Summary of Elijah Wald's Escaping the Delta

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The history of blues music is full of romantic foolishness. When did blues emerge. Popular entertainers were reborn as primitive voices from the dark and demonic Delta, and a music notable for its professionalism was recast as the heart-cry of a suffering people.

#2 The term blues has been used for a lot of different styles over the years. It has been used to describe the music filed in record stores as blues, but it has also been used to describe the music of Bessie Smith and B. B. King.

#3 The most common and influential definition of blues is the one used by the true modern arbiters of genre, the people who market music and file it in record stores. Through their good offices, blues has come to be generally understood as the range of music found in the blues section when we go shopping for CDs.

#4 The term blues was first used to describe the popular style of music played by Handy and the blues queens. It was expanded to include other, more or less related styles played by guitarists on the streets and farms of the deep South.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822520189

IRB Media

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Insights on Elijah Wald's Escaping the Delta

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The history of blues music is full of romantic foolishness. When did blues emerge. Popular entertainers were reborn as primitive voices from the dark and demonic Delta, and a music notable for its professionalism was recast as the heart-cry of a suffering people.

#2

The term blues has been used for a lot of different styles over the years. It has been used to describe the music filed in record stores as blues, but it has also been used to describe the music of Bessie Smith and B. B. King.

#3

The most common and influential definition of blues is the one used by the true modern arbiters of genre, the people who market music and file it in record stores. Through their good offices, blues has come to be generally understood as the range of music found in the blues section when we go shopping for CDs.

#4

The term blues was first used to describe the popular style of music played by Handy and the blues queens. It was expanded to include other, more or less related styles played by guitarists on the streets and farms of the deep South.

#5

The more romantic view of the blues is that it was the heart-cry of poor, backcountry black folk. However, there have been many blues artists who have resented the image of the blues being the music of poor, backcountry black people.

#6

The term blues was not used to describe rural back-porch moans, but a new hot pop style performed by professionals in fine gowns and fancy suits. The older black music that survives in the recordings of people like Mississippi John Hurt only came to be marketed as blues later on.

#7

The blues was developed by Ma Rainey, a blues singer, and her husband, William Pa Rainey, a minstrel performer. They performed in circuses and vaudeville theaters throughout the southeastern United States.

#8

The first rural guitarists and singers began recording in the mid-1920s, and they were called blues singers. The music was a commercial choice designed to link them to the popular recordings of the blues queens.

#9

The mainstream perception of the early blues boom is completely out of sync with the facts. The most influential and acclaimed stars of the period were often belittled or ignored by later writers and fans.

#10

The first published blues was a song called I Got the Blues, which appeared in New Orleans