Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell [Hardcover]

Michael Gray (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2009

By the time he died in 1959, Blind Willie McTell was almost forgotten. He had never had a hit record, and his days of playing on street corners for spare change were long gone. But this masterful guitarist and exquisite singer has since become one of the most loved musicians of the prewar period, spurring Bob Dylan to write, “Nobody can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell.” Now this richly evocative and wide-ranging biography illuminates for the first time the world of this elusive and fascinating figure, a blind man who made light of his disability and a performer who exploded every stereotype about blues musicians.

 

Traveling the back roads of Georgia, interviewing relatives and acquaintances, and digging up fascinating archival material, author Michael Gray weaves together his discoveries to reveal an articulate and resourceful musician with a modest career but a mile-wide independent streak. Whether selling high-quality homemade bootleg whisky out of a suitcase, bragging about crowds of women chasing him, or suffering a stroke while eating barbecue under a tree, McTell emerges from this book a cheerful, outgoing, engaging individualist with seemingly limitless self-confidence.

 

This moving odyssey into a lost world of black music and white power is also an unprecedented portrait of the culture, language, and landscape of the deep South--the violence, the leisurely pace of life--and of the blues preservationists who ventured into its heart. A long, thoughtful stare into the world of Blind Willie McTell, Hand Me My Travelin’ Shoes is sure to find a place among the classics of American music history.

 

To learn more about the book, visit www.handmemytravelinshoes.blogspot.com

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Blind Willie McTell may be the most important Georgia bluesman to be recorded in the first half of the 20th century, but so little information about him has survived that, for Gray, who's previously written about Bob Dylan and Frank Zappa, getting the story is itself part of that story, making this less a biography of the blind musician than a memoir of the effort to uncover his past. At its best, the results are colorful anecdotes about Gray and his status as a British tourist in rural Georgia, where being neither a Yankee nor a white Southerner usually makes it easy for him to get along (save for one disturbing encounter with a state prison security detail). At other times, however, Gray pads his account with arguably superfluous details, including descriptions of the public libraries he visited during his research. He is quick to acknowledge where the facts leave off and his speculations begin, and unafraid to offer critical judgment, especially when it comes to evaluating the racist culture in which McTell lived. Those who were hoping for a definitive biography of McTell may be disappointed, but enough of his story pokes through for even nonblues fans to grasp his enduring appeal. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"The most comprehensive work to date on the bluesman."  —Booklist

"Gray paints an evocative portrait."  —Kirkus Reviews

"A superb meditation on a rare American figure, one who grows more mysterious and iconic the more Gray reveals of his facts and context; a brilliant exhibition of how musical study becomes cultural study; and an elegant and passionate book that expands until its subjects seems to be time and memory themselves."  —Jonathan Lethem, author, The Fortress of Solitude

"The blues is the bedrock of popular music, and while its story has been told many times, rarely has it been told as effectively as this."  —Record Collector

"More than a search for the bluesman Blind Willie McTell, this is an evocation of a whole vanished world . . . Part biography, part genealogy, part history, part travel writing, this wonderful book is suffused with empathy for its subject."  —Independent on Sunday

“[An] assiduous work of reclamation."  —Observer

"A wonderful book about a spellbinding musician."  —Guardian

"Gray . . . presents not just an authoritative portrait of the great bluesman, but also vivid history of the South in general and the area of rural Georgia that was mostly home to McTell, with an especially vivid account of the Civil War." —Uncut

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press; First Edition edition (September 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556529759
• ISBN-13: 978-1556529757
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #685,708 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

MICHAEL GRAY IS A WRITER, critic & broadcaster recognised as a world authority on the work of Bob Dylan and as an expert on rock'n'roll and blues history but also writes about travel and history and gives A-V-illustrated talks at arts festivals, theaters, colleges, museums and major libraries.

IN 2006 HIS BOOK "THE Bob Dylan Encyclopedia", a 750,000 word hardback, was published in New York and London. In 2007 came "Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell", published in hardback by Bloomsbury in the UK.

THE FORMER WON THE C.B. Oldman Prize for an outstanding work of scholarship and research, and the latter was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography. Both were published in paperback in the UK in 2008.

"HAND ME MY TRAVELIN' SHOES" is now published in hardback in North America by Chicago Review Press (September 2009).

HIS CAREER BEGAN AT YORK University (UK), where he studied under the brilliant, controversial critic F. R. Leavis, and as a student journalist interviewed the distinguished historian A. J. P. Taylor and the now-legendary American guitarist Jimi Hendrix.

HIS PIONEERING STUDY OF BOB Dylan's work, "Song & Dance Man", first published in the early 1970s in Britain, America and Japan, was the first critical study of this crucial contemporary cultural figure, and is now recognised as a classic in its field.

"THE ART OF BOB DYLAN" was published in the UK & USA in 1981-2, and a selection of pieces on Dylan, "All Across The Telegraph", co-edited by Gray and including work by Christopher Ricks, Aidan Day and David Pichaske, was published in 1987. In 1993 an early version of "Song & Dance Man III"'s major study of Bob Dylan's use of the blues was published in Germany and extracted in Berlin newspaper die Tageszeitung.

IN 1996 HE CO-AUTHORED "The Elvis Atlas: A Journey Through Elvis Presley's America", published in hardback in New York by Henry Holt.

THE MASSIVE THIRD EDITION OF his Bob Dylan study, "Song & Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan" was published by Cassell Academic in London in 1999 and in the US by Continuum in March 2000. A reprint appeared in the US in April 2001, when Gray delivered talks at a number of US universities, and a fourth reprint was published in New York and London in 2002. A fifth reprint was issued in 2004, a sixth in 2006 and a seventh in 2008. It is still in print.

MICHAEL GRAY HAS also lectured for the Institute for Folklore Studies in Great Britain & Canada, the Northern Ireland Arts Council, at York & Exeter Universities and Goldsmiths College, London, and at conventions in Austria, Manchester & Leicester. In 2006 he was the closing speaker at the Dylan Congress at the Institut fur Sozialforschung, Goethe University, Frankfurt. Also in 2006 he spoke by invitation at the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland Ohio, gave a packed address at the New School in NYC and attracted the largest audience for any outside speaker in over two years when he spoke at the University of Texas at Austin. In March 2007 he gave the closing address at the University of Minnesota's three-day academic symposium on Dylan's work, at which other speakers included Christopher Ricks and Greil Marcus. In early 2009 he toured in the UK, Ireland, Canada and the USA, and in October 2009 is giving audio-visually illustrated talks and book signings as follows:

THURS OCT 8, 11am: Farmingdale College (SUNY), Long Island NY
THURS OCT 15, 7pm: Douglass Theatre, Macon GA
THURS OCT 22, 7pm: Georgia Southern University, Statesboro GA
FRI OCT 23, 7pm: Averitt Center For The Arts, Statesboro GA

WHEN NOT TRAVELING MICHAEL GRAY lives in France with his wife (food-writer Sarah Beattie).


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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars formidable work, August 25, 2009

By 

Steven Hugh Wilson "support442" (vera, ok United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell (Hardcover)

A well-researched well-written book. My only beef with all of the civil war background stuff, etc., was that it substantially delays the appearance of Mr. McTell.

Once Mr. McTell finally shows up, the book moves at a lively pace and contains a wealth of information about Mr. McTell previously unknown to the general public. And as can be expected, Mr. McTell turns out to be a much more complex character who lived a more complex life than what one might expect.

Although he never had a hit record, Willie lived a decent working-class life as a local musician and his superior musical skills earned him the respect of both white and black audiences as well as the respect of his fellow musicians. Willie might've been riding the rails, all right, but he wasn't riding in any box cars. Rather, he'd be working his way through the passenger cars earning his living playing for tips.

Again, Mr. Gray deserves to be commended for his hard work on this project. All blues historians owe him a pat on the back and the rest of us know much more about Mr. McTell than we ever would've without Gray's efforts. His approach was/is much like a good reporter sniffing out an important story dispite the fact that Willie had been dead almost 50 years before work on the book started. Indeed, most of the 'first-person' sources (people who actually knew Willie in person) died before the book made it to publication.

You can't have everything but if you could I wish Mr. Gray would've researched more information about Willie's guitars. As a guitar player myself, I am curious.

Any hard-core blues historian will enjoy this book. As for me, I couldn't put it down. I read the whole thing in one sitting.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Author's Journey Tells Blind Willie McTell's Story, May 31, 2010

By 

R. Weinstock (Falls Church, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell (Hardcover)

Blind Willie McTell, like Robert Johnson and other legendary figures, never had a hit record. When he died in 1959, after decades of playing on the streets and clubs of Atlanta, Georgia, he was largely forgotten - but today is celebrated. Several of his songs, most notably "Statesboro Blues," have become staples of blues and blues-rock. Mystery author David Fulmer made McTell a central character in "The Dying Crapshooter's Blues," inspired by one of McTell's songs; and Bob Dylan wrote that "Nobody can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell." Among blues enthusiasts and scholars, the body of McTell's music is second to none. With Michael Gray's new book on McTell, "Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes," we get part social history, part biography and part travelogue as Gray takes the reader on his journey in uncovering the facts of McTell's life.

This is not simply a dry recitation of the life and music of Blind Willie McTell. He takes us back several generations to McTell's ancestors, which include a slave owner who fought for the Confederacy and was even a prisoner of war. Using census materials, he comes across the many different spellings as well as the small rural Georgian communities, tracks what ancestors on both sides of McTell's family did, and lived, and takes us through his birth, childhood and career as a musician who made a number of celebrated recordings during his life, yet was relatively forgotten when he passed. Using census records, old newspapers, and oral history he evokes the world McTell lived in, one of white supremacy, segregation and lynchings, yet one where McTell seemed to avoid the harshest aspects of the racist repression.

Gray tracks his life from upbringing, the school for the blind, and his homes in various communities including Statesboro and Atlanta. McTell, despite his handicap, was quite independent and able to negotiate the streets and buses of Atlanta quite well. We are taken to the places he lived, the women in his lives and how his reputation was sufficient to earn him a recording career. Gray does not over-romanticize McTell or his music. He recognizes its greatness and yet realizes that he was not a major recording star in terms of record sales. He also is sober in discussing about McTell's music as represented on recordings. He gives us the stories underlying how the sessions came about and discusses succinctly the recordings, where they took place and gives reasoned and thoughtful analysis.

This extends beyond simply the commercial recording sessions for Victor-Bluebird, Okeh, Decca and others. There is some consideration of the Library of Congress recordings made under the auspices of John A. Lomax and Gray does spend some space noting that the original reissue of this material had some omissions, because if a few bits of speech were left off, they could get everything else on one tape and thus was issued first on record and then CD, even listed as The Complete Library of Congress Recording is not complete and omits some of McTell's comments on songs or that he used to sing "I Got to Cross That river Jordan" which he used to sing and play with Blind Willie Johnson. And his wife Ruby was at the session and added her comments. So that the image that one has of the patronizing Lomax and other aspects Gray argues is misleading because of what was omitted.

Despite Gray including his own journey of visiting where McTell lived, walking the dusty country roads McTell walked, and visiting the buildings where McTell recorded and played, the book is still about McTell. Michael Gray has enriched us with Blind Willie McTell's story and the legacy, and it's a story well worth reading.

The above review originally appeared in Jazz & Blues Report's 2009 Gift Guide published in late 2009 ([...]). If I could give half stars I probably would give 4 1/2 stars.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Marvelously Written Story Of Mr. McTell's Life, August 13, 2009

By 

Daniel B. Pepper (New York) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell (Hardcover)

I'm very pleased to have the chance to tell everyone about this wonderful biography of a giant of the Country Blues, which is also much more than a book about Willie McTell. I've been a fan of Country Blues for over 10 years now. In my opinion, Blind Willie is one of the very best musicians of the 20th century. I purchased the UK version of this biography of Willie about a year ago via the Amazon UK website. I must say that it was a terrific read, and that the American version looks even better.

Mr. Gray tells McTell's life story in an empathetic and passionate way. I also found all of the Civil War and Georgia-related information to be absolutely breathtaking. Mr. Gray is not only a Blues historian, but also an expert on American history. On a related note, I picked up the "Down The Tracks" dvd about Bob Dylan and found Michael Gray's commentary to be insightful. The dvd, and this wonderful biography, are available on Amazon for a very cheap price.

Now that a book has been written about Mr. McTell, it would be appropriate if someone would publish Johnny Shines' autobiography. Mr. Shines was right up there with Blind Willie McTell in my opinion, but is often glossed over in favor of talking about Robert Johnson, which is a true shame.