In Search Of The Blues
Black Voices, White Visions
Published on 3. January 2008
Book
Paperback/Softback
256 pages
978-0-7126-6446-2 (ISBN)
Description
Everyone knows the story of the Delta blues, with its fierce, raw voices and tormented drifters and deals with the devil at the crossroads at midnight. In this compelling book, Marybeth Hamilton radically rewrites that story.
Archaic and primeval though the music may sound, the idea of something called 'Delta blues' emerged in the late twentieth century, the culmination of a longstanding white fascination with 'uncorrupted' black singers, untainted by the city, by commerce, by the sights and sounds of modernity.
Written with exquisite grace and sensitivity, at once historically acute and hauntingly poetic, the book is an extraordinary excavation of the blues mystique and provides a deeper understanding of the place of blues within wider American culture.
Archaic and primeval though the music may sound, the idea of something called 'Delta blues' emerged in the late twentieth century, the culmination of a longstanding white fascination with 'uncorrupted' black singers, untainted by the city, by commerce, by the sights and sounds of modernity.
Written with exquisite grace and sensitivity, at once historically acute and hauntingly poetic, the book is an extraordinary excavation of the blues mystique and provides a deeper understanding of the place of blues within wider American culture.
Reviews / Votes
Fascinating... Hamilton's book deserves to be read, particularly by those who think they've read it all before. In future, all searches for the blues must start here -- Robert Sandall * Sunday Times * Provocatively entertaining...Assiduously researched and beautifully written, what this book reminds us is that the blues has always meant something quite different to white audiences than to black ones -- Mick Brown * Daily Telegraph * Iconoclastic... Marybeth Hamilton proves herself a fine and sensitive detective... It shakes the foundation myth of so much music that followed, as well as explaining a great deal about what it is to be a record collector, itself a dying calling in the age of the iPod -- Caspar Llewellyn-Smith * Observer * An important and often beautifully written piece of historical revisionism * Observer Music Monthly * Hamilton has a keen, unforgiving eye...an eloquent book about people making the forgotten important -- Roz Kaveney * Time Out * Hamilton's outstanding book profiles the folklorists and collectors who shaped the concept of Delta blues... A plausible and provocative book. And it has transformed my view of the blues -- Ludovic Hunter-Tilney * Financial Times * Hamilton tells such a good story that she turns a work of scholarship into a page-turner * Times Literary Supplement * Hamilton has done a good job of researching a subject that blues fans will find fascinating * Prospect * Evocative and engaging -- Tim Willis * Sunday Telegraph *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Illustrations
app 15 integrated pictures
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
309 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7126-6446-2 (9780712664462)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
05/2009
1st Edition
Vintage Digital
€12.99
Available for download
Previous edition
Marybeth Hamilton
In Search Of The Blues
Book
01/2007
Jonathan Cape
€36.11
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Person
Marybeth Hamilton was born in California and teaches American history at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is the author of When I'm Bad, I'm Better: Mae West, Sex and American Entertainment.