The Land Where the Blues Began

Rating:
Summary: Begin At the Beginning
Review: A critical first step in your Blues education. An excellent read, but may contain more information than the casual Blues fan wants to know. What I would call a "serious" blues text. Along with a detailed search for the source of the blues, there are fascinating portions that illuminate racial divides and prejudices. Check out Lomax's adventures in Memphis, told in first person, for a disturbing portrait of "cracker law enforcement"...seems almost unbelievable...almost.

Rating:
Summary: Begin At the Beginning
Review: A critical first step in your Blues education. An excellent read, but may contain more information than the casual Blues fan wants to know. What I would call a "serious" blues text. Along with a detailed search for the source of the blues, there are fascinating portions that illuminate racial divides and prejudices. Check out Lomax's adventures in Memphis, told in first person, for a disturbing portrait of "cracker law enforcement"...seems almost unbelievable...almost.

Rating:
Summary: Soul mining
Review: Alan Lomax has done more than any living man to unearth the powerful African music heritage that lives in many different genres of American music. This book is only part of the wealth that he has dug up and offered to us, so that we may better know ourselves. Check out the 4CD set of his recordings "Sounds of the South" for a soundtrack to this book.But no book, no acetate, no film, can adequately depict the pain and suffering that Africans were subjected to in the US. Lomax's work, though, brings us closer, by bringing us the voices of the prisoners, the fieldworkers, the muleskinners, and the roustabouts who lived in a world we can scarce imagine today.Life was cheap then. People were brutal to one another. By Lomax's account, sex and violence seem to be more unrestrained in the first half of the 19th century than in the second. Today, Arnold kills people with laser guns to make a couple bucks for Hollywood. Then, Boss White would kill a man with a shotgun to the skull, just for complaining. After having read the book, I caught myself being hopeful for humanity. Maybe we are getting better

Rating:
Summary: In showing us the Blues, Lomax reveals a hidden culture.
Review: As a native, white expatriot Mississippian, I read with great interest Alan Lomax's account of the genesis of the Blues--which he considers the most important indigenous musical form of the 20th century globally. As grand a claim as this is, Lomax carries the credentials and the experience to back it up. Aside from the music, what he reveals is bitter suffering and unconscionable cruelty against African-Americans, the quality of whose lives was scarcely better than those of their slave grandparents. Out of this tragedy grew an art and a culture than far surpassed that of the oppressors. The poignant majesty of these folk poets is engaging and arresting. Their ability to find beauty, humor, passion, and dignity in lives that were riven with strife speaks of the indomitable spirits of these people. Lomax's research was timely, because much of the music and poetry he heard in the 40's no longer exists, and he chronicles an invaluable chapter in the history of American art and culture. Dr. William Bradley Roberts

Rating:
Summary: Best history of the blues
Review: I have listened to and played acoustic blues on guitar and piano for 35 years. I have met and played with Son House, Fred McDowell, Gary Davis, Robert Williams, and others. This book speaks of the history of the people like these that made the blues and gives insight into the social and cultural environment that surrounded the birth of the blues. Lomax was there in the early days with his field recorders and takes us with him in this book. His recordings are available on CD now, and listening to the recordings with the book in your lap and your guitar on your knee is as good as being there.

Rating:
Summary: Tales of Woe and Joy
Review: I plunged into this book unsure of what to expect, knowing little of Alan Lomax and his contribution to American culture. I emerged overcome with emotion at the stories and lives contained within this book. Lomax's story is not his own, but those of the African Americans he interacted with over the course of his career. And their stories are brutal, hilarious, depressing and uplifting. As Lomax travels across the South with his portable recorder, he discovers and re-discovers musical traditions that have helped sustain a rural culture, and will serve as the bedrock of modern American popular culture. The characters we meet are truly unforgettable - hardly a day goes by when I don't suddenly flash upon Blind Sid Hemphill, Son House, or many others. Lomax's portrait of the South is a tough one, and many times the ugliness makes for difficult reading. But these are the stories that we'd rather keep swept under the rug, tales of vicious brutality and lynchings, the shadowy secrets of America and the black struggle for equality, and it says as much as any slave narrative or civil rights chronicle. For those who agree that American culture is ultimately African in origin, this book will be an affirmation. For those unaware of the rich cultural tradition forged by a proud group of individuals, it will be a revelation. And as an unforgettable portrait of America, warts and all, this is a history book that breathes life on every page. Reading this book should change your life, a lofty claim too often bestowed casually on works that don't deserve the hype. Believe the hype this time - Lomax's story demands to be told, remembered, and taken to heart. We forget the cruel causes of the blues at our own peril.

Rating:
Summary: Tales of Woe and Joy
Review: I plunged into this book unsure of what to expect, knowing little of Alan Lomax and his contribution to American culture. I emerged overcome with emotion at the stories and lives contained within this book. Lomax's story is not his own, but those of the African Americans he interacted with over the course of his career. And their stories are brutal, hilarious, depressing and uplifting. As Lomax travels across the South with his portable recorder, he discovers and re-discovers musical traditions that have helped sustain a rural culture, and will serve as the bedrock of modern American popular culture. The characters we meet are truly unforgettable - hardly a day goes by when I don't suddenly flash upon Blind Sid Hemphill, Son House, or many others. Lomax's portrait of the South is a tough one, and many times the ugliness makes for difficult reading. But these are the stories that we'd rather keep swept under the rug, tales of vicious brutality and lynchings, the shadowy secrets of America and the black struggle for equality, and it says as much as any slave narrative or civil rights chronicle. For those who agree that American culture is ultimately African in origin, this book will be an affirmation. For those unaware of the rich cultural tradition forged by a proud group of individuals, it will be a revelation. And as an unforgettable portrait of America, warts and all, this is a history book that breathes life on every page. Reading this book should change your life, a lofty claim too often bestowed casually on works that don't deserve the hype. Believe the hype this time - Lomax's story demands to be told, remembered, and taken to heart. We forget the cruel causes of the blues at our own peril.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding. A desert island book
Review: I've just finished The land Where the Blues Began and I can say it is amongst my 5 favourite books. I enjoyed it more than almost any other book I've ever read. It opened my eyes, fed me with interest and enthusiasm and allowed me to read about people whom I knew nothing. Revelatory. A true delight. I feel deeply indebted to Alan Lomax and to those he spoke to and recorded with such care and commitment. Wonderful.

Rating:
Summary: The Music Makers of the Blues
Review: So powerful is the writing of Alan Lomax that one cannot help but be moved by the trials of the African American, which gave birth to the Blues. I read through this account with equal parts shame, empathy and admiration for the people who found hope through their music. I've been a listener and aspiring musician of the Blues for many years. With reading Mr. Lomax's account I feel my education has been grounded in the truth of what makes the Blues so uplifting and expressive. When all hope and opportunity were removed from the negroes of the Jim Crow South, they turned to their instruments, and driven by subconscious inspiration of their ancestoral past, were able to find something to sing and dance about. Through this singing and body-embracing rhythm-making the Blues becomes a means of making peace within their lives, within our lives. This much I've learned from reading the narration of Mr. Lomax. His work will always be with me.

Rating:
Summary: Read this book, Savor it, Treasure it
Review: The Land Where the Blues Began is one of the finest books on any subject I've ever read in my life. Every magical benefit of reading came poring forth from its pages, including deep and fascinating discovery, chills, outrage, tears, joy, laughter, amazement and finally, understanding and awe. Alan Lomax embarked on a personal odyssey to the Mississippi Delta serving up one of the great vicarious thrill rides any reader with a hankering to learn where rock and roll, and rhythm and blues came from. Armed with primitive recording equipment and a lifetime's experience researching the folk and popular music of the world (following in his father's distinguished footsteps in this endeavor), Lomax plunges us directly into the redneck towns and the plantations, where the Blues emerged from a fascinating combination of African musical roots, Folk...Popular...and Church Music, and the hollers which slaves, prisoners, levee workers, rail gangs, mule drivers, sharecroppers and roustabouts would sing out to express their rage, pain, heartsickness, loneliness, hopelessness and frustrations. Finding giants of the blues in dilapidated shacks in the middle of nowhere, Lomax coaxed many into performing for his acetate machines. Also haunting the bars, with names such as the Dipsy Doodle, in the black sectors of heavily segregated towns, Lomax (who is white) repeatedly puts his personal safety in jeopardy as he defies the redneck deputies' orders and ends up swigging homemade whiskey and eating fresh barbecue while recording legendary performances. If all this weren't enough, the book weaves the evolution of the Blues in with poignant memoirs of impoverished childhoods, family life, prison life, farm labor, Jim Crow, unthinkable mistreatment, murder, and devastation. Fashioning musical instruments out of pieces of wire and wooden boxes, tree branches or anything available, these masters created, nurtured and passed down their knowledge to subsequent generations until it flowered in the hands of a young and inspired new crop of Blues giants. Eventually blacks seeking a better way of life were able to move North into the urban areas of Chicago, New York, Kansas City and other places, and the adventurous among the Blues musicians followed them there, where the Blues kept people in touch with their roots and linked them emotionally to their Southern heritage. Here, the musicians were horribly exploited by white recording executives who invited them to record their music, and robbed them blind when a recording did well on the radio and/or in the stores. Eventually the mature Blues style inspired the world's greatest pop and rock musicians from the Rolling Stones and The Beatles to Eric Clapton, all of whom were British and discovered American Blues music at its commercial inception. Later, they introduced it back to the American masses who had for the most part not yet been exposed to it. As I finished the book, I was awestruck that these impoverished yet heroic people who lived in the shacks, shouting their laments to the cotton fields and the sky above, had a massive and magnificent influence on the world which few human beings will ever achieve. Hats off to Blind Lemon Jefferson, Son House, Robert Johnson, Fred McDowell, Big Bill Broonzy, Muddy Waters and so many others, especially the now-forgotten faceless progenitors of the style, without whom today's popular music would have an entirely different and far less rich character. And three cheers for Alan Lomax whose passion and love for the people and music he documents, coupled with his original and rich writing style leaves us in an emotional heap at the end of our journey.