The land where the blues began

Available (1)

Location	Collection	Call #
Pleasant Hills Public Library	Nonfiction	781.643 L83
Location	Pleasant Hills Public Library
Collection	Nonfiction
Call Number	781.643 L83

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Summary

Published Reviews

Booklist Review: "Half a century ago, the son of the folklorist who introduced Leadbelly to a larger public began his own recordings of African American oral traditions. If it were a novel, Alan Lomax's long-awaited account of his adventures in the Mississippi Delta would be called "sprawling" and a "must read." For although it documents black American folk life as richly as The Journal of American Folklore, it is as delightful and hard to put down as any fictional epic. Indeed, at times many may suspect Lomax of fiction. Young readers must be forgiven for wondering whether his account of interracial proprieties under Jim Crow is factual when he reports being booked once for shaking hands with a black man in public, then again for joining a black family on its porch. More seasoned readers may be forgiven for wondering whether he collapses the intervals of time separating his adventures. But no reader will question his authentic joy in the search for such bluesmen as Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Big Bill Broonzy, and Son House. Some years ago, Lomax was a legend in his own time. Today he is more: a national treasure. ~--Roland Wulbert"
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Publisher's Weekly Review: "Working for the Library of Congress and other cultural institutions, legendary roots-music connoisseur Lomax ( Mister Jelly Roll ) visited the Mississippi Delta with his father, folklorist John Lomax, and black folklorist Zora Neale Hurston in the 1930s; with African American sociologists from Fiske University in the 1940s; and with a PBS film crew in the 1980s, researching the history of the blues in America. Addressing this wonderfully rich vein of scarcely acknowledged Americana, Lomax has written a marvelous appreciation of a region, its people and their music. Burdened early with now long-forgotten technology (500-pound recording machines, etc.) and encountering pronounced racial biases and cultural suspicions about black and white people mixing socially and otherwise, Lomax sought out those in the Delta who knew Robert Johnson and Charlie Patton and others acquainted with musicians once less well known, such as Doc Reese, young McKinley Morganfield (Muddy Waters), Dave Edwards, Eugene Powell and Sam Chatmon. Traveling across the South ``from the Brazos bottoms of Texas to the tidewater country of Virginia,'' Lomax discovers the plantations, levee camps, prisons and railroad yards where the men and women of the blues came from and the music was born. In a memoir that will take its place as an American classic, Lomax records not just his recollections but the voices of hard-working, frequently hard-drinking, spiritual people that otherwise might have been lost to readers. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved"
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Additional Information

Subjects	Blues (Music) -- Mississippi -- Delta (Region) -- History and criticism. African Americans -- Mississippi -- Delta (Region) -- Music -- History and criticism. African Americans -- Mississippi -- Delta (Region) -- Social life and customs. Delta (Miss. : Region) -- Social life and customs.
Publisher	New York :Pantheon Books,1993
Edition	1st ed.
Language	English
Description	xv, 539 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Bibliography Notes	Discography: pages 515-518. Filmography: pages 519-522. Includes bibliographical references (pages 509-514) and index.
ISBN	0679404244
Other	Classic View