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Blues Talk 8:
the devil and the blues, part 1

 

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Books, links, and other useful resources (listed roughly in the order they're mentioned in the video):


Gussow, Adam.  Mister Satan’s Apprentice:  A Blues Memoir.  1998.  New edition:  U of Minnesota Press, 2009.

------------------. “Ain’t No Burnin’ Hell:  Southern Religion and the Devil’s Music,” Arkansas Review 41.2 (August 2010):  83-98.

-------------------.  “Heaven and Hell Parties:  Ministers, Bluesmen, and Black Youth in the Mississippi Delta, 1920-1942,” Arkansas Review 41.3 (Winter/December 2010):  186-203.

--------------------. “Sold It To the Blues-Devil:  The Great Migration, Lost Generations, and the Perils of the Urban Dance Hall,” Popular Music and Society 37.1 (November 2013, online).

Evans, David.  Tommy Johnson.  Littlehampton Book Services, 1971.

Crossroads [on this radio documentary, folklorist Mack McCormick recants his claims about Robert Johnson]

Spencer, Jon Michael.  Blues and Evil.  U of Tennessee Press, 1993. 

Wardlow, Gayle Dean.  Chasin’ That Devil Music:  Searching for the Blues.  Backbeat, 1998.

Garon, Paul.  The Devil’s Son in Law:  The Story of Peetie Wheatstraw & His Songs.  1971.  New edition:  Charles H. Kerr, 2003.

Schroeder, Patricia.  Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture.  U of Illinois Press, 2004.

Pearson, Barry Lee and Bill McCulloch.  Robert Johnson:  Lost and Found.  U of Illinois Press, 2008.

Epstein, Dena.  Sinful Tunes and Spirituals:  Black Folk Music to the Civil War.  U of Illinois Press, 2003.