Download or read book Escaping the Delta written by Elijah Wald and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The life of blues legend Robert Johnson becomes the centerpiece for this innovative look at what many consider to be America's deepest and most influential music genre. Pivotal are the questions surrounding why Johnson was ignored by the core black audience of his time yet now celebrated as the greatest figure in blues history. Trying to separate myth from reality, biographer Elijah Wald studies the blues from the inside -- not only examining recordings but also the recollections of the musicians themselves, the African-American press, as well as examining original research. What emerges is a new appreciation for the blues and the movement of its artists from the shadows of the 1930s Mississippi Delta to the mainstream venues frequented by today's loyal blues fans.
Download or read book The Road to Robert Johnson written by Edward M. Komara and published by Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation. This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Guitar Educational). This highly anticipated book traces the development of the legendary Robert Johnson's music in light of the people and songs that directly and indirectly influenced him. It includes much information about life in the Delta from the late 1800s to Johnson's controversial death in 1938, and features fascinating historical photos, maps, musical examples, and much more. Required reading for all blues fans!
Download or read book Up Jumped the Devil written by Bruce Conforth and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Penderyn 2020 Music Book Prize (UK edition) Living Blues Critics Choice Best Blues Book of 2019 Living Blues Readers Choice Best Blues Book of 2019 Certificate of Merit in the Best Historical Research in Recorded Blues, Soul, Gospel, or R&B category from ARSC (Association for Recorded Sound Collections) An essential story of blues lore, black culture, and American music history Robert Johnson's recordings, made in 1936 and 1937, have profoundly influenced generations of singers, guitarists, and songwriters. Yet until now, his short life—he was murdered at the age of 27—has been poorly documented. Gayle Dean Wardlow has been interviewing people who knew Johnson since the early 1960s, and he was the person who discovered Johnson's death certificate in 1967. Bruce Conforth began his study of Johnson's life and music in 1970 and made it his mission to fill in what was still unknown about him. In this definitive biography, the two authors relied on every interview, resource, and document, much of it material no one has seen before. This is the first book about Johnson that documents his lifelong relationship with family and friends in Memphis, details his trip to New York, uncovers where and when his wife Virginia died and the impact this had on him, fully portrays the other women Johnson was involved with and tells exactly how and why he died and who gave him the poison that killed him. Up Jumped the Devil will astonish blues fans worldwide by painting a living, breathing portrait of a man who was heretofore little more than a legend.
Download or read book Brother Robert written by Annye C. Anderson and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Rolling Stone-Kirkus Best Music Book of 2020 “[Brother Robert} book does much to pull the blues master out of the fog of myth.”—Rolling Stone An intimate memoir by blues legend Robert Johnson's stepsister, including new details about his family, music, influences, tragic death, and musical afterlife Though Robert Johnson was only twenty-seven years young and relatively unknown at the time of his tragic death in 1938, his enduring recordings have solidified his status as a progenitor of the Delta blues style. And yet, while his music has retained the steadfast devotion of modern listeners, much remains unknown about the man who penned and played these timeless tunes. Few people alive today actually remember what Johnson was really like, and those who do have largely upheld their silence-until now. In Brother Robert, nonagenarian Annye C. Anderson sheds new light on a real-life figure largely obscured by his own legend: her kind and incredibly talented stepbrother, Robert Johnson. This book chronicles Johnson's unconventional path to stardom, from the harrowing story behind his illegitimate birth, to his first strum of the guitar on Anderson's father's knee, to the genre-defining recordings that would one day secure his legacy. Along the way, readers are gifted not only with Anderson's personal anecdotes, but with colorful recollections passed down to Anderson by members of their family-the people who knew Johnson best. Readers also learn about the contours of his working life in Memphis, never-before-disclosed details about his romantic history, and all of Johnson's favorite things, from foods and entertainers to brands of tobacco and pomade. Together, these stories don't just bring the mythologized Johnson back down to earth; they preserve both his memory and his integrity. For decades, Anderson and her family have ignored the tall tales of Johnson "selling his soul to the devil" and the speculative to fictionalized accounts of his life that passed for biography. Brother Robert is here to set the record straight. Featuring a foreword by Elijah Wald and a Q&A with Anderson, Wald, Preston Lauterbach, and Peter Guralnick, this book paints a vivid portrait of an elusive figure who forever changed the musical landscape as we know it.
Download or read book Play Like Robert Johnson written by Dave Rubin and published by Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation. This book was released on 2018-12 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Play Like). Study the trademark songs, licks, tones and techniques of the King of the Delta Blues Singers, Robert Johnson. This comprehensive book and audio teaching method provides detailed analysis of his guitars, techniques, styles, songs, licks, riffs and much more. You'll learn everything you need to know about Johnson's legendary guitar playing, as captured on his 29 known recording from 1936-7. Audio is accessed online using the unique code inside the book and can be streamed or downloaded. The audio files include PLAYBACK+, a multi-functional audio player that allows you to slow down audio without changing pitch, set loop points, change keys, and pan left or right. Five full songs are included: Come on in My Kitchen * Cross Road Blues (Crossroads) * I Believe I'll Dust My Broom * Kind Hearted Woman Blues * and Sweet Home Chicago, plus excerpts from many more signature tunes.
Download or read book Searching for Robert Johnson written by Peter Guralnick and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 79 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This highly acclaimed biography from the author of Last Train to Memphis illuminates the extraordinary life of one of the most influential blues singers of all time, the legendary guitarist and songwriter whose music inspired generations of musicians, from Muddy Waters to the Rolling Stones and beyond. The myth of Robert Johnson’s short life has often overshadowed his music. When he died in 1938 at the age of just twenty-seven, poisoned by the jealous husband of a woman he’d been flirting with at a dance, Johnson had recorded only twenty-nine songs. But those songs would endure as musical touchstones for generations of blues performers. With fresh insights and new information gleaned since its original publication, this brief biographical exploration brilliantly examines both the myth and the music. Much in the manner of his masterful biographies of Elvis Presley, Sam Phillips, and Sam Cooke, Peter Guralnick here gives readers an insightful, thought-provoking, and deeply felt picture, removing much of the obscurity that once surrounded Johnson without forfeiting any of the mystery. “I finished the book," declared the New York Times Book Review, "feeling that, if only for a brief moment, Robert Johnson had stepped out of the mists.”
Download or read book The Loop written by Jeremy Robert Johnson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-08-10 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A small town in Western Oregon becomes the epicenter of an epidemic of violence as the teenage daughters and sons of several executives who happen to work at the biotech firm nestled in the hills have become ill, and oddly, aggressively, murderous"--Provided by publisher
Download or read book Crossroad Blues written by Ace Atkins and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2000-02-15 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "... Ahmad has created a novel that looks at race and culture and the changing face of America. It's a story that's easy to devour but hard to forget... " - Richmond Times-DispatchRanjit Singh, a former Indian Army Captain trying to escape a shameful past, lives with his family among the migrant workers of Martha's Vineyard, working as a caretaker of the vacation homes of the rich and powerful. Needing a place to stay, Ranjit moves his family into an empty Senator's home. Happily, but illegally ensconced in the house, he tries to forget his brief affair with Anna, the wife of an African-American senator, and focus on providing for his family. But one night, their idyll is shattered when mysterious armed men break into the house, looking for an antique porcelain doll. Forced to flee, Ranjit is pursued and hunted by unknown forces, and becomes drawn into the Senator's shadowy world. To save his family and solve the mystery of the doll, he must join forces with Anna, who has her own dark secrets. As the past and present collide, Ranjit must finally confront the hidden event that destroyed his Army career and forced him to leave India.Tightly plotted, action-packed, smart and surprisingly moving, The Caretaker takes us from the desperate world of migrant workers to the elite African-American community of Martha's Vineyard, and a secret high-altitude war between India and Pakistan.
Download or read book Beyond the Crossroads written by Adam Gussow and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The devil is the most charismatic and important figure in the blues tradition. He's not just the music's namesake ("the devil's music"), but a shadowy presence who haunts an imagined Mississippi crossroads where, it is claimed, Delta bluesman Robert Johnson traded away his soul in exchange for extraordinary prowess on the guitar. Yet, as scholar and musician Adam Gussow argues, there is much more to the story of the devil and the blues than these cliched understandings. In this groundbreaking study, Gussow takes the full measure of the devil's presence. Working from original transcriptions of more than 125 recordings released during the past ninety years, Gussow explores the varied uses to which black southern blues people have put this trouble-sowing, love-wrecking, but also empowering figure. The book culminates with a bold reinterpretation of Johnson's music and a provocative investigation of the way in which the citizens of Clarksdale, Mississippi, managed to rebrand a commercial hub as "the crossroads" in 1999, claiming Johnson and the devil as their own.
Download or read book Love in Vain written by J. M. Dupont and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 'Crossroads Blues' to 'Sweet Home Chicago', 'Hellhound on My Trail' to 'Come On In My Kitchen', Robert Johnson wrote some of the most enduring and formative songs of the original blues era, songs that would go on to help shape the birth of rock'n'roll in the 1960s. Beloved of Clapton, Dylan and the Stones, Robert Johnson remains one of the most iconic and mythologised figures in popular music (and the first of many to die at the age of 27). Born in the in the South in Mississippi, Johnson made his way to the urban North as a travelling musician, but it was only when he returned to the South that he recorded the twenty-nine songs, in two sessions, which would create his legacy.Exploring the stories and legends that surround his life and death - his childhood, his womanising, his pact with the devil at the crossroads - Mezzo and DuPont have produced a fittingly creative and beautiful depiction of this most extraordinary life.
Download or read book Black Cat Bone written by J. Patrick Lewis and published by The Creative Company. This book was released on 2006-09 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Robert Johnson was born in rural Mississippi and died young, leaving little behind except blues like no one sung the blues before him. A legend says that Robert sold his soul to the devil in return for becoming King of the Delta Blues."--From source other than the Library of Congress
Download or read book On the Back Road to Mandalay written by Robert Johnson and published by Xulon Press. This book was released on 2006-12 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "On the Back Road to Mandalay" is the story of twenty years of life and work in the mountains of western Burma. To advance the Christian faith, they had an adventurous life raising their children, running schools, training men and women for ministry, translating the Bible, building churches, producing Christian literature and Sunday school material, and promoting health and education.
Download or read book Time in the Blues written by Julia Simon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Immediate and spontaneous, the blues focuses on the present moment, creating an experience of time for performer and listener. Time in the Blues offers an interdisciplinary analysis of the forms of temporality produced by and reflected in the blues within the historical context of Jim Crow segregation, sharecropping, racist violence, and migration.
Download or read book Highway Robbery written by Robert Doyle Bullard and published by South End Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description
Download or read book Lily Was the Valley written by Dann Robert Johnson and published by . This book was released on 2016-01-04 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Difficulty unlooked for. Loss unforeseen. Hope forever. They'd never heard about the darker sides of adoption. Never counted on illness. Or loss. As for Dann, his head had always ruled his heart. Now Lily was dying, and he was about to find out just how little he knew about love. Dann Robert Johnson's humor and acute honesty hurtle the reader through a memoir that reads like fiction but shines with hope for the times real life deals us its worst. It's for adoptive families. It's for those who have lived cross-culturally. But more than anything it may be a story for adoptees who wonder if someone could have loved them before they came home. It's the story of a flawless Lily in the darkest valley. "This gut-wrenching struggle through the mysterious strains of deepest love arrested me. It's no fairy-tale version of a princess in a castle." Dr. Ken Castor, adoptive father, 2002, and contributing editor for the Jesus Centered Bible.
Download or read book Blues Traveling written by Steve Cheseborough and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a crossroads in the Mississippi Delta, Robert Johnson is said to have sold his soul to the Devil so that he could become a guitar virtuoso and King of the Delta Blues. Blues Traveling: The Holy Sites of Delta Blues will tell you where that legendary deal was supposed to have been made and guide you to all the other hallowed grounds that nourished Mississippi's signature music. Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, Memphis Minnie, Jimmie Rodgers, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Howlin' Wolf, B. B. King, Little Milton, Elvis Presley, Bobby Rush, Junior Kimbrough, R. L. Burnside-the list of great artists with Mississippi connections goes on and on. A trip through Mississippi blues sites is a pilgrimage every music lover ought to make at least once in a lifetime, to see the juke joints and churches, to visit the birthplaces and graves of blues greats, to walk down the dusty roads and over the levee, to eat some barbecue and greens, to sit on the bank of the Mississippi River, and to hear some down-home blues music. Blues Traveling is the first and only guidebook to Mississippi's musical places and blues history. With photographs, maps, easy-to-follow directions, and an informative, entertaining text, this book will lead you in and out of Clarksdale, Greenwood, Helena (Arkansas), Rolling Fork, Jackson, Natchez, Bentonia, Rosedale, Itta Bena, and dozens of other locales that generations of blues musicians have lived in, traveled through, and sung about. Stories, legends, and lyrics are woven into the text so that each backroad and barroom comes alive. Touring Mississippi with Blues Traveling is like having a knowledgeable and entertaining guide at your side. Even people with no immediate plans to visit Mississippi will enjoy reading the book for its photos, descriptions, and lore that will broaden their understanding and enhance their appreciation of the blues. Steve Cheseborough is an independent scholar and blues musician. His work has been published in Living Blues, Blues Access, Mississippi, and the Southern Register .
Download or read book He written by Robert A. Johnson and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1989 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it really mean to be a man? What are some of the landmarks along the road to mature masculinity? And what of the feminine components of a man's personality? Robert A. Johnson explores these questions in this new edition of He, updated to reflect his thinking on these subjects. Book jacket.
