Escaping the Delta Quotes

“the first published blues was a song called “I Got the Blues,” which appeared in New Orleans in 1908. Its composer was an Italian American named Antonio Maggio, and it began with a twelve-bar section using a melody that is a clear predecessor of W. C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues.”
― Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues

“When did blues emerge? We have all heard variations on a mythic answer: The blues been here since time began Since the first lyin’ woman met the first cheatin’ man.”
― Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues

“Johnson was unknown to the vast majority of the blues audience and ignored by all but a handful of his musical peers until the “blues revival” hit in the 1960s.”
― Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues

“It is hardly surprising that this should have been the birthplace of the most desperate and primal of American musics. Where musicians in the cities or the more accommodating eastern seaboard states could be cheery entertainers, in the Delta there was little money left over for entertainment. Music, dancing and drinking were not casual pastimes, they were the only available escape from the difficulties of day-to-day life. The music had to serve an almost religious function, to take the listeners to another world.”
― Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues

“They say, ‘Take some graveyard dirt, you’ll be a great guitar player.’ Hacksaw Harney told me to try that, he said that’s why he play so good. He took me along with him to get some, but I got about halfway there, and I said no. He said, ‘You got to do that if you want to be a better player.’ I said I guessed I was good enough.”
― Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues

“Legend says this man sold his soul to the Devil. I don’t know about that. All I can say is, when he died, the members of this church had love in their hearts and gave him a resting place, and God wrote that down. Now, I don’t know what Robert Johnson told the Lord. You don’t know what Robert Johnson told the Lord. We all have come short of the glory of God.”
― Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues