January 15, 2008
Hamilton (American history, Birkbeck Coll., Univ. of London; "When I'm Bad, I'm Better: Mae West, Sex, and American Entertainment") writes about several key ethnomusicologists and record fanatics who documented what they considered uncorrupted, raw blues and extolled blues singers as primitive outsiders. She begins in the early 20th century with Howard Odum and Dorothy Scarborough, who confirmed their racial stereotypes through the study of African American spirituals and blues, and she ends with James McKune and his band of record collectors, the Blues Mafia, who searched for untainted country blues discs and helped ignite the 1960s folk blues revival. Although Hamilton provides an excellent examination of the way preconceptions surfaced in her subjects' definitions of the blues, she does not fully address the motivation of these chroniclersin part, it was the emotional intensity of the country blues that mesmerized them. She also conflates Delta blues with country blues and New Orleans jazz and doesn't place Delta blues in the larger musical context of the growth of rock 'n' roll. Recommended as a compelling if limited addition on early blues that will appeal mostly to academics and blues fanatics.Dave Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
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