Summary of Elijah Wald's Escaping the Delta

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

Sample Book Insights:

#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.