson Les Paul!Thanks to the incredible and much missed Robert Palmer and Dave Stewart we have a glimpse of what blues must've sounded like (and looked like) back in the days of Charley Patton.
This is an earthy, funky and sincere look at some of the remnants of that period......the artists are stoned, they play a semi-tone away from the rest of the band,their equipment probably came from sears & roebuck ...but the end result is a raw, gritty and no-holds barred excursion into the basis of rock and roll!Hound Dog Taylor would've looked great also on this video (if he had still been around)
Check out the c.ds of these artists on the Fat Possum label.
If you wish to bypass B.B.King and his gold rings or Clapton and his Dolce & Gabana black suit then this IS the book/video for you! ... Read more

Isbn: 0140062238
Subjects:  1. Blues (Music)    2. Genres & Styles - Blues    3. Genres & Styles - Soul & R&B    4. History and criticism    5. Music    6. Musical Instruments - General    7. Music / General   

Searching for Robert Johnson
by Peter Guralnick
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (01 August, 1998)
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Editorial Review

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 ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Great Story, but nothing new
The recent packaging of the Complete Recordings of Robert Johnson has shown this bluesman to be one of the most influential musicians in American history. He is more popular now than he ever was in his lifetime. It is his life, rather than his legacy, that is the subject of music historian Peter Guralnick's book. Little is know about Johnson's life, but Guralnick brings what little there is to light in a fascinating work that is more like a ghost story than a biography.

Vivid description of the blues great
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
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 forsuch 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... ... Read more

Isbn: 0452279496
Subjects:  1. Biography    2. Biography & Autobiography    3. Biography / Autobiography    4. Biography/Autobiography    5. Blues musicians    6. Composers & Musicians - General    7. Composers & Musicians - Rhythm & Blues    8. Johnson, Robert,    9. Mississippi    10. People of Color    11. d. 1938   

Chasin' That Devil Music: Searching for the Blues
by Gayle Dean Wardlow, Edward M. Komara
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (1998)
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Editorial Review

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 ... Read more

Reviews (10)

Definte, interesting, scholarship, good CD
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!

Great Interviews
Chasin' That Devil Music is definitely not a very cohesive work. It is a series of articles by Blues scholar Gayle Dean Wardlow detailing the lives of and searches for early Delta Bluesmen. The parts about Charley Patton are especially interesting, with insights to other parts of his life besides his singing career. He also puts the spotlight on some forgotten giants of the Delta Blues, like Ishmon Bracey, one of the first recorded Blues artists. A CD with some rare recordings and interviews with these legends and their associates is included. While this is a fascinating book, I would not recommend it to anyone who is not a Blues fan.

A Valuable Piece for Blues Fans
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. ... Read more

Isbn: 0879305525
Subjects:  1. Biography    2. Blues    3. Blues (Music)    4. Blues music    5. Blues musicians    6. Genres & Styles - Blues    7. Genres & Styles - Pop Vocal    8. History & Criticism - General    9. History and criticism    10. Mississippi    11. Music    12. R&B   

The Story of the Blues
by Paul Oliver, Paul Oilver
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (01 May, 1998)
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Reviews (4)

Too much information in too little space
I'm not faulting the research, which is comprehensive; it is the format that the author chooses to present this information that is so difficult to digest. On any given page there are as many as 15 different names with barely enough information about each artist to differentiate them from one another. The book is so short and so densely packed that it is difficult to absorb the information. The author uses the regionalization of the Blues as it traveled from the South to the North as his basis for examination; occasionally throwing in lyrics or musical notes to support a point, but their inclusion seems to be haphazard at best. If you are looking for a tremendous amount of information about the Blues this is fine, but if you are looking for an enjoyable read, look elswhere.

Too much information in too little space
I'm not faulting the research, which is comprehensive; it is the format that the author chooses to present this information that is so difficult to digest. On any given page there are as many as 15 different names with barely enough information about each artist to differentiate them from one another. The book is so short and so densely packed that it is difficult to absorb the information. The author uses the regionalization of the Blues as it traveled from the South to the North as his basis for examination; occasionally throwing in lyrics or musical notes to support a point, but their inclusion seems to be haphazard at best. If you are looking for a tremendous amount of information about the Blues this is fine, but if you are looking for an enjoyable read, look elswhere.

what a story!
If you are looking for a book with mini-sized, hackneyed biographies of a few acclaimed blues artists, this isn't it.After all, it's not called, "Ten Blues Artists You Ought to Know About" (I wonder, how many could one refer to, providing substantial information and interesting details, in just 300 pages?).As the title clearly claims, this book tells "The Story of the Blues," the history of the beginnings of Black American music.Paul Oliver's intention is to present the magnitude of the blues, primarily as an important part of Black American life, but also as a form of entertainment that was, in no time, packing music halls both across America and Europe. The author refers to an extremely large number of artists not with the intention of name-checking them, but with a purpose of mapping the evolution of the blues and its transformation through the years as more and more people were exposed to it.So, if you're interested in reading about the history of the blues, and the development of American music as entertainment, up to and including rock'n'roll, I recommend you check this out.Yes, reading it can become a bit dizzying, but only because it's such an engaging read. ... Read more

Isbn: 155553354X
Sales Rank: 604961
Subjects:  1. African American musicians    2. Blues (Music)    3. Blues musicians    4. Genres & Styles - Blues    5. Genres & Styles - Soul & R&B    6. History and criticism    7. Music    8. United States    9. United States - General   

King of the Delta Blues: The Life an Music of Charlie Patton
by Stephen Calt
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (01 June, 1988)
list price: $14.95
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Reviews (3)

Jaundiced but interesting
Calt denigrates almost every other bluesman of that time and place--except, perhaps, Robert Johnson. Still, the book contains invaluable information about an elusive subject. Anyone who admires Patton's work andis interested in the period should be able to tolerate Calt's excesses. Hisbile is put to better use in his bio of Skip James--whom Calt knewpersonally. That very quirky (and sometimes fascinating) book becomes asmuch a study of the author as of his subject. And they deserved each other.

The ultimate portrait of the quintessential delta bluesman.
This book is the final word in the elusive character known as Charley Patton. Gayle Dean Wardlow's exhaustive researchand Steven Calt's vivid presentation create a text which I have read and re-read dozens of times.Unlike biased hacks such as David Evans , the two authors give a balanced ,even handed portrait of "Papa Charley" , the greatest bluesartist the Mississippi delta has ever produced....and that's sayingsomething.

Great research by Wardlow marred by Calt's poor presentation
This book is fairly essential to those interested in the music of Patton and his contemporaries, as it is based on the comprehensive research on the subject by Gayle Dean Wardlow, research which is largely unavailable elsewhere. Unfortunately, Calt's presentation of this information is poor at best, and downright malicious at times.His writing is typically peppered with ad homien attacks at his subjects, and this book is no exception.The book is also in desperate need of thorough editing... one sometimes wonders how it got published at all. ... Read more

Isbn: 0961861002
Sales Rank: 1021157
Subjects:  1. 1887-1934    2. Biography    3. Blues musicians    4. Mississippi    5. Music    6. Patton, Charley,    7. Patton, Charley   

African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia: A Study of Folk Traditions (Publications of the American Folklore Society New Series)
by Cecelia Conway
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (01 October, 1995)
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Reviews (5)

A MUST READ
I have only recently began playing the banjo and feel this book has taken me 100% closer to being the well rounded musician I aspire to be. If you are interested in history, music, and the banjo this is where to start!

Retrieving the real Black origin of the Banjo & its Playing
i HAD JUST handed in my MFA thesis to be published. I realized library priviledges I had had for 12 years would be gone in a couple weeks, I went to the music section of the FIU library and bumped into this book. I loved it, it loved me. I read it straight through--didnt go to work the next day.I have been studying and playing traditional American music for 40 years, and this is one of the best books on any level I have ever read. Ater talking about picking up the banjo for 40 years, I bought one right after I read this book and have bought another since.

So much of history and opinion about popular music is just congealed prejudice and wishful thinking.This is science and real life. The banjo is an African instrument, the traditional way of playing it is the African way of playing it. Not to speak of the non traditional post WWII guitar influenced Bluegrass way which simply adds as many blue and blues notes into the music as can be found.

What romanced me in this book is her interviews with African American banjo players from North Carolina and Virgina--some of whom have passed on since the book came out.The Photographs in there are great too.

Cece Also made a movie of these guys that was shown back when the book first came out.While it has been out of circulation for years, she will be showing it at the April 7-10 2005 Black Banjo Then and Now Gathering at Appalachian State College in Boone North Carolina.

You see that scene in the library was 6 years and three banjos ago. The book and the recordings and other development have brought many African American artists back to the banjo and back to the roots players that inspired Cece's book. Earlier this year (2004), I launched Black Banjo Then and Now, a group on Yahoo that carried forward where this book leaves off. We gather together Black banjoists from around the country, many scholars of the banjo including Cece, and folks of many types who honor or are interested in the Black legacy of the instrument. You might want to join us.

But back to this book: Buy it, give it to your friends, make sure every library has this book, make sure this book is taught in the schools,This is it!

The only thing better than this book is its accompanying CD!
Cecelia Conway and Scott Odell should be awarded an enormous fellowship from the MacArthur or Guggenheim folks for additional research. This book merits a readership among anyone who so much as owns a "banjer." The accompanying CD (called "Black Banjo Songsters" and available on the Smithsonian/Folkways label) is a bit academic in its notes and its repetition of songs, but hearing the likes of John Snipes and Dink Roberts go to town is thrilling. ... Read more

Isbn: 0870498932
Sales Rank: 477109
Subjects:  1. African Americans    2. Appalachian Region    3. Black Musicians And Their Music    4. Folk Music    5. Folk songs, English    6. Folklore & Mythology - Folklore    7. History and criticism    8. History: American    9. Music    10. Musical Instruments - Strings   

That Half-Barbaric Twang: The Banjo in American Popular Culture (Music in American Life)
by Karen Linn
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (01 August, 1994)
list price: $17.95 -- our price: $12.21
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Reviews (1)

Book one on the Banjo, Great book on American Culture
This is one of the best books on the nature of cultural perception and the wars between reality and the stereotypes of the dominant culture, as well as the relationship between capitalism and culture, race and capitalism in America, as well of class race and style. This book belongs in every home.

Linn deals with the social image of the banjo from its African and African American origins, to minstrelry's role in popularizing this instrument as well as the conflicts between the racism of minstrelry and the explosion of an instrument suited to popularize African American music. She continues by charting the now-forgetten age of the classic banjo from post civil war period until thefirst decade of this century, when manufacturers and teachers tried to elavate the five string instrument from its working class and African American roots, to becoming a polite and priviledged possession for the rich. She then charts the evolyution of the instrument and its image into the jazz age with the various 4 string banjos. Finally she deals with the images in the culture created by the persistence of the instrument in appalachia and its revival in the folk scene of the 1950s through today.

This is a gross summary of a subtle, well written book, that provides pictures about how stereotypes and misinformation based on the racial and class conflicts of society both cloud our knowledge of the real culture and constitutes part of it.

This is a fascinating book about American history and culture and race under capitalism, even if the reader is not interested in the banjo.If one is interested in the banjo in any way, you Need this book! ... Read more

Isbn: 025206433X
Sales Rank: 288687
Subjects:  1. Banjo    2. History & Criticism - General    3. History and criticism    4. Music    5. Musical Instruments - Strings    6. Musical instruments    7. Popular music    8. United States   

The Devil's Box: Masters of Southern Fiddling (Vanderbilt/Country Music Foundation Press)
by Charles Wolfe, Mark O'Connor
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (01 August, 1998)
list price: $18.95 -- our price: $12.89
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Reviews (2)

Give Charles Wolfe a Dram
Charles Wolfe's book will appeal to fiddlers, fans of old-time and country music, and music historians.Mark O'Connor's introduction provides an interesting contemporary perspective on the old-time music, and each chapter is a historical sketch of an important fiddler.When read as a whole, the book provides a good social history of fiddling and fiddlers from the South.I especially like the articles on the obscure but really important musicians, but the articles on fiddlers like Eck Robertson and Bob Wills are also great reading.The book is written in an enjoyable style, and Wolfe's knowledge of fiddling and music history is incredible.

Good research and writing by one of the best in this field.
Well-written, well-researched accounts of fiddlers whose time has passed but whose reputations as masters of the instrument grow with time. A bonus is Wolfe's research on many early recordings of these musicians and how they came to be. Highly recommended for anyone remotely interested in the subject. This author knows his subject. I went looking for CD samples of their music, which wasn't easy to find but was worth the effort. Jim Travis, Nashville ... Read more

Isbn: 0826513247
Sales Rank: 487095
Subjects:  1. Country And Western Music    2. Genres & Styles - Country & Bluegrass - General    3. Genres & Styles - Folk & Traditional    4. History & Criticism - General    5. Music    6. Musical Instruments - Strings    7. Social Aspects Of Music   

Last Cavalier: The Life and Times of John A. Lomax, 1867-1948
by Nolan Porterfield
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (01 April, 2001)
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Reviews (1)

Porterfield is to Lomax what Boswell was to Johnson.
I just finished LAST CAVALIER and without question consider it the best biography I've read in years. This book may well signal John Lomax's overdue emergence as a national treasure for his collecting and preserving of thousands of cowboy songs including "Home on the Range"--as well as for bringing musical artists like Leadbelly to national attention.Lomax already is a treasure in his home state of Texas.If you're a reading Texan and/or have any interest whatsoever in country or black music, the roots of American folklore, the ambiance of the Texas mileau in the first half of this century, or a profound character study of one of the country's great promoters of native culture, this uncompromising biography was written for you. However, the book transcends regionalism both in the writing and its universal perspective and message.One practically has to go to Flaubert's rendering of Emma Bovary to find such an incisive pyschological study of someone so well-meaning and successful, and yet so flawed, as John Lomax.Porterfield makes his character so relatable and understandable that we can love and hate him at the same time--and even identify with this American original, if only from a distance.The author also renders his impeccably researched material with all the skill and technique of a first-rate novelist.He is as authoratative and compelling in his treatment of Lomax as James Boswell was with Samuel Johnson. ... Read more

Isbn: 0252069714
Sales Rank: 892006
Subjects:  1. Biography / Autobiography    2. Composers & Musicians - Country & Folk    3. Entertainment & Performing Arts - General    4. Ethnomusicology    5. Folk Music    6. Genres & Styles - Folk & Traditional    7. Music   

Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War (Music in American Life (Hardcover))
by Dena J. Epstein
Average Customer Review:
Hardcover (December, 1997)
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Reviews (2)

A necessary work,a triumph of determination
Dena Epstein was a Chicago Librarian.She wasn't a paid musicologist, but she was determined to find out the story of African American music from the time we got off the slave ships until the Civil War.She emerged with a triumph.

No one who has not read this book really knows anything about African American, or for that matter American culture and music, worth knowing.Rather than the abstract dwelling on Africanism in this or that part of Black culture, she refutes the idea that the slaves were robbed of their culture she shows how the musical culture of West Africa was carried here and how it was modified and added to.

One of the most interesting aspects of Epstein's book for me is the record of the many different African instruments that were brought to the New World or were remade by Africans in the New World.The common idea that African instruments were limited to drums is refuted here strongly with her references to descriptions of different instruments found in the US and the West Indies. Along the way, Epstein was one of the first to reassert the AFricanness of the banjo and document it.

One interesting question which with the easiness of hindsight and futher research I raise is the issue of fiddling. Epstein documents that contrary to the popular stereotype that AFricans in the America were primarily banjoists or drummers, in the US until the point in the 19th Century when banjos became generally available and popular among most black and poor folks, African American musicians were most closely indentified with the fiddle. This is true not only in the US but in the West Indies.

Epstein does document how quickly after being "imported" African born musicians became excellent players of the fiddle, makers of fiddles, and even teachers of fiddling.She points out that the fiddle was so essential to the lives of planation African Americans that the question of whether the slave master should provide his slaves with a full time fiddler for slave dances was debated in circles who discussed how to manage slaves.

The question is really posed that such quick mastery of a very difficult instrument, and the rather rapid way it was used to play African based music could not be just a coincidence or a product of some kind of general African musical ability, but the product of retention of traditions that come from West African bowed instruments.Blacks who were fiddlers already in AFrica on African fiddle like instruments were enslaved, and their rapid progress another feature of transmission of AFrican culture into this country.

Of course, I am looking back from advances pioneered by Epstein and those who followed her.

Read this books and celebrate that triumph and learn what must be known about Black music and American culture.

Wonderful History of the Music of Africans in the New World
Epstein expertly culls available documentary evidence, including contemporary accounts as well as such sources as runaway slave notices mentioning that the slave in question was a fiddler, to fill in a lot ofgaps in our knowledge of how African music developed when it wastransplanted to North America. The book is well-written and full ofgroundbreaking research. It's absolutely essential if you are interested inthis subject. ... Read more

Isbn: 0252005201
Sales Rank: 1038136
Subjects:  1. Music    2. Musical Instruments - General   

The Stonemans: An Appalachian Family and the Music That Shaped Their Lives (Music in American Life)
by Ivan M. Tribe
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (01 March, 1993)
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Reviews (1)

Congratulations from their record producer
I was one of the several record producers to be blessed with an opportunity to work with certain members of the Stoneman family and fortunate to have written and produced what is currently being hailed aspossibly their finest album ever recorded. Originally recorded in 1978, Ihave just now released it for commercial sales to the public. It is titled:The Stonemans-Country Hospitality, and is currently enjoying good salesover Amazon.com's music site. It is a rare recording from an exceptionaland legendary musical family. When I first received this book of their lifestory I sat down and read it without stopping. I discovered at once howlittle I knew of this family I had worked so closely with. It is a grippingstory of the struggles they endured and obstacles they overcame in order topursue their love for music and survive as a family in the process. Dr.Ivan Tribe has done an outstanding job chronicling their life history andhas performed a service for us lovers of bluegrass and traditional mountainmusic which will place us forever in his debt. I am proud to have my albumlisted in the discography of this wonderful book. ... Read more

Isbn: 0252063082
Sales Rank: 1029973
Subjects:  1. Biography    2. Biography & Autobiography    3. Biography/Autobiography    4. Composers & Musicians - General    5. Country musicians    6. Genres & Styles - Country & Bluegrass - General    7. Pop Arts / Pop Culture    8. Stoneman Family (Musical group    9. Stoneman Family (Musical group)    10. Stoneman, Ernest V    11. United States