Customer Reviews

Chasin' That Devil's Music Searching for the Blues - Book/CD (Softcover)

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I agree with Lampic's review in that the author comes across as egocentric while compiling the history of the Mississippi Delta blues, offering some inappropriate and disrespectful comments while interviewing seventy-five-year-old bluesmen. Regardless, the content of this book is very important and valuable to anybody who is as passionate about the music from this era as me.

We are all familiar with Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton, Skip James, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Elmore James, and Son House. These names give us the true definition of Mississippi Delta blues and have now obtained a well-deserved legendary status, becoming subjects of countless music compilations and biographies. But they weren't the only blues singers from the Delta. The author recognizes this and gives us strikingly vivid and detailed accounts of the lives and contributions of the lesser-known bluesmen; namely, Ishmon Bracey, King Solomon Hill, and Tommy Johnson (although Tommy Johnson has recently been a subject of intrest after the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" phenomenon). These men have long been overlooked and their music was shadowed by that of Skip James and Robert Johnson during the blues revival of the 1960s.

One particularly interesting portion in this book is the re-examination of Robert Johnson's death, which has been the subject of many-a-legend. Wardlow rehashes the search for Johnson's death certificate and offers his own ideas, based on his own research and interview sessions, about how Johnson really died.

We also learn the fates of many of the other performers, which is often heartbreaking--these men are my heroes, and it's so sad to learn that many were victims of alcoholism and extreme poverty.

The accompanying CD is an excellent item indeed. Not only do we have audios of Wardlow's interviews, but many previously unreleased (or thought to have been lost) recordings from Skip James, Tommy Johnson, King Solomon Hill, and Ishmon Bracey (among others). What's even more remarkable is that these came from Wardlow's own private collection of blues 78s--I'd love to see this guy's record library!

Wardlow also includes an extremely comprehensive discography for each bluesman, arranged by catalog number for Paramount and Yazoo. This list alone is worth the price of the book--I now have a basis for building my own collection (although I tend to stick to the cheaper and less fragile CD releases, rather than trying to track down the original 78s!)

If you look beyond the writing style and the occasional arrogance, this book is excellent for its historic information and accompanying music collection.

Chasin' That Devil Music will interest hard-core devotees and scholars of rural blues, even if its narrow focus will occasionally frustrate and exasperate them. Those of us who love American roots music owe Gayle Dean Wardlow a huge debt of gratitude for the many years he has devoted to the search for the the human beings behind those scratchy, classic 1920s/1930s Mississippi blues recordings. This book puts between covers a number of articles, most of them fairly short, Wardlow has published in blues and record-collector periodicals since the 1960s. It's fat with detail and minutia of varying degrees of interest, and here and there it stops to debunk some hoary blues legend. It contains a wealth of terrific photographs, and a splendid CD accompanies it. That's the good news. The bad news is that nothing especially profound or engaging is going on here. Wardlow treats the musicians as if they existed in a vacuum except when they recorded, played, or interacted with one another. The reader longs for some effort to put these talented men (there are few women here) into a broader cultural context, or for some attempt to relate rural blues to the other varieties of rural Southern folk music, white as well as black, that helped to create and shape it. Then, again, maybe it isn't fair to criticize an author for not writing the book you wish he'd written. It can, however, be fairly charged that because of its reprint format, the book lacks structure and narrative drive. Wardlow ought to have attempted to use the articles simply as the first draft of a coherent, fully realized book. As it is, Chasin' That Devil Music is best ingested in small bites.

I praise this remarkable book as a biased reader. I've had the great pleasure over the years to discuss early blues research projects with Mr. Wardlow, a fine Southern gentleman. It is no exaggeration to say that we would know far, far less about the details surrounding the early recordings of our pioneer Delta blues musicians without his field research. He began his search in the early 1960s when many elderly blues artists, or associates and relatives, were still alive. This book details his amazing journeys into a mysterious world. He kept these details from being lost forever. As blues (like jazz) becomes part of our academia, Mr. Wardlow's work will become more recognized. This book isn't a rehash/compilation of previously published material. Wardlow is a research hound like no other. Read this book and then take it with you down Highway 61 through the Delta. You will be overwhelmed.

This book is not intended as a complete story of the blues or of even the Delta blues, but it is a facinating book none the less. I am not an expert but to follow the researching of these blues figures, some of whom we do not even know what they looked like, how they died or where they are buried, is facinating reading. Unlike rock stars today, these men and a few women, produced their art in almost total obscurity to the culture of today and we owe Wardlow a debt of gratitude for his field work. Sure their are more comprehensive books, but none better to show how the facts and the music was rediscovered when and if available.

Wardlow tells his researching story, so it is not a chronological history book of the Delta Blues, it is devided by research types, for instance a section about finding documents , and a section about interviews. Yet it gives finally good tools to know about the Delta Blues big picture.

Young Delta Blues fans who for instance are not aware that there were a question how many people by the name of Willie Brown were at the same place and time playing Delta Blues, it is not only good introduction of the question but also the possible answers.

I have this book about a year or two and I keep coming back. It is essential if you are really a Delta Blues fan who wants to extend the knowledge about the Delta Blues and it's history, this is the first place. It can serve as appendix to any article or book about the Delta Blues, so when reading other stuff, coming back to this book is going to be a ritual for anyone having this book.

Whatever you think of Wardlow's own views, this is the kind of definite real scholarship someone who wants to become really knowledgeable about Mississippi blues and its economic and cultural milieu. Despite what various comments are, Wardlow's writing is not overly intellectual, rather it is very factual. It is record collectors and blues lovers like Wardlow in the late 1950s and early 1960s that laid the basis for their being original Delta blues records (and their peers in old time "white" music)to be reissued and who "found" so many of the original blues stars. Wardlow provides a lot of good basic information about the recording practices for the music, and the situations of lots of blues players you may or may not have heard of. These are all articles where he announced his or others work making the discovery. \
One thing to read is his article that clearly illustrates that Robert Johnson never said, thought, or was rumored to have sold his soul to the devil. No one who knew Johnson ever said that. One informant took the story that Tommy Johnson told and told a credulous folk nik "blues expert" this in the 1960s, the rest has become a minor industry.
The CD provided is fun and provides some players most havent heard of. The Western Swing tune about selling the soul to the Devil has beocme part of my performance repertpor!

Gaylon is one of the world's top authorities on pre-war blues and his book is true masterpiece. After collecting for 25 years I still learned a lot from this great book.

This book is a reprint of a collection of articles written by blues scholar Gayle Dean Wardlow. The collection contains interviews of blues musicians who helped shaped today's blues music and people who knew artists that no longer lived. The book also contains a CD of rare delta blues recordings made by the artists covered in this book.

This book IS a reprint of previously published articles, not all of them written by Wardlow (for instance, an interview with Wardlow by other reporters is included), but apparently most of these articles have never appeared in book form. They are fascinating for a reader interested in learning more about how people like Charley Patton and Robert Johnson, long dead, are more celebrated today than would have been imaginable, let alone possible, in their own times. Wardlow was one of the early "investigators" who unearthed obscure recordings and salient information about the musicians who made them. This book is largely an account of that difficult process. Now, when it's relatively easy to hear the complete recorded works of Son House, Blind Willie Johnson, et. al., it's hard to imagine what blues fans had to go through to hear this music 40 years ago. Wardlow's book is a revelation and an inspiration also. The "free" CD is wonderful, too, and worth the price of the book itself.

Am I the only one who noticed that this is not a book about ancient blues masters but a monument to its author? Come on,folks,read between the lines - Wardlow talks to old blues musicians just to add his own (patronising) remarks how they forgott everything and he knows better.The argument about King Solomon Hill is nothing but one big ego-trip,he was frustrated for 18 years because his theory was ridiculed at the time,so now he can point that he was right the whole time.Wardlow never mentioned why he got hooked on blues music in the first place (except that he found that old 78 records were collectors items) but through the whole book (collection of articles) shows his white-boy-turns-blues-knows-it-all attitude,treating blues music with intellectualism typical for someone who collect recording dates and musician's names,just so he can later point that he knows those dates and names better than old musicians who recorded them.True,if its not for Wardlow and people like him,many of these names would be completely forgotten,but I find his writting style annoying and CD is the best thing about the whole book.