In Search of the Blues

by Marybeth Hamilton

Basic Books

January 2008, 309 pages, $24.95

[7 March 2008]

by Chadwick Jenkins

Share
- Email
- Del.icio.us
- Digg
- Reddit
- Newsvine
- StumbleUpon
- Google
- Yahoo
- Facebook
Print
Comments (0)
Feeds
- PopMatters
- Read

"Where the Southern Cross the Dog": The Enigma of Authenticity

This is a different story of the blues; it is the story of those people (primarily white men and women) who were in search of something that they believed the blues or some other form of secular and "primitive" African-American music communicated in an undiluted manner.

‹‹ Read the full article

RATING:

Add a comment

Tagged as: american south | blues | marybeth hamilton | popmatters pick

Retelling the History of Black Music: Everything You Know about the Blues Is Wrong

Mark Reynolds

03.Jul.08

The white “blues cult” cherished untainted authenticity in their art (in the case of the Beats, add a dash of rebelliousness), and they thought they’d located it in the all-but-forgotten music of the acoustic bluesmen.

TODAY ON POPMATTERS

Features | recent
:. Surviving the Net Crunch: A Practical Guide for Print Publications in a Digital World
:. Now Hear This!: Joe Purdy [Lowell, Arkansas]

Columns | recent
Marginal Utility: Brand Evangelists
Field Studies: Vinyl: Got to Get You Into My Life

Blogs | recent
Short Ends and Leader: Doomsday: Unrated (2008)
Marginal Utility: The Truman Show Delusion
Sound Affects: Good Bad, and Probably Evil
Crazed by the Music: Digital Survival Guide Redux
Notes from the Road: Robert Glasper Trio - 16 July 2008: New York, Madison Square Park

Music | recent | short takes | archive
:. David Bowie: Live Santa Monica '72
:. Billy Joel: The Stranger
:. DubXanne: Police in Dub
:. Sam Sparro: Sam Sparro
:. Teddy Thompson: A Piece of What You Need
:. Luke Doucet and the White Falcon: Blood's Too Rich

Events | recent | archive
:. Sonic Youth - River to River Festival — 4.July.08: Manhattan, NY

Film | recent | archive
:. The X-Files: I Want to Believe
:. Brideshead Revisited
:. Step Brothers

DVDs | recent | archive
:. 30 Days: The Complete Second Season
:. Los Straitjackets: Los Straitjackets in Concert

Books | recent | archive
:. Federico Fellini The Book of Dreams by Federico Fellini
:. When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

Multimedia | recent | archive
:. Wii Fit

News | recent
:. ‘Civilization Revolution’ works on console
:. INTERVIEW:Starring role on ‘Psych’ the result of determination from Dule Hill
:. The Movie Masochist: Doing time in PG prison
:. Mad about the return of ‘Mad Men’

Recent Books

More Books

:. recent articles
:. full archive

:. 33 1/3: Reign in Blood by D. X. Ferris
:. All the Sad Young Literary Men by Keith Gessen
:. America America by Ethan Canin
:. Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
:. Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited: AIDS and Its Aftermath by Andrew Holleran
:. Clint Eastwood Actor and Director: New Perspectives by Leonard Engel
:. Coming to Wherever You Are: MuchMusic, MTV, and Youth Identities by Kip Pegley
:. Commonwealth by Joey Goebel
:. Deception and Abuse at the Fed: Henry B. Gonzalez Battles Alan Greenspan's Bank by Robert D. Auerbach
:. The Disorder of Longing by Natasha Bauman
:. Dreamland by Tom Giliing
:. E: The Incredibly Strange History of Ecstasy by Tim Pilcher
:. Eldorado by Laurent Gaudé
:. Federico Fellini The Book of Dreams by Federico Fellini
:. The Funniest One in the Room by Kim "Howard" Johnson
:. The Ghost Soldiers: Poems by James Tate
:. Goodbye 20th Century: A Biography of Sonic Youth by David Browne
:. Growing Up Asian in Australia by Alice Pung
:. A Happy Man and Other Stories by Axel Thormählen
:. Jenny & the Jaws of Life: Short Stories by Jincy Willett
:. The Journey Home by Dermot Bolger
:. The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
:. The Narcissist's Daughter by Craig Holden
:. Radical Alerity by Jean Baudrillard, Marc Guillaume
:. The Riddle of the Sands & The 39 Steps
:. The Rough Guide to Europe on a Budget
:. The Savior by Eugene Drucker
:. Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal by Randall Kennedy
:. Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial by Alison Bass
:. Sing Me Back Home: Love, Death, and Country Music by Dana Jennings
:. Slackonomics: Generation X in the Age of Creative Destruction by Lisa Chamberlain
:. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale
:. A Week of This: A Novel in Seven Days by Nathan Whitlock
:. When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
:. Wild Mulberries by Iman Humaydan Younes