The Land Where Blues Began

Describing himself as a "song-hunter," the folklorist Alan Lomax journeyed through the Mississippi Delta in the 1930s and '40s, equipped with rudimentary recording gear and a profound appreciation for the Delta's rich musical legacy. Travelling across the towns and small villages where the blues took root, Lomax provided a platform for such luminaries as Leadbelly, Fred McDowell, Muddy Waters, and numerous others, all of whom made their initial recordings with him.

The Land Where the Blues Began is Lomax's "stingingly well-written cornbread-and-moonshine odyssey" (Kirkus Reviews) through America's musical heartland. Through frank conversations with blues musicians and vivid, firsthand accounts of the landscape that birthed their music, Lomax's "discerning reconstructions . . . give life to a domain most of us can never know . . . one that summons us with an oddly familiar sensation of reverence and dread" (The New York Times Book Review).

The Land Where the Blues Began encapsulates the irrepressible energy and spirit of the people who fundamentally altered American musical history. Winner of the 1993 National Critics Circle Award for non-fiction, The Land Where the Blues Began is now available in a handsome new paperback edition.