Deep Blues. A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads

Customer Reviews

the best concised book on the blues

2007-10-11
this is the the best concised book on the blues. few books provide so much insight in so few words

definitive history of the blues

2007-08-21
this is a serious history of the blues treating the blues with the same respect & seriousness given jazz, classical and other forms. it is a wonderful book combining interviews with blues legends like muddy waters and howling wolf with in-depth musical and cultural analysis.

for serious blues lovers or the novice looking for a deeper understanding of the music's roots, the culture that spawned and the incredible musicians who created it.

Dull

2006-10-03
I'm a big fan of the blues. I even play a little country blues on the guitar. That being said, I was really looking forward to reading this book. Unfortunately, I have found this to be a really dull read. The book just seems to ramble along, trying to romanitize the blues instead of just giving the facts. I already understand the magic of the blues. I didn't need a book convincing me of that magic. It was also difficult to keep track of the chronology of the development of the music.
The author talks a lot about African rhythm when, in fact, African rhythms have little to do with the blues. Discussions of rhythm would be more appropriate in a book about jazz. I found myself skipping ahead in hopes of finding something interesting. Alas, I did something I don't often do once I start a book--I stopped reading it.

A review on the book, not the DVD.......

2006-08-30
Robert Palmer's book "Deep Blues" is nothing short of an anthropological journey to find the genesis of the blues. He does an excellent job of highlighting the various early popular bluesmen, men such as Tommy Johnson, Charlie Patton, and Robert Johnson. He details life working on the plantations of the deep south, life on a Saturday night living it up in the various juke joints of the south, and the personal lives of early blues singers which led to the creation of the blues, and by extension, American music as we have come to know it.

The book begins by going back to the western coast of Africa, where the slave trading occurred, and Palmer details very well the oral music traditions of people from the various tribes and countries, presenting styles which could be found in the music of the eastern and southern United States from the late 19th and on into the early 20th Century. He highlights, in great detail, the sounds and how they were made in the mouth by particular tribes in Africa, and in what areas of the country and these sounds began showing up performed in field hollers done by workers on plantations throughout the south. I do not use the word anthropological lightly, as Robert Palmer does a magnificent job of highlighting the blues tradition from it's specific oral traditions in Africa, to it's nascent phase in the early 20th Century, to Muddy Waters' time in the Delta on up through his success in Chicago, to Sonny Boy Williamson's King Biscuit Time radio show and beyond.

Various interviews abound from people and relatives of the blues musicians and by articles from early periodicals detailing their lives, so by the end of the book one really feels as though we were on the freight car with Robert Johnson traveling and avoiding the hellhound on his trail.

A book for anyone who truly loves the blues. Being a book just shy of 300 pages however, only so much detail can be given, which is why this will probably not be the last book on the blues I own. 4 1/2 stars.

A must read for any true music fan

2006-08-13
Robert Palmer explains on this fantastic book, the origins and development of one authentic and unique american art form.
Palmer tells in a fascinating way the origins of the blues, from the age of slavery and its complex polyrithmyc african roots through its development in the Deep South plantation-based economy era, to its final consolidation and world spreading in Chicago's Southside.
Read how Charley Patton developed the genre, along with other gifted musicians like Tommy Johnson from the then almost unknown musical traditions of afroamericans on Mississippi's Delta to finaly create a true american tradition. Find how the amazing and legendary Robert Johnson , took the torch from Patton and made a whole revolution, exploring new musical forms for blues guitar playing. Discover the development of other blues scenes in Helena, New Orleans, Memphis, Detroit and more; and finally the emigration in 1943 of Muddy Waters to Chicago and the cultural revolution he provoked on a global scale when the blues gets electrified and brought to the big urban centers of America.

What are you waiting for!!!, stop reading and buy this book!!!.

Couldn't resist...

2006-07-11
This superb documentary vividly illustrates the enduring vitality of country blues, an idiom that most mainstream music fans had presumed dead or, at best, preserved through more scholarly tributes when filmmaker Robert Mugge and veteran blues and rock writer Robert Palmer embarked on their 1990 odyssey into Mississippi delta country. What Arkansas native and former Memphis stalwart Palmer knew, and Mugge captured on film, was that the blues was not only alive but still intimately woven into the daily lives of rural blacks.

Palmer, a former rock musician and Memphis Blues Festival cofounder best known for his bylines in The New York Times and Rolling Stone, had already chronicled the saga of Southern blues in his seminal book that provides the film's title. He's an astute guide, and Mugge underlines this role by pairing him with British rocker Dave Stewart (Eurythmics), whose avid interest in the music makes him an effective foil.

The film's real triumph, however, rests in the team's success in capturing modern day blues survivors and inheritors playing in the bars, juke joints, and barns of delta country. Palmer, who had returned several years earlier to the delta to capture these artists for his scrappy Fat Possum label, introduces us to the now-amplified but still elemental blues of R.L. Burnside, the late Junior Kimbrough, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Roosevelt "Booba" Barnes, and other keepers of the faith. Mugge, whose profiles of Al Green, Sonny Rollins, and other musicians probed their cultural and artistic contexts with intelligence and sensitivity, captures both the music and the milieu in crisp color footage. Deep Blues thus triumphs as a testament to the blues' deep roots and an unintentional eulogy for Palmer, who would pass away in the mid-'90s just as the gut-bucket music of Burnside and Kimbrough served notice that the blues were alive and kicking. --Sam Sutherland

Blues is a groove 2005-08-30
Aconcise and excellent treatment of a very important subject for all Americans and all musicians world-wide.

A useful survey, perhaps trying to do too much 2005-07-12
I havent read this book in decades. In fact, until I was straightening out my library the other day, I didn't even remember I owned a copy.

This is well written and compelling reading to me now, after I have spent much of the last 5 or six years playing music, reading about music, talking with great intelligences like Sholmo P whom you have already read on this subject about African American traditional music. This book stands up very well against all the other research that has gone on since it first came out.

I found Palmer's description of the transition from preblues to Blues to be most interesting and most useful, not only because it is an area where I have an interest, but because it is so well done, clearly explained, and is careful not to try to say too much. In that wise, I think if Palmer were to rewrite this section he would do well to read Cece Conway's description of the genre of Black banjo songs she describes in her book African Echoes and see how they prefigure the blues along with the jump ups Palmer talks about.

Palmer is best in Mississippi at the start when he is talking about Charley Patton and Son House and Bob Johnson, but when he gets past them to Muddy Waters, he has to go quicker and quicker to fit all the Mississippi descended blues artists up to his time in. Not that there is anything bad that he says, nor anything shoddy. It is just that we grow to love the richness of Palmer's history and feel for tradition and the music itself when he has time to stretch out, and we feel we are missing something when he has to compact everything into a few pages.

I would say despite its age, like Elijah Wald's book on Robert Johnson, this is a book no one interest in the Blues should live without. It is the kind of book you will read and reread and always find a little bit more as the years go on and you may read other books on the subject, hear other stories.

Robert Palmer's "Fat Possum" fascinating masterpiece. 2003-04-28
Wow, what a thrilling experience.Probably the best music video documentary to ever come around in the early 90s and the book also is a worthwhile investment.----This is what the REAL blues is all about and it doesn't get any better than this road trip into the Mississippi Hill territory where some of the most obscure but noteworthy musicians did exist. Alot of the artists featured like R.L. Burnside, Jnr Kimbrough,Lonnie Pitchford,Roosevelt "Booba" Barnes, Booker.T Laury,Napoleon Strickland have since 1992 sadly passed away but this film still serves a great purpose. Thanks to the well informed and much missed Robert Palmer( who himself died in 1997) and ex-Eurythmics artist Dave Stewart we have a glimpse of what blues must've sounded like (and looked like) back in the days of Charley Patton. Robert Palmer explains about the philosophical side of the Blues, the good luck potions(e.g.Mojo Hand, John the Conqueror Root ) and takes Dave Stewart through the streets from where American music grew up. It's a truly fascinating trip and Robert Palmer's humility and deep appreciation shows just how genuine a person he truly was.
Most of the artists featured were known to have recorded for the extraordinary 'Fat Possum' label, a label that deals with every type of no holds barred music from punk and surging rock'n'roll to the most primitive,disturbing & spooky sounding Blues. The inclusion of the Fife & Drum snippet on the DVD is wonderful and reminds one of the ancient songs of the Fra-Fra Tribesmen (the true roots of the Blues). Jesse Mae Hemphill is shown as being down to earth, no pretense at all and this goes for everyone else on this remarkable film/book.On the DVD some of the artists are suitably stoned as are the audience present at the crowded and seedy Blues clubs . Some musicians play a semi-tone away from the rest of the band, song meters are avoided at all cost by artists like Jnr. Kimbrough. Some artists like the bug eyed Roosevelt"Booba" Barnes are completely manic and seem on a never ending high. Booba sounds like Magic Sam on acid. The equipment probably came from a pawn shop but the end result is a raw, gritty excursion into the basis of rock and roll. Hound Dog Taylor would've looked great also on this video if he had still been around in 1992.
Check out the c.ds of these artists on the Fat Possum label.
If you think that Blues music stops with B.B. King and his gold rings or Clapton and his Versace suit & Alfa Romeo then this IS the book/video for you as it will educate you to the fullest degree.

A MUST HAVE 2002-01-15
If you're new on the blues scene, this is the ultimate book you MUST read. Hystorical background, artists, and styles descriptions are perfectly trimmed in an easy-reading and pasionate pace. Defenetly an EXCELENT book to us, the new generation of blues lovers. Only one notable absence: not a single word nor mention to Mr. Albert ICEMAN Collins. ?? That's the main reason I give it a 4 stars and not 5.