Rating: 
Summary: Skip the Book, Buy the CD Instead
Review: Think you know the blues? Yeah, well so did I. But after reading this book, coupled with the current PBS series on The Blues, I'm diving back into stuff I've listened to for decades, but never really "heard." Quite possibly the best book ever written on the subject and one that I'll be re-reading for a long time.
Rating: 
Summary: Read, Then Listen Again And Really "Hear" The Blues
Review: Think you know the blues? Yeah, well so did I. But after reading this book, coupled with the current PBS series on The Blues, I'm diving back into stuff I've listened to for decades, but never really "heard." Quite possibly the best book ever written on the subject and one that I'll be re-reading for a long time.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning oral history of rural blacks in the early 1900's.
Review: This book details the life of the poor, southern black in the early and middle portion of the twentieth century, not only in terms of the music, but perhaps more interestingly, with reference to the traditions and mores of those who were born and lived under the "plantation" system. The unbelievable stories and recountings of the individuals made me understand much more deeply the true effects of slavery as well as the reasons for so many of the difficult to explain behaviors we see in the inner city today. And of course, the highly romantic history of the origins of the blues makes fascinating reading for any jazz or blues buff.This book affected me more than nearly any other I've read in the last 10 years.
Rating:
Summary: This is the blues!
Review: This book did a great job of capturing the essence of the rural beginnings of American Blues music. If you are a blues-hound, buy this book. This book inspired me to take a 4500-mile two-week blues history road trip through the south.
Rating:
Summary: This is the blues!
Review: This book did a great job of capturing the essence of the rural beginnings of American Blues music. If you are a blues-hound, buy this book. This book inspired me to take a 4500-mile two-week blues history road trip through the south.
Rating: 
Summary: Blues, People
Review: This book is important, and maybe even vital, in spite of itself. Lomax is the real thing: He knows his material incredibly well, and even his most offhand paragraphs on anything at all related to African influences on American/southern culture are right on the mark. His field recordings were/are an incalculable contribution to American music. Some of them brought major artists -- Muddy Waters being the most obvious example -- from total obscurity squarely into the mainstream. He was a true scholar, and a kind of cultural hero. That said, this memoir/history was not exactly a joy to read. Lomax has a terrible weakness for lyrical language, but he just doesn't have the chops as a writer; his story is so good he should have been as plain in the telling as possible. His overheated romance with the black American male is often embarrassing. Maybe the best part of the book is a long passage when he simply gets out of the way and we hear directly from one of his subjects for many pages. It's not that Lomax had no right to do a book like this -- he had every right to. And even at its most purple, what he has to say is crucial if you want to understand American music. I just wish he could have spared us some of his attempts at heightened language and overwrought description. Complaining about white rock musicians, he writes, "To my jaundiced Southern ears .. many rock guitarists are more concerned with showing how many notes they can get off and how many chords they know tan what the song has to say or how the guitar can speak for them." I would say something very similar about the way Lomax wrote this book -- he should have been less concerned about how many phrases he could get off and how many words he knew, and just let his wonderful story tell itself plainly.
Rating:
Summary: Blues- Must Have Selection
Review: This is a must read for blues fans! Lomax takes the reader into the dark corners and sometimes disturbing haunts of the early bluesmen. The times and the cold social realities that shaped the blues are described by Lomax as he travels in search of original blues practitioners. This is both a musical and sociological journey which is thought provoking and informative.
Rating:
Summary: A lesson in American History
Review: When I first bought this book, I thought I was going to read a story about early American music. I wasn't exactly too off base, it's just that the journey I was about to engage in was much more eye opening and broad than I anticipated. Alan Lomax brought me on a trip to the Mississippi Delta region. He then introduces the reader to the likes of Mississippi Fred McDowell, McKinley "Muddy Waters" Morganfield, Big Bill Broonzy and many others. This book is a lesson in early American history. I was enchanted with the stories of the Riverboat Roustabouts, The Levee builders, the cotton pickers, railroad trackman, and the guitar pickin' blues singers of yesteryear. The book tells of the hardships and craziness of the slavery days and how the music came about. This work of art is a classic that should be read in High Schools throughout the U.S.A. It is a history lesson on early American music, it's genius and origin; it's people, and love, hatred, ignorance and prejudice. A true American classic.
Rating:
Summary: Essential reading for blues and American music lovers.
Review: Without Lomax and his father, a huge amount of American music would not have been recorded. And Alan Lomax is an exciting and eloquent writer who paints extraordinary pictures of the people he meets, the social and political climate of the Mississippi Delta, and the amazing period he lived through and actually changed by being there.
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