If you want to understand the blues, buy this book!
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I've read quite a few books on the blues, but haven't read anything quite like this excellent book. Palmer very effectively analyzes the blues and explains the unsung role played by Robert Lockerwood in bridging the various guitar styles. Palmer also provides a very interesting insight into the complexity of blues singing--something that will make people realize that the often repeated phrase "all blues songs seem to be the same" is simply not true. Whether you are a blues connaisseur or wanting to learn something about the blues, do buy this book. Cheers
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An Aussie heads for Clarksdale
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I read this wonderful book here in Canberra, Australia's national capital, far far away from the Delta. It was hard to put it down. But I did so just long enough to revisit favourite blues tracks by The Masked Marvel [aka Charley Patton] and Henry [Texas]Thomas...so evocative was Palmer's text that their voices crossed the decades and brought me to tears. Palmer surmounts the tyranny of time and distance and brings the Delta and its music to life for me on the other side of the world. My Road Atlas of the USA is open in front of me...Clarksdale here I come. Phil Teece Canberra Australia
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Simply The Best
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There's no other way to put it, this is simply the best book out there on the blues both as a music form and as force in shaping American culture. At once simple and concise, yet broad and in depth enough to tell a very complete story, this one work should satisfy everyone from the novice to the experienced blues fan. Meticulously researched, Palmer uses Muddy Waters as a jumping off point to explore the history and evolution of the blues as music as well as the society and culture from which it sprang. He peppers his work with amazing anecdotes, from the story of Robert Johnson, the Band meeting a dying Sonny Boy Williamson, an aging Howlin' Wolf giving a phenominal concert that add color to his story and helps make his frequent forays into musicology more tolerable to the non-musician. Best of all is the sense of time and place the book evokes, from plantations and dark swamps in rural Mississippi, to the noisy, crowed streets of South Chicago at the peak of the Great Migration, to small clubs and long forgotten juke-joints. I read this book for the first time 10 years or so ago and have probably reread it 5 times since. I keep coming up with new things to admire about the book every time. That so much richness can be packed into such a short readable work is amazing. This book triumphs over everything else written on the subject and only leaves you wanting to explore further.
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It stays with you
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I read this book about 15 years ago, sometime after it first came out, and have probably re-read it three or four times since then. I haven't read it in about 10 years, but continually recommend it to friends who want to know something about the blues. A great read.
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This book is the BIBLE of juke joint fables!
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Robert Palmer wrote the most colorful stories on the blues I have ever read. The way he describes the way Ike Turner "accidently" discovers distortion/fuzz by having his amps fall off of the top of his station wagon as he is racing across state lines (narrowly outrunning the local law enforcement) in order to catch the last ferry crossing the Mississippi to make it to a second gig, wow! I would have loved to have knocked back a few tall cool ones with this guy!
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