Just Finished Reading: The Blues – A Very Short Introduction by Elijah Wald (FP: 2010) [123pp] 

I’ve always been the kind of person who can enjoy something without know very much about it. I’m certainly not one to ‘fan boy’ on artists, authors or musicians so generally would have no idea who they were if I met them in the street (highly unlikely I know). I only know who actors are – but precious little about their off-screen lives – because I see them in front of me when I watch their movies. Likewise, I know very little about artistic styles, and not much more about literary genres. Mostly I don’t think it’s all that important and that, again mostly, it’s the entertainment value I’m looking for rather that a biography (unless I’m READING a biography). 

So it is with the Blues. I probably developed a liking for it by watching classic Noir films or films from the 40’s in general. Blues and Jazz seemed to be everywhere back then – in films anyway. I started buying Blues CDs over a decade ago and have collected quite a few since then. Most are compilations of various artists from various eras but I do have a few single artist CDs too. But if you asked me which Blues singer/writer influenced who, or which particular ‘school’ of Blues each artist came from, or even which part of American they came from I’d honestly have zero idea. Well, I do now! 

Reading about music is, to be honest, a bit strange (at least for me). What would’ve been great is examples of the music the author was talking about being accessible whilst reading (something for the future no doubt). But despite this I did find this slim volume very interesting. I knew some of the origins of the Blues – in African American slave chants and ‘field hollers’ plus street/bar performances but it was intriguing to see who both white and black performing artists took the music mainstream through both song sheets and early recordings. It’s also interesting how very similar songs were classified for their audiences depending on the race of the singer. Recordings and song sheets also solidified what was, until that point, a very fluid sound but it also allowed other artists to re-interpret songs and evolve new styles. What was also interesting was the intersections between Blues, Jazz and Country music. At first, I was rather sceptical about the last associated style but the author managed to convince me otherwise.  

Overall, although not exactly ‘gripped’ by this book – partially because it’s a little bit outside of my ‘comfort’ zone – I did find it informative and I’ll definitely be listening more closely to both my Blues and Jazz recordings more closely in future (and reading some of the inserts which I rarely do). If, like me, you’re a Blues fan without knowing all that much about the history of the style itself this is definitely the book for you. More music related books to come.