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Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues
by Elijah Wald
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Amistad (2005-01-01)
ISBN: 0060524278
EAN: 9780060524272
Dewy Decimal #: 709
Paperback: 368 pages
Edition: Amistad Paperback
Release Date: 2004-12-14
SKU: T071022-2123
Condition: Good
Comments: Very good overall condition. Tight binding. Book has some underlines. CD not included. A tear on front cover. Ships same day or next in a bubble mailer. Enjoy.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
The life of blues legend Robert Johnson becomes the centerpiece for this innovative look at what many consider to be America's deepest and most influential music genre. Pivotal are the questions surrounding why Johnson was ignored by the core black audience of his time yet now celebrated as the greatest figure in blues history. Trying to separate myth from reality, biographer Elijah Wald studies the blues from the inside -- not only examining recordings but also the recollections of the musicians themselves, the African-American press, as well as examining original research. What emerges is a new appreciation for the blues and the movement of its artists from the shadows of the 1930s Mississippi Delta to the mainstream venues frequented by today's loyal blues fans.
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Customer Reviews
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perhaps rating was a little too harsh
Rating  (1)
Date: 2007-10-11
2 out of 7 customers found this reveiw helpful
i was disappointed to find out that the book's only "new" evidence is some sales data of delta blues music and a few first hand accounts that once in a while these blues musicians played a tune that was not blues.
In addition his long description about music sales and the development of the blues, Wald uses these first hand accounts to prove his points, while at the same time he ignores stories that don't fit into his argument-which may makes his claims specious to say the least.
lets say Mr. Wald and I may not have have the same fundamentals views about the blues. I contacted Mr. Wald to mention important aspects which I believe he may have carelessly overlooked. To Mr. Wald's credit he took great time and care to explain to me (an amateur blues reader) what his points were and why they are important to blues history. These were facts that I may be missed when reading his book. so i must say this worth may be worth looking at .
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Robert Johnson -- Still not the whole story
Rating  (4)
Date: 2007-05-07
1 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
Escaping The Delta should be one of the first books a blues novice reads as it helps fill out the outline of the music, the role of the delta and the music of Robert Johnson who did escape the delta only to be drawn back to die in its mystery and danger. There was a lot more to say about Robert Johnson and the delta at the time this book was written: very little original oral history research has been done in recent years (with the exception of the recent Howlin' Wolf book), very little extensive research into European blues magazines (the only first person interviews of the classic blues musicians -- few were done in America) has been done because full collections are hard to find (if they exist), and the author failed to interview the only people alive who really knew Robert Johnson (Honeyboy Edwards,Robert Lockwood Jr., and Robert Townsend for example). Thus little new light is shed on Johnson's life, even where he is actually buried (in Little Zion church on the Money Mississippi road outside of Greenwood) and why he is there and not thrown into the river as most bluesmen would have been. With all respect to Mr. Ward who has written an excellent book, I did all of that research in the process of researching the lives of Alex "Rice" Miller (Sonny Boy Williamson II) and Robert Lockwood Jr.. I did have the opportunity to communicate with Ward about his Josh White book (Sonny Boy Williamson II played on his last album). There is more to say on the history of the blues and the delta as well as Robert Johnson.
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Not What It Says It Is
Rating (1)
Date: 2007-01-11
5 out of 12 customers found this reveiw helpful
This volume is a book about something. But its not about Robert Johnson, its not about escaping the Delta, and its hardly about the blues. It is more a rambling chronology of popular music, and the ways in which Blues is nested into that overall context. It is as much or more about musicians other than blues musicians. And when it focuses on "blues musicians", it goes to great and repeated lengths to demonstrate they were not really "Blues" musicians at all. We understand them to be such today, the author labors, because Blues sold. In fact, the author repeats, the "Blues" musicians we have come to revere liked to play, and did play, other kinds of music as much or more than blues, including ragtime, tin pan alley, fife and drum and spirituals. See? They weren't really blues players at all. They were versatile musicians forced into this genre by the music business, many of them preferring to play something other than blues. Huh.
Further, the author posits that latter day (white?) blues musicians are not really playing the blues either. They are acting "as if", affecting musical styles and inflections that are not their own. Sort of make believe blues performing. Imitating the blues musicians of yore, and not authentically expressing themselves in their own right. Despite Fred McDowell's and John Lee Hooker's assertion that "the Blues is a feeling", the author would apparently have us believe that it was only THEIR feeling, not one available to others.
Suffice it to say, the author and I do not share a fundamental view of what the Blues is. Would I buy, read, or reccommend this book. No, no and no. It isn't what it says it is. And what it is is superficial in its depth of understanding of Blues expression, and how and where that happens.
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Wonderful!
Rating  (5)
Date: 2005-12-04
4 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
This was a great book and a must-have in any music biography library. It's more than a music biography though. Many of us in this day and age have a mythical idea of who Robert Johnson was, we've all heard the story of how he learned to play guitar by selling his soul to the devil at the crossroads and other such lore, but this book cuts through all that and gets down to the real brass tacks: Robert Johnson was anything but popular in his time, when bands like the Mississippi Sheiks were much more popular.
The historical information in the book is fascinating, it strips away all of our romantic notions about juke joints and mythological bluesmen and shows the real Delta of the early part of this century: gritty, unbelievably impoverished and depressed, dangerous and frightening. Truly the land that begat the blues.
This book is truly excellent.
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A Refreshing Insight
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-08-24
3 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
Elijah Wald's book is outstanding in the sense that he not only gives an insight to the music, but also the the personalities of second-generation bluesmen, with a strong emphasis on Robert Johnson. Mr. Wald has speculated somewhat on what has not been recorded, but much of this is corroborated in one way or the other, mostly based on interviews. The opinions and memories conveyed might have been warped, twisted or recolletions embellished, nevertheless, I strongly believe that this shall stand the test of time and stay as one of the alternatives to the romantic and platonically idealized view of the "bluesman".
I did not read the book as an academic work, but as an in-depth story of Robert Johnson, his predecessors and successors. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Mr. Wald's approach was objective and far from the forced devotion that some hardcore fans of delta blues have shown. As art creates its heroes after they have lived, the concept of the delta bluesman is stereotypically formed in the minds of most people. This is especially emphasized in liner notes, booklets in box sets, and even in some books. Yes, they might have been hard-drinking, womanizing, dangerous people who have shown the delicate side to their personalities in their music and lyrics, but the fact that first and foremost they were entertainers of high calibre is frequently overlooked.
Robert Johnson has only one recorded solo, his lyrics do not have consistency, but John Hammond has selected Johnson for the famed concerts in 1938. The music had already changed by the time the British Blues Explosion took place, but the neo-bluesmen had to find some heroes to identify themselves with. Bluesmen who had died young, hoboed from town to town, drank and smoked excessively and played around with women fitted perfectly with their conception of life, which evolved into sex, drugs and rock'n roll.
I believe that Mr Wald's book is invaluable for uncovering this mystique about the bluesmen, and helping us blues lovers in accepting these people as "people" first.
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