[return to Blues Talk HOME]
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.