Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues (Paperback)

~ (Author) "THERE HAS PROBABLY BEEN MORE ROMANTIC FOOLISHNESS written about blues in general, and Robert Johnson in particular, than about any other genre or performer of..." (more)
Key Phrases: rural guitarists, black record buyers, white blues fans, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Leroy Carr (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this combination history of blues music and biography of Robert Johnson, Wald, a blues musician himself (and author of Narcorrido), explores Johnson's rise from a little known guitarist who died in 1938 to one of the most influential artists in rock and roll. From the blues' meager beginning in the early 1900s to its '30s heyday and its 1960s revival, Wald gives a revisionist history of the music, which he feels, in many instances, has been mislabeled and misjudged. Though his writing sometimes reads like a textbook, and he occasionally gets bogged down in arcane musical references, Wald's academic precision aids him in his quest to re-analyze America's perception of the blues as well as in trying to decipher the music's murky true origins and history. Using a lengthy comparison of how white Americans and black Americans define the blues, Wald demonstrates how Johnson fit into the gray area between the two. Wald combines a short bio of Johnson with detailed analysis of his songs and the mysterious tales that are associated with him, giving a thorough account of Johnson's life, music and legend. The chapter on how white guitarists like Eric Clapton and Keith Richards interpreted who Johnson was and what he played really shows why he is not one of the many forgotten early 20th-century bluesmen. Wald's theories will no doubt cause passionate discussions among true blues aficionados, but the technical and obscure nature of much of his writing will make the book more of a useful reference resource.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The Washington Post

The congressional proclamation of 2003 as the "Year of the Blues" enabled all manner of film, concert and educational initiatives meant to raise public awareness and appreciation of a genre that Congress asserts "is the most influential form of American roots music." While few would argue otherwise, some have responded to all this Capitol Hill pomp by raising questions about the relevance of the blues in the 21st century, when the music's audience has skewed overwhelmingly white, and its most rabid supporters appear to be the fraternity of beer-ad music supervisors.

Elijah Wald is not so interested in what the blues means in its year of distinction, but he is very interested in how it came to mean something other than what it once did. In Escaping the Delta, he sets out to explore "the paradox of [Robert] Johnson's reputation: that his music excited so little interest among the black blues fans of his time, and yet is now widely hailed as the greatest and most important blues ever recorded." Wald sees this paradox as symbolizing a larger gulf between the blues as heard by the black audience in its own time -- who knew it as hip, popular music -- and a later, mostly white audience that romanticized the blues as "the heart-cry of a suffering people." Not a book about Johnson per se, Escaping the Delta is a thoughtful, impassioned historical essay about that gulf.

Wald spends the first several chapters laying out the prewar musical terrain in which the blues came to the fore, through a synthesis of murkily understood received culture and the skills of those who refined the blues into a consciously commercial -- not naively folk -- art. After a quick sketch of Johnson's life and a critical analysis of his recordings, Wald carries the story through to the folk-revival "discovery" of the blues in the 1950s and the British Invasion's canonizing stamp of the 1960s, then adds a coda in which he seeks to lay permanently to rest the resilient myth that Johnson met the devil at a crossroads and sold his soul for other-worldly musicianship.

If the first half of the story sounds a lot more interesting than the second, Wald may feel the same way. Escaping the Delta is most engaged in the early going, as he dismantles genre stereotypes via endearing tidbits such as that blues singer Memphis Minnie's set list included George Gershwin's "Lady Be Good" and that Johnson rated the Sons of the Pioneers' "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" among his favorite songs. The book is much more hurried and polemically loose on the downhill side, as Wald takes broad swipes at an uptight blues "cognoscenti" and cites more dully familiar anecdotes such as the time the Rolling Stones sat at the feet of Howlin' Wolf. A professional musician himself, Wald can regale a listener with pinpoint comparisons of Johnson and Kokomo Arnold recordings that were each waxed more than 60 years ago. Such record-geek soliloquies can clear out a cocktail party, but here they serve a reader well. For Wald is rarely less than convincing when he makes his case for what Johnson and the prewar blues audience were actually hearing in their own day.

Often it wasn't the blues. Repeatedly Wald drives home the point that neither the musicians nor the audience frequenting a Clarksdale, Miss., juke joint in 1937 likely limited their taste to visceral fare like Johnson's "Cross Road Blues." They'd probably never heard it. In Wald's estimation, black listeners tended to prefer the smooth, urbane vocals of the far better-selling (in Johnson's day) blues pianist Leroy Carr, and if the jukebox selections noted by a 1944 field recording team are any indication, some may have liked the "sweet band" leader Sammy Kaye better than either.

In this fashion Wald does not seek to temper admiration for Johnson and his brilliant Delta generation. Rather he wants to rescue them from a historical narrative he sees as having been edited by record producers (the blues were good business), folklorists (the blues were authentic) and Rolling Stones fans (the blues were outlaw), each of which had a separate agenda for the music.

But Wald's focus on folkies and Stones freaks is problematic. For all his interest in the complexity of black-white, blues-pop musical exchanges in the pre-World War II South, he largely ignores that dynamic as carried through to the volatile postwar context. The South is full of tales of white kids who during the segregation era snuck away to off-limits black nightclubs, and of black kids who grew up with their ears tuned to the Grand Ole Opry. Wald is rightly sympathetic to the frustrations of the latter (quoting Bobby "Blue" Bland, "it was the wrong time and the wrong place for a black singer to make it singing white country blues") but oddly uninterested in the experiences of the former. He mentions Elvis Presley mostly in passing and scarcely touches on the impact of postwar black radio. Yet that generation's story had every bit as much to do with evolving perceptions (and misperceptions) of the blues as did any folk revivalism or Stones evangelism.

Nevertheless, the best studies inspire further study, and the best music books inspire further listening. Escaping the Delta could well do both. Blank spots aside, one comes away respecting Wald's view that far too much time has been spent wondering if Robert Johnson really sold his soul to the devil, and far too little time listening at the musical crossroads where he actually lived.

Reviewed by Daniel Cooper

Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks; Book and CD-ROM edition (December 14, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060524278
• ISBN-13: 978-0060524272
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #61,450 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #8 in	Books > History > United States > State & Local > Mississippi
  #20 in	Books > Entertainment > Music > Musical Genres > Blues
  #99 in	Books > Entertainment > Music > Musical Genres > Popular

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Blues and Romantic History, March 30, 2004

By	Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues (Hardcover)

Many Americans have shown a great interest in "roots" music as part of a highly commendable effort to understand our country's life and culture. Much of this interest has, over the years, focused on the blues of the Mississippi Delta and, in particular, on the recordings of singer and guitarist Robert Johnson (1911 -1938). Johnson was an obscure figure in his day and his life and music remain the stuff of legend. He had two recording dates in 1936 and 1937. His music was rediscovered in the 1960s and since that time the sales of his collected recordings have numbered in the millions.

In "Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues" (2004), Elijah Wald offers a compelling study of the blues and of blues historiography focusing on Robert Johnson. Wald tries to correct what he deems to be the prevailing myths about Johnson: that he was a primitive folk artist caught in the Mississippi Delta who recorded and perfected a local traditional form of blues. Wald finds Johnson an ambitious young singer who had studied the blues forms popular in his day. Johnson, Wald argues, wanted to escape the Mississippi Delta and pattern himself on the urban blues singers, in particular Leroy Carr, emanating from the midwest and Chicago.

Wald finds that Johnson displayed a variety of blues styles in his recordings and that he was largely ignored by black music listeners of his day because Johnson's early efforts to capture an urban blues style were basically copies of more successful singers and because his songs in the Delta blues style lacked appeal to the urban and sophisticated black audience of the time.

Johnson's music only became well-known, Wald argues, with the rise of English rock, and with his rediscovery by a largely white audience. The tastes of black music listeners had moved in a mostly different direction towards soul, funk, rap, disco and did not encompass rural blues singers. The fascination of modern listeners with Johnson, according to Wald, is due to a romantic spirit -- a boredom with the life of the everyday -- and a search for a past full of authentic individuals who knew their own wants and needs and who projected themselves in their art.

Wald's book begins with a history of the blues before Robert Johnson focusing on the commercial character the music had at the outset. He gives a great deal of attention to the Blues queens -- Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey -- and to their smooth-voiced male sucessors, particularly Leroy Carr, as mentioned above, and Lonnie Johnson. These singers profoundly influenced Johnson's music and his ambitions to become a popular entertainer and not a cult figure.

The central part of Wald's book consists of a brief biography of Johnson -- summarizing the various speculations on his life -- and of a song-by-song discussion of his recordings. In this discussion, Wald discusses the music with a great deal of intelligence and understanding. He shows very clearly Johnson's debts to his more commercially sucessful predecessors and explains as well the variety of blues styles Johnson encompassed in his songs.

The final portion of the book carries the story of the blues forward beyond Robert Johnson's death. It shows how the music at first evolved into a combo style, again approaching popular music, which took blues into a different direction from Johnson's recordings. The book concludes with a discussion of Johnson's rediscovery, and the discovery of other Delta blues singers, beginning in the 1960's.

Wald clearly knows his material. For all his criticism of the mythmaking cult over Johnson, Wald's love for this music shines through, as he is the first to admit. Upon reading this book, I spent considerable time relistening to Johnson's music and felt I came away with a better understanding and appreciation of it than I had before. The goal of every book about music should be to encourage its readers to return to (or get to know) the songs, or what have you, themselves. The book meets this goal admirably.

There are few books on the blues that manage to be both scholarly, critical, and inspiring and Wald's book is one of these few. I do not find Wald's thesis as unsusual as he claims it to be, but it certainly will be worth exploring by listeners and readers who do not have a large backround in this music.

In music, a fair and careful historical account will in the long run perform a greater service to the music and the artists than will legends and stereotypes. The Delta singers discussed in this book, Robert Johnson, Son House, Skip James, Charley Patton, were musicians of talent. Understanding their story can only increase the listener's appreciation of the blues.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Missing CD information, December 5, 2004

By	Elijah Wald - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This edition contains a two-song CD, but no information about what songs are on it. The songs are Robert Johnson's "Traveling Riverside Blues," take one (the only Johnson cut that was missing from the Sony "Complete Recordings" box), and Leroy Carr's "Mean Mistreater Mama," which was the model for Johnson's "Kindhearted Woman Blues."

(I am the author, and would not have filled in a star rating if I could have left that section blank.)

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Up Jumped the Blues, August 7, 2004

By	doomsdayer520 (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues (Hardcover)

This is a fascinating study of the history of blues music, as distilled through the life of Robert Johnson. As the book progresses, Wald gives us a much clearer understanding of the man and the music on their own terms, and expertly deconstructs the myths and stereotypes that have been propagated by recent revivalists. Modern white fans have a much different view of Robert Johnson and his contemporaries than they had of themselves. The blues was once mainstream pop music among black audiences in the first half of the 20th century, constantly evolving and striving for sales and popularity, rather than the static and mythologized roots music envisioned by today's purists.

Wald provides convincing evidence that Robert Johnson was far from the troubled loner and brooding genius who single-handedly revolutionized western music in miserable backwoods locations, as current fandom mythology would tell you. Instead, Johnson was a professional entertainer who dreamed of being that era's equivalent of a rock star, as did most other blues musicians of the time. Johnson's music, while certainly compelling, wasn't even that unique or original when seen in the context of its time, as Wald finds evidence that he often simply updated the works of his major influences like Leroy Carr, Son House, or Kokomo Arnold. The blues musicians of the time were also adept at many different pop and mainstream styles, and Johnson was no exception, as Wald shows us through Johnson's decidedly non-Delta songs like "They're Red Hot" or "From Four Till Late." Interestingly, Johnson wasn't even very successful or influential in his own time (the 1930's), and was mostly unknown even in the blues community until he was rediscovered by white revivalists in the 60's.

Wald continues into an examination of how contemporary black audiences and musicians of the time had vastly different views of the music than modern cult purists, and the music of Robert Johnson and his contemporaries can only be truly understood by looking at it in these proper contexts. In the end we find that Johnson was still a genius but was much more human than his modern legends suggest. The same goes for the blues in general. Other reviewers have noted that Wald's writing tends to be overly academic and boring. I concur that he does tend to over-elaborate on his arguments, providing voluminous evidence for points that he already made convincingly long before. That leads to believable research breakthroughs, but a book that is sometimes much more wordy than it needs to be. But other than that minor weakness, this is an outstanding accomplishment of musicology, and will prove fascinating for blues aficionados as well as anyone interested in the history of American music. [~doomsdayer520~]