Big Road Blues: Learning from the Rise and Fall of Public Arts Funding

Although first published in 1982, this book may be more important to today's readers as the passage of time has resulted in a shifting importance to this book's content. Along with serving as an insightful contribution to folkloristic analysis, the book has now become a major resource for understanding the social history of the blues. In this respect, Evans' analysis provides a good way to understand and appreciate both historical and contemporary blues music. Evans' interviews with blues musicians from the 1960s and 70s, in particular, provide irreplaceable resources for learning about well-recognized blues players like Charley Patton, Son House, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, and Tommy Johnson as well as lesser-known, but still important, figures such as Mager Johnson, Willis Taylor, and Mott Willis, and Fiddlin' Joe Martin. The focus on Drew, MS gives this study a good example of a community with a thriving local tradition, where many of the previously-mentioned musicians played, and it provides an especially strong way to understand the development of the blues tradition in the Delta. Evans' careful transcriptions of a variety of blues songs and sharp analysis of tunes and lyrics further contribute to an understanding of the music within the context of a once-vibrant local blues tradition. The book culminates in a extensive analysis of the development and diffusion of the tune "Big Road Blues." This chapter includes thorough transcriptions that show how the song has been played by a number of musicians. It is especially interesting and worthwhile to listen to some of the recordings that Evans mentions (and that he, himself, even produced) while reading about the players who created the various performances of the tunes.

In the interest of fairness, I'm giving this book five stars, though I admit that I am not totally qualified to rate this book in its' totality. I say that because, I have no knowledge of reading music and much of BIG ROAD BLUES by David Evans is designed to teach blues music as well as entertain readers. The book was certainly entertaining giving rich and colorful history of blues pioneers and the Mississippi delta small towns where blues found its roots. As for the music part of it, it was way over my non-music playing head, but I am certain guitar artists and aspiring blues musicians would benefit greatly from its lessons. Even without a music background, simply as a lover of blues music, I found this book very readable and informative. The book is laden with brief biographies of obscure blues musicians largely forgotten by all by the most devout blues fans, as well as pictures that lend character to the book. This is a book I believe any blues lover would enjoy reading.

Everything I have seen by or edited by David Evans has impressed me with his thoroughness, his seriousness, and his respect for tradition. This is no exception. Books about the blues are often written by people who know little or nothing about the Blues, or worse, by people who have just enough misinformation, stereotypes, and wrong attitudes to make their book a threat to knowledge about the Blues. David Evans is a serious student of the Blues. He has spent decades in Mississippi and other parts of the South interviewing, getting to know, studying, and playing with real Bluesmen, living in the blues environment, and learning the entire gamut of musical culture that Africans brought to this country. His study is from the standpoint of a trained folklorist and musicologist, not a mere enthusiast. This book centers on a study of the Blues traditions of the Drew, Mississippi area and takes the song "Big Road Blues" identified with Drew musician Tommy Johnson and recorded in 1930 by the Mississippi Sheiks as "Stop and Listen" as the center of that study. Along the way, Evans provides a history of the development of the blues and a history of the development of analysis and study of the blues up to the point of publication of his book as well as a final chapter with suggestions and questions that his study poses to the general methodology of Folklore. Evans gives a very good picture of how the Blues tradition was passed won in the Drew Area. This is important because the Drew area included significant Delta Blusicians like Charlie Patton, Son House, and tangentially Robert Johnson and Howling Wolf. He distinctly describes the education and sharing of blues men and women, and through his study of Big Road Blues/Stop and Listen, he gives a picture of what defines a blues despite the characteristic shift of lyrics between different players. Moreover, instead of providing the usual air-headed summary of well-known blusicians, Evans gives a picture of the role in transmission and development and playing of many grass roots blues singers who were never recorded and rarely performed outside of Drew and the surrounding area. There is a lot to be learned here. The text is well-noted and has a great bibliography. There are pictures of almost every blusician that Evans mentions, mostly taken by Evans, his wife, or his research assitant. They are many lyrics. All of this is done with care and clarity. Another thing that I like about Evans is his accuracy and modesty. Too many folklorists assert the final truth of what are their own conjectures or inqueries. Too many writing about music insist that whatever their small bit of survey suggests is the gospel truth for the whole world of blues or music as a whole. Evans is guarded, concrete, and modest in his conclusions. He never tries to assert a relevance for his conclusions beyond the area of study. Instead, he calls for more studies like his own to capture other local trad