Get into a conversation about blues roots music and most people will defer to Robert Johnson. Ask Johnson who his go-to guy is. His answer? Charley Patton. You'd also get the same response from Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Son House, and eventually Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page.
Patton laid many of the foundations that defined the art form and pushed it forward. The whiskey growl, syncopated (off the beat) rhythms, energetic stage rituals, and seamless guitar strumming created a near religious experience in one joint after another. His approach to the guitar set the template for countless musicians over the next century.
Blues is undoubtedly a fixture on the American landscape. Like jazz, it was conceived in the Deep South sometime around the close of the 18th century. By the 1920s, its presence was felt across many American cultures. By the 1950s, it erupted into numerous splinters, all of which still had one foot in the misty Mississippi Delta on Blues Highway 61, our legendary route along the Mississippi River running south from downtown Memphis, Tennessee, to Vicksburg, Mississippi.
To continue learning about our region’s local music lore, be sure these five books are part of your collection:
Delta Blues
by Ted Gioia
Those of you who know the blues well know that the genre is often accompanied by legend and myth. In his acclaimed book, Delta Blues, Ted Gioia takes an honest, no-nonsense approach to telling the story of the blues as accurately as possible. It may be the best introduction to the blues ever written. Gioia is highly praised both for his accuracy and his articulation.
Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta
by Robert Palmer
In general, blues lovers and reading lovers alike can’t say enough about this book. Although most blues listeners already know the correlation between African music and blues music, Palmer covers it extensively, even going as far as pinpointing the very area where blues originated.
Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues
by Elijah Wald
Like Gioia, Elijah Wald attempts to deconstruct the myths surrounding the life and music of Robert Johnson. “Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings” symbolizes, in many aspects, the blues and its greatest musical representation. Wald explores the modern notion of Johnson and blues in general while dismantling our romantic notions along the way.
The Land Where the Blues Began
by Alan Lomax
Behind every great musical movement is a culture that is cultivating it. Alan Lomax's award-winning book is as heartfelt as it is insightful. Lomax traveled through the Delta, tape recorder in tow, to interview people and capture moments along the way. He chronicles his adventures in this exceptionally charming and fact-filled testament.
The History of the Blues: The Roots, The Music, The People
By Francis Davis
It's hard to roll out a shortlist of blues books without reaching for Francis Davis’ thought-provoking restatement of the blues, its meaning and its story. Davis gets the reader to find the genre’s value and meaning on its musical merit, not just on its place in history or its relationship to outside influences. His chronicle of the lineage of the blues from Mississippi to major metropolitan stops such as St. Louis and Chicago is as good as it gets.