Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music

Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music PDF Author: Ted Gioia
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393069990
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 463

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Book Description
“The essential history of this distinctly American genre.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution In this “expertly researched, elegantly written, dispassionate yet thoughtful history” (Gary Giddins), award-winning author Ted Gioia gives us “the rare combination of a tome that is both deeply informative and enjoyable to read” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). From the field hollers of nineteenth-century plantations to Muddy Waters and B.B. King, Delta Blues delves into the uneasy mix of race and money at the point where traditional music became commercial and bluesmen found new audiences of thousands. Combining extensive fieldwork, archival research, interviews with living musicians, and first-person accounts with “his own calm, argument-closing incantations to draw a line through a century of Delta blues” (New York Times), this engrossing narrative is flavored with insightful and vivid musical descriptions that ensure “an understanding of not only the musicians, but the music itself” (Boston Sunday Globe). Rooted in the thick-as-tar Delta soil, Delta Blues is already “a contemporary classic in its field” (Jazz Review).

Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music

Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music PDF Author: Ted Gioia
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393069990
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 463

Get Book Here

Book Description
“The essential history of this distinctly American genre.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution In this “expertly researched, elegantly written, dispassionate yet thoughtful history” (Gary Giddins), award-winning author Ted Gioia gives us “the rare combination of a tome that is both deeply informative and enjoyable to read” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). From the field hollers of nineteenth-century plantations to Muddy Waters and B.B. King, Delta Blues delves into the uneasy mix of race and money at the point where traditional music became commercial and bluesmen found new audiences of thousands. Combining extensive fieldwork, archival research, interviews with living musicians, and first-person accounts with “his own calm, argument-closing incantations to draw a line through a century of Delta blues” (New York Times), this engrossing narrative is flavored with insightful and vivid musical descriptions that ensure “an understanding of not only the musicians, but the music itself” (Boston Sunday Globe). Rooted in the thick-as-tar Delta soil, Delta Blues is already “a contemporary classic in its field” (Jazz Review).

Escaping the Delta

Escaping the Delta PDF Author: Elijah Wald
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062018442
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Book 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.

Delta Blues

Delta Blues PDF Author: Carolyn Haines
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781935562078
Category : American fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
An outstanding collection of short stories from writers aching to sing you the blues.

Blues Traveling

Blues Traveling PDF Author: Steve Cheseborough
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1604733284
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
At a crossroads in the Mississippi Delta, Robert Johnson is said to have sold his soul to the Devil so that he could become a guitar virtuoso and King of the Delta Blues. Blues Traveling: The Holy Sites of Delta Blues will tell you where that legendary deal was supposed to have been made and guide you to all the other hallowed grounds that nourished Mississippi's signature music. Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, Memphis Minnie, Jimmie Rodgers, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Howlin' Wolf, B. B. King, Little Milton, Elvis Presley, Bobby Rush, Junior Kimbrough, R. L. Burnside-the list of great artists with Mississippi connections goes on and on. A trip through Mississippi blues sites is a pilgrimage every music lover ought to make at least once in a lifetime, to see the juke joints and churches, to visit the birthplaces and graves of blues greats, to walk down the dusty roads and over the levee, to eat some barbecue and greens, to sit on the bank of the Mississippi River, and to hear some down-home blues music. Blues Traveling is the first and only guidebook to Mississippi's musical places and blues history. With photographs, maps, easy-to-follow directions, and an informative, entertaining text, this book will lead you in and out of Clarksdale, Greenwood, Helena (Arkansas), Rolling Fork, Jackson, Natchez, Bentonia, Rosedale, Itta Bena, and dozens of other locales that generations of blues musicians have lived in, traveled through, and sung about. Stories, legends, and lyrics are woven into the text so that each backroad and barroom comes alive. Touring Mississippi with Blues Traveling is like having a knowledgeable and entertaining guide at your side. Even people with no immediate plans to visit Mississippi will enjoy reading the book for its photos, descriptions, and lore that will broaden their understanding and enhance their appreciation of the blues. Steve Cheseborough is an independent scholar and blues musician. His work has been published in Living Blues, Blues Access, Mississippi, and the Southern Register .

King of the Delta Blues

King of the Delta Blues PDF Author: Gayle Dean Wardlow
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 1621906620
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
Born 130 years ago in the heart of Mississippi, Charlie Patton (c. 1891–1934) is considered by many to be a father of the Delta blues. With his bullish baritone voice and his fluid slide guitar touch, Patton established songs like “Pony Blues,” “A Spoonful Blues,” and “High Water Everywhere” in the blues lexicon and, through his imitators, in American music. But over the decades, his contributions to blues music have been overshadowed in popularity by those of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, and other mid-century bluesmen and women who’ve experienced a resurgence in their music. King of the Delta Blues Singers, originally published in 1988, began a small renaissance in Patton and blues research. And now, with the wide availability of Patton’s complete discography on CD and as digital downloads, this completely revised second edition continues the story of Charlie Patton’s legacy. Gayle Dean Wardlow and the late Stephen Calt (1946–2010) originally probed Patton’s career in the Mississippi Delta, his early performances and recordings, and his musical legacy that continues to influence today’s guitarists and performers, including such musicians as Jack White and Larkin Poe. For this second edition, Wardlow and Edward Komara refined the text and rewrote major sections, updating them with new scholarship on Patton and Delta blues. And finally, Komara has added a new afterword bringing Patton into the contemporary blues conversation and introducing numerous musical examples for the modern researcher and musician. The second edition of King of the Delta Blues Singers will further cement Patton’s legacy among important blues musicians, and it will be of interest to anyone absorbed in the beginnings of the Delta blues and music biographies.

Deep Blues

Deep Blues PDF Author: Robert Palmer
Publisher: Viking Adult
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
"Deep Blues" offers a concise, authoritative account of the music's Afircan beginnings, its early evolution, and its transformation from a backcountry good-time music into today's modern blues and rock and roll.

I'm Feeling the Blues Right Now

I'm Feeling the Blues Right Now PDF Author: Stephen A. King
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1617030112
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
In I’m Feeling the Blues Right Now: Blues Tourism and the Mississippi Delta, Stephen A. King reveals the strategies used by blues promoters and organizers in Mississippi, both African American and white, local and state, to attract the attention of tourists. In the process, he reveals how promotional materials portray the Delta’s blues culture and its musicians. Those involved in selling the blues in Mississippi work to promote the music while often conveniently forgetting the state’s historical record of racial and economic injustice. King’s research includes numerous interviews with blues musicians and promoters, chambers of commerce, local and regional tourism entities, and members of the Mississippi Blues Commission. This book is the first critical account of Mississippi’s blues tourism industry. From the late 1970s until 2000, Mississippi’s blues tourism industry was fragmented, decentralized, and localized, as each community competed for tourist dollars. By 2003–2004, with the creation of the Mississippi Blues Commission, the promotion of the blues became more centralized as state government played an increasing role in promoting Mississippi’s blues heritage. Blues tourism has the potential to generate new revenue in one of the poorest states in the country, repair the state’s public image, and serve as a vehicle for racial reconciliation.

Development Arrested

Development Arrested PDF Author: Clyde Woods
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1844675610
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
A new edition of a classic history of the Mississippi River Delta Development Arrested is a major reinterpretation of the 200-year-old conflict between African American workers and the planters of the Mississippi Delta. The book measures the impact of the plantation system on those who suffered its depredations firsthand, while tracing the decline and resurrection of plantation ideology in national public policy debate. Despite countless defeats under the planter regime, African Americans in the Delta continued to push forward their agenda for social and economic justice. Throughout this remarkably interdisciplinary book, ranging across fields as diverse as rural studies, musicology, development studies, and anthropology, Woods demonstrates the role of music—including jazz, rock and roll, soul, rap and, above all, the blues—in sustaining a radical vision of social change.

Blues Musicians of the Mississippi Delta

Blues Musicians of the Mississippi Delta PDF Author: Steven Manheim
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1439667098
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description
The Mississippi Delta blues run as deep and mysterious as the beautiful land from where the music originates. Blues legends B.B. King, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, and countless other greats came from this region. The Delta blues, born as work songs in Mississippi cotton fields, was played on city street corners and in rural juke joints. With the Great Migration of African Americans in the first half of the 20th century, the Delta blues also made its way from Mississippi to Chicago. The sound of the blues would become the blueprint for the birth of rock and roll in Memphis in the 1950s. The era of the great Delta blues musicians is over, but their legacy remains an important chapter in American music. This book contains images of these important performers and the rich Delta landscapes that influenced their music.

Blues From The Avon Delta

Blues From The Avon Delta PDF Author: Mark Jones
Publisher: Record Press
ISBN: 9781909953765
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
In 1967, the fledgling, Bristol based, Saydisc label released its first country blues record, by Anderson Jones Jackson, with Noël Sheldon on jug. By 1968, it was helping Sunflower, Kokomo and Highway 51, three 'pop-up', independent, DIY blues labels, to get to market. These were mere toes in the water and in 1968 Saydisc created the celebrated Matchbox label to release contemporary, British country blues and LPs, transcribed from original 78s, of classic, pre-war, US country blues. Matchbox also pressed the popular, Austrian, Roots label for the UK market and, later, issued contemporary, American blues and transcriptions of Library of Congress recordings. Later again came the Bluesmaster Series. Saydisc released well over 100 blues LPs between 1967 and 1987, when it moved exclusively to CD. By 1968, blues was becoming increasingly popular in the UK, though the focus was mostly on electric blues bands. In July, however, Matchbox released the first LP of home-grown, British, country blues. The time was right and Blues Like Showers of Rain made a big stir. John Peel played it on his Nightride radio show and invited most of the artists up to London to record BBC sessions. The major labels picked up on the buzz and most of the artists were snapped up. Matchbox carried on the momentum over the next few years but eventually shut in July 1977. It returned in 1982 with the extremely well-received Bluesmaster Series, an ambitious undertaking that resulted in 38 LPs along with two 2-LP sets. Amongst other things, this book includes: - Information on every Saydisc-related, blues record released (and one that never saw light of day). - Images of all Saydisc's blues record sleeves. - Images of all Saydisc-related Sunflower, Kokomo, Highway 51 and Ahura Mazda record sleeves. - A cameo appearance by The Village Thing label, which represented 'what came after the blues'. - Memorabilia provided specially by the label owners and other archives/collections, much not seen in print since the 1960s and 1970s (if ever). - Active input from those who were there. - A section on Saydisc's hook-ups with Blues World and November Books' Blues Paperbacks series.