At the risk of coming across like a cliché–namely, a middle-aged white dude who’s really into the blues–I might as well lean into it, as I put this on my Xmas list for 2025.
Sometimes I’m looking for The One Book That Will Explain The Thing I Want to Learn. This is often folly, especially when it comes to things relating to science, philosophy, psychology (and more!), but what I wanted was a way to piece together the myriad of the names I kept coming across in my listening and discovery of blues musicians; to put it into some sort of historical (and, ideally, geographical) context.
Robert Palmer’s Deep Blues does a pretty good job on all counts. It’s unique in that, published in the early 80s, it was written during a period when it was still possible to speak to many of the sources while they were among us, and it benefits from this perspective in ways that a similar book written today could not.
Palmer (no, not that Robert Palmer) begins with Muddy Waters cooling his heels at his home and reflecting on his success. It then goes back to the beginning, to the roots of how the Delta blues was formed. The author does a good job of providing not just a stateside perspective, but also draws parallels in how the fife and drum, and the holler-and-response style of music from the cotton fields of the Delta originated in West African song and instrumentation, such as the instrument that eventually became ubiquitous in the south, the banjo.
If there was an ur-Delta blues musician–someone who tied things together in an original way that hadn’t been done before–it was Charley Patton. I’m struck by the initial reaction to the first blues songs. I’m not talking from white folks, but from established Black performers such as Ma Rainey. The word most commonly used is weird. This is the value of good historical writing: informed perspective.
Because of the sweeping scope of the book inevitably there are parts that contain a roll-call of names that are almost impossible to register in a single reading, but if you have to start somewhere this is definitely it. Towards the end, deservedly given the rigor of Palmer’s journalism, there are touching moments such as the last days of harmonica player Sonny Boy Williamson (with added perspective from none other than The Band’s Robbie Robertson).
If there are any criticisms, there are two: the lack of women (hello, Sister Rosetta Tharpe) profiled, and most oddly the lack of perspective on race. The latter is a head-shaker. Palmer’s matter-of-fact prose seems to make it feel as if Black musicians just decided uniformly to move from the South to the North for economic reasons. Yes, he recounts the injustices Black people faced, but there’s no mention of Jim Crow and no mention of the Great Migration–these are not “woke” concepts but very real and pertinent things that a journalist at the time could have easily made room for a couple of paragraphs to include. Yes, there’s no such thing as The One Book That Will Explain The Thing I Want to Learn…but the lack of perspective on these two points do not help this age well.
