R. Crumb Draws the Blues [Paperback]

Robert Crumb (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1993

comic strips and stories

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Last Gasp of San Francisco (August 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0867194014
• ISBN-13: 978-0867194012
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 8.7 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #140,781 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must be jelly 'cause jam don't shake like that..., March 13, 2008

By 

Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: R. Crumb Draws the Blues (Paperback)

R. Crumb is not only a graphic genius. He's also an afficionado of "old music"--blues, jazz, and blue grass--and has been collecting '78s since he was a teenager. His love for the music of the 1920s and '30s is paralleled by his disdain--and sometimes active hatred--of things contemporary: fastfood culture, faddish art, loud electric music, the American ethos (which he forsook for the life of an expatriot in France in the mid 1990s). For Crumb, the "old music's" attraction isn't just because it sounds better than the newer stuff. Its appeal lies also in the fact that it's a craft, a reflection and builder of community, not the latest product from an industry whose bottom line is profit and whose identity changes almost daily.

R. Crumb Draws the Blues pulls together some of the artist's best music-themed work, reflecting both his love of the old stuff and his contempt for the new. Three of the pieces are dramatic biographies of blues greats Charley Patton (1891-1934), Jelly Roll Morton (1890-1941), and Kansas City Frank Melrose (1907-1941). Each of the biographies, especially Patton's and Jelly Roll's, are drawn in dark, ominous tones--only appropriate, since all three of their subjects led unsettled, torturous lives (Jelly Roll was convinced he was voodoo-cursed), and all three died young (Melrose was beaten to death).

Crumb's love for the "old music" is expressed in "That's Life," a wonderful story about an unknown black sharecropper who travels to Memphis, cuts a record, is killed in a honky-tonk shortly afterwards, and gets rediscovered by a Crumb-like collector forty-odd years later. Good music lives on. "Where Has It All Gone, All the Beautiful Music of Our Grandparents?" is a piece that Crumb calls his "diatribe on modern music." It's funny, but it's also a poignant lamentation for an age that's gone forever.

Crumb being Crumb, though, no collection of his work would be complete without a few of his deliciously outrageous rants. R. Crumb Draws the Blues doesn't disappoint in this department. "The Old Songs Are the Best" and "Boppin' and Jivin'" are his opportunities to scream in frustration at noise that masquerades as sound. "Cubist Bee-Bop Comics" is a (LSD-inspired?) psychedelic romp that at times waxes furious, but at other times seems utterly celebratory. Who knows how to classify it?

All in all, a fantastic collection for Crumb fans. And if you're an "old music" fan, even better!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the crumb bum does it again, September 15, 2005

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BigBird "theater freak" (Trenton, Mi. U.S.A.) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: R. Crumb Draws the Blues (Paperback)

this is a must for any crumb and/or blues fan. the charlie patton story is worth the price alone. great stuff!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars makes you proud to be an American, July 7, 2009

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2 cents "meaningless memes" (chain stores road way USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: R. Crumb Draws the Blues (Paperback)

Kurt Vonnegut said that. Makes me proud to be an American. And Crumb will make you feel good about America too. This collection of Crumb's treatment of the Blues is about American music. True, Crumb hates music produced by the music industry and so I suppose most music I love and you probably do too. His favorite music was made a long time ago and he loves it because it was music made by real people living in communities for their communities. It wasn't produced by an "industry" for the main purpose of making money. I feel where Crumb is coming from on that, but, imo, he goes too far. I like a lot of music produced by the music industry. A blurb describes Crumb as a moralist with a blown mind. In this collection the Charlie Patton strip is my favorite and like the other reviewer said is worth the price alone. I also dug the trippy stuff at the back and "The Repudiation of Keep On Trucking" was interesting and is about his feelings on this modern music "Dance of Death".