Download or read book Me and the Devil Blues written by Akira Hiramoto and published by Del Rey. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: STRANGE FRUIT In Me and the Devil Blues, bluesman Robert Johnson, an American legend, has been completely reimagined. This fictionalized biography takes us deep into the heart of some of the darkest chapters in American history. RJ was a simple farmhand who dreamed of becoming a great bluesman. When RJ made a deal with the devil, he lost his wife and his mortal soul. Now he may lose his last remaining possession: his life. Kidnapped by thugs, RJ is locked in a tiny cell to await mob justice. His only hope lies with gangster Clyde Barrow. Clyde, however, has problems of his own. Masquerading as a newspaper reporter, Clyde befriends Stanley McDonald, the most powerful man in town. Clyde is all set to help free RJ, but while staying in McDonald’s mansion he discovers a chilling secret that could mean death for an innocent boy. Now Clyde must decide whom to save: the innocent child or his mysterious friend RJ?
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 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 I d Rather Be the Devil written by Stephen Calt and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2008-04 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Skip James (1902–1969) was perhaps the most creative and idiosyncratic of all blues musicians. Drawing on hundreds of hours of conversations with James himself, Stephen Calt here paints a dark and unforgettable portrait of a man untroubled by his own murderous inclinations, a man who achieved one moment of transcendent greatness in a life haunted by failure. And in doing so, Calt offers new insights into the nature of the blues, the world in which it thrived, and its fate when that world vanished.
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 162 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 The Language of the Blues written by Debra Devi and published by True Nature Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive dictionary of blues lyrics invites listeners to interpret what they hear in blues songs and blues culture, including excerpts from original interviews with Dr. John, Bonnie Raitt, Hubert Sumlin, Buddy Guy, and many others.
Download or read book Chasin that Devil Music written by Gayle Wardlow and published by Backbeat Books. This book was released on 1998 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the development and characteristics of the Delta blues, and describes the most influential blues musicians and recordings of the 1920s and 1930s
Download or read book Me and the Devil Blues written by Walter M. Ellis and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2000-11 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Me and the Devil Blues, Walter Ellis brings us a ghost story, a passionate romance, and a unique look into our musical and historical past. This fast-paced novel, in the tradition of Larry McMurtry and Toni Morrison, combines comedy and pathos with just a touch of the supernatural. Robert Foster is down on his luck. He wants to be a Blues musician, and he wants the beautiful Beatrice White, the prettiest girl in Memphis. Both seem beyond his grasp. Robert is disowned by his supposed father and driven into the Depression-era Mississippi Delta. There he meets the talented, funny, and alcoholic Charlie Patton and the mysterious and evil Matthew Foster. Robert sells his soul to the Devil for Beatrice and for fame but finds neither to be what he expected. There is a surprising twist in the last chapter that will shock the reader into an entirely new dimension. Me and the Devil Blues is a blend of fact and fiction and features several real people as characters including Louis Armstrong, Chester Burnet, "The Howling Wolf," and the cranky and irascible Rice Miller, also known as Sonny Boy Williamson. What does it mean to sell your soul? In an episode, near the center of the novel, Robert dreams that he makes a deal with his real father, the evil Matthew Foster, for the woman that he loves and for the fame that he craves. Robert then achieves fame, makes some popular records, and returns home to Memphis a hero. Beatrice White, who is living with Todd Young, a bootlegger and dope pusher, drops Todd and comes to live with Robert. Only gradually does Robert come to undestand Beatrice's secret, a secret that will drive her to the brink of suicide and him to the brink of madness.
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 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 Searching for Robert Johnson written by Peter Guralnick and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 86 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 Where the Devil Don t Stay written by Stephen Deusner and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1996, Patterson Hood recruited friends and fellow musicians in Athens, Georgia, to form his dream band: a group with no set lineup that specialized in rowdy rock and roll. The Drive-By Truckers, as they named themselves, grew into one of the best and most consequential rock bands of the twenty-first century, a great live act whose songs deliver the truth and nuance rarely bestowed on Southerners, so often reduced to stereotypes. Where the Devil Don’t Stay tells the band’s unlikely story not chronologically but geographically. Seeing the Truckers’ albums as roadmaps through a landscape that is half-real, half-imagined, their fellow Southerner Stephen Deusner travels to the places the band’s members have lived in and written about. Tracking the band from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia, to the author’s hometown in McNairy County, Tennessee, Deusner explores the Truckers’ complex relationship to the South and the issues of class, race, history, and religion that run through their music. Drawing on new interviews with past and present band members, including Jason Isbell, Where the Devil Don’t Stay is more than the story of a great American band; it’s a reflection on the power of music and how it can frame and shape a larger culture.
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 Robert Johnson for Ukulele Songbook written by Robert Johnson and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Ukulele). 18 blues guitar classics specially arranged for the ukulele, with riffs and backup rhythms, in standard notation and tab. Includes: Drunken Hearted Man * Honeymoon Blues * I Believe I'll Dust My Broom * I'm a Steady Rollin' Man (Steady Rollin' Man) * Kind Hearted Woman Blues * Me and the Devil Blues * Sweet Home Chicago * When You Got a Good Friend * and more.
Download or read book Bluesman written by Rob Vollmar and published by NBM. This book was released on 2022-08-16 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now collected into one stunning hardcover! This story, structured like a traditional twelve bar blues song, with three sections each made of four chapters, follows blues musician Lem Taylor's harrowing journey across Arkansas of the late twenties, hunted for a crime he didn't commit.
Download or read book Corregidora written by Gayl Jones and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 1987-02-15 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is Gayl Jones's classic novel, the tale of blues singer Ursa, consumed by her hatred of the nineteenth-century slave master who fathered both her grandmother and mother.
Download or read book Up Jumps the Devil written by Michael Poore and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-07-03 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The sustained comedy in this hilarious novel is equaled only by its heart, and the myriad ways there are for it to break. I love this book. Michael Poore writes like an angel.” —Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish John Scratch, the Devil himself, is the protagonist in this stunningly imaginative, sharp, funny, and tender novel, as he tricks, teases, and prods America to greatness in the hope of luring his lost love back down to Earth from Heaven. Up Pops the Devil is fiction with humor and heart, the kind of hilarious, off-beat, and original reading experience that fans of Chris Moore, Joe Hill, Chuck Palahniuk, and Jim Shepard would sell their souls for—a brilliant blending of the occult and the outrageous starring the anti-hero of anti-heroes, the one and only Prince of Darkness.
