In Search of the Blues (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780465018123)

In this extraordinary reconstruction of the origins of the blues, historian Marybeth Hamilton demonstrates that the story as we know it is largely a myth. Following the trail of characters like Howard Odum, who combed Mississippi's back roads with a cylinder phonograph to record vagrants, John and Alan Lomax, who prowled Southern penitentiaries and unearthed the rough, melancholy vocals of Leadbelly, and James McKune, a recluse whose record collection came to define the primal sounds of the Delta blues, Hamilton reveals this musical form to be the culmination of a longstanding white fascination with the exotic mysteries of black music.

Author: Marybeth Hamilton
ISBN-10: 0465018122
ISBN-13: 9780465018123
Publisher: Basic Books
Language: English
Published: 06/01/2009
Pages: 320
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.10w x 0.80d

About the Author
Marybeth Hamilton is a professor of American history at Birkbeck College, University of London. The author of When I'm Bad, I'm Better, she is also a writer and presenter of features for BBC radio. She lives in London.