Overview

In this extraordinary reconstruction of the origins of the blues, historian Marybeth Hamilton demonstrates that the story as we know it is largely a myth. Following the trail of characters like Howard Odum, who combed Mississippi's back roads with a cylinder phonograph to record vagrants, John and Alan Lomax, who prowled Southern penitentiaries and unearthed the rough, melancholy vocals of Leadbelly, and James McKune, a recluse whose record collection came to define the primal sounds of the Delta blues, Hamilton reveals this musical form to be the culmination of a longstanding white fascination with the exotic mysteries of black music. By excavating the history of the Delta blues, Hamilton reveals the extent to which American culture has been shaped by white fantasies of racial difference.

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9780465018123

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Reviews

Marybeth Hamilton's gripping new book tells of seekers, ranters, scholars, oddballs, propagandists, and down-and-out loners, united in a search for the Mississippi Delta blues. More than anybody, she says, this quirky and dedicated band not simply recovered the blues but turned Delta music into one of the fundamentals of modern musical culture. -- Sean Wilentz

Author Information

Marybeth Hamilton is a professor of American history at Birkbeck College, University of London. The author of When I'm Bad, I'm Better, she is also a writer and presenter of features for BBC radio. She lives in London.

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