Rating: 
Summary: "They forgott,but I know better"
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Wardlow is by far the greatest modern blues researcher/write
Review: Anyone interested in the pre and post war blues stylists should place this book at the top of their "to read" list! In fact it is an indispensable read for any one truely interested in blues musicians, the socio-economic conditions giving rise to their individual music legacies and manner in which research was conducted and the trials and tribulations overcome to bring their stories to light. Gayle Dean Wardlow, through his tireless research efforts and excellent writing paints a clear portrait of many known and lesser known (but equally important) pre and post war blues musicians. Wardlow captures their history, and conveys in a manner that both captures the imagination and inspires the reader to seek out the music for themselves....and that is the greatest reward of all! For anyone seriously looking to explore the great pre-war stylist...check out Document Records and you will find most of the artists portrayed in this book. There is also a cd included which is also incredible and will give you a taste of the treat you are in for the further you delve!!!
Rating:
Summary: Wardlow is by far the greatest modern blues researcher/write
Review: Anyone interested in the pre and post war blues stylists should place this book at the top of their "to read" list! In fact it is an indispensable read for any one truely interested in blues musicians, the socio-economic conditions giving rise to their individual music legacies and manner in which research was conducted and the trials and tribulations overcome to bring their stories to light. Gayle Dean Wardlow, through his tireless research efforts and excellent writing paints a clear portrait of many known and lesser known (but equally important) pre and post war blues musicians. Wardlow captures their history, and conveys in a manner that both captures the imagination and inspires the reader to seek out the music for themselves....and that is the greatest reward of all! For anyone seriously looking to explore the great pre-war stylist...check out Document Records and you will find most of the artists portrayed in this book. There is also a cd included which is also incredible and will give you a taste of the treat you are in for the further you delve!!!
Rating:
Summary: Great Interviews
Review: Chasin' That Devil Music is definitely not a very cohesive work. It is a series of articles by Blues scholar Gayle Dean Wardlow detailing the lives of and searches for early Delta Bluesmen. The parts about Charley Patton are especially interesting, with insights to other parts of his life besides his singing career. He also puts the spotlight on some forgotten giants of the Delta Blues, like Ishmon Bracey, one of the first recorded Blues artists. A CD with some rare recordings and interviews with these legends and their associates is included. While this is a fascinating book, I would not recommend it to anyone who is not a Blues fan.
Rating:
Summary: a flawed but worthwhile look at the makers of the blues
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Blues Masterpiece
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A Valuable Piece for Blues Fans
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: One amazing author/researcher
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: A Blues music resource.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: The mystique of early rural blues
Review: 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.
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