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Books : Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell
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Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell by: Michael Gray List Price: £9.99 CD-Charts Price: £6.19 You Save: £3.80 (38%)Prices subject to change. |
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Binding: Paperback EAN: 9780747565611 ISBN: 0747565619 Label: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Manufacturer: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Number Of Pages: 448 Publication Date: October 06, 2008 Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Studio: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Sales Rank: 8759 Related Items:
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Well researched but dull in places. Still worth a look though.There is a terrific long magazine article about Blind Willie McTell lurking inside this book. The effort it took researching it doubtless made Gray feel he deserved to put his name to the rather grander output of a book. The trouble is that often the little hard-won information there is about the bluesman is sometimes overshadowed by the story about how the author tracked it down. So rather than being the story of Blind Willie McTell, its the story of how Michael Gray researched the story of Blind Willie McTell. At least in titling the book "In search of..." author and pubisher are honest about this. You read at length about trips to libraries, archives, registrars, and county halls in search of documents. A lot of it hinges on birth, death ... Read More: Rating:  - A great readI first came across the book when the auther was interviewed by Laurie Taylor on Radio 4's 'Thinking Allowed' - it was the detail that was apparent from the interview that atracted me to the book. So many books covering 'rural blues' simply touch the surface, so that death cirtificate's lack of information, gaps in lives etc., and oft repeated cliches are taken to reflect the vagaries of the musicians rather than the indeference and racial hostility of the society that they lived in. Yes, this is a detailed read, but it's all the better for it, you get a clear understanding of the man, his music and the times that he lived in - an able, intellegent man, much loved by thoses around him and able to deal with great skill with the society in which ... Read More: Rating: - Badly in need of an editorWhile this book certainly gives some sort of a picture of dustbowl America in the pre-war years in particular, it is a tedious read. If, like me, you are someone who skips over the detailed family trees to get to the real subject in biographies, then this is not the book for you. Only after 170 pages did the story get going, largely because of the author's addiction to detail. The result is that Blind Willie barely emerges as a character in his own book, especially since none of the pictures described in the book are included (not in my edition anyway). There's a good thin book hiding in here. Maybe before the paperback come out, Michael Gray can have another go at it - and put in a few pictures. Rating: - Fascinating and insightful portraitThis is an eye-opening book, which has enriched my understanding and appreciation of Blind Willie McTell and the blues. Only the absence of maps and a family tree - essential given the welter of place names and people mentioned - prevents it getting five stars. Rating: - Fascinating account of blues musician & the world where he recorded his musicMichael Gray's astonishingly detailed biography of Blind Willie McTell brings both the man and the world in which he made his music into vivid life. Almost like one of Willie's songs, Grays' book rambles through 150 years of American history - from Willie McTell's white Confederate great-grandfather to today's record companies and his current descendants puzzling over the royalties of songs that were recorded by Taj Mahal and the Allman Brothers. Willie remains a fascinatingly Protean figure. Always fiercely independent despite his blindness, he carried in his head a vivid mental image of the world as he rambled and recorded from Georgia to Chicago. There is a sense of how each person interviewed met a subtly different McTell. His clear tenor voice ... Read More: |
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