ROBERT PALMER | Deep Blues | 1st Ed Hardcover | SIGNED (New Orleans Jazz Fest)

Description: • For Your Consideration: • A SIGNED & INSCRIBED* HARDCOVER (First Edition, First Printing) of: • “DEEP BLUES” (The Viking Press, 1981) (Hardcover, First Edition, First Printing) • BY ROBERT PALMER • SIGNED & INSCRIBED & DATED: By ROBERT PALMER to QUINT DAVIS, the producer of the NEW ORLEANS JAZZ & HERITAGE FESTIVAL on the Half Title Page (in blue ink). For details about the signature & inscription & date, please see below (far below) next to the headlines highlighted in yellow. • ABOUT THIS TITLE: “In this extraordinary musical and social history, ROBERT PALMER traces the odyssey of the blues from its rural beginnings, to the steamy bars of Chicago’s South Side, to international popularity, recognition, and imitation. PALMER tells the story of the blues through the lives of its greatest practitioners: ROBERT JOHNSON, who sang of being pursued by the hounds of hell; MUDDY WATERS, who electrified Delta blues and gave the music its rock beat; ROBERT LOCKWOOD and SONNY BOY WILLIAMSON, who launched the King Biscuit Time radio show and brought blues to the airwaves; and JOHN LEE HOOKER, IKE TURNER, B. B. KING, and many others.”—THE PUBLISHER • “No one wrote better about the music of rock and roll than ROBERT PALMER…. His specialty was the r&b of the '40s and '50s, which he came up on as a teenaged saxophonist-clarinetist in Little Rock and studied for the rest of his life. But his passions were myriad. He was an early adept of world musics from India to Morocco to Jamaica. He loved JERRY LEE LEWIS and YOKO ONO, ORNETTE COLEMAN and THE ROLLING STONES, IGGY POP and SONIC YOUTH, JAMES BROWN and LAMONTE YOUNG—anything that stretched limits, blasted convention, promised the transcendence he longed for. DEEP BLUES, 1981’s simultaneously scholarly, speculative, critical, and reportorial account of the Mississippi Delta and its diaspora, is considered the best book ever written on a staggeringly well-mined subject.”—ROBERT CHRISTGAU • “Deserves a place on every bookshelf.” —NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • “It’s a brilliant book, a landmark publication in blues historiography and armed, at every page, with the special PALMER talent insight, and power of cultural portraiture.” —ROBERT FARRIS THOMPSON, “AFRICAN ART IN MOTION” • “PALMER has a powerful understanding of the music and an intense involvement in the culture.” —THE NATION • “ROBERT PALMER’s DEEP BLUES is a classic study of black music from the Congo to Chicago. His portrait of musicians and their worlds is an eloquent tribute to the blues.” —WILLIAM FERRIS, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF SOUTHERN CULTURE • “PALMER’s book is full of rich black history, details and dialogue, wonderful memories of recording sessions, parties, performances, and most important, crucial information about the precise points at which deep blues became the highly profitable commodity fetish called ‘rock’ in the early 1950’s.” —CHARLES KEIL, “URBAN BLUES” • “One of PALMER’s best-known books is DEEP BLUES. Published in 1981, it has been used as a textbook in college classrooms and traces the blues from its African roots to the Delta to post–World War II Chicago, Illinois. It is considered a definitive work on the subject. PALMER was screenwriter, narrator, and musical director for the documentary film by the same name….”—ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ARKANSAS • “His major contribution was his book DEEP BLUES, the most enjoyable…history of major aspects of American blues.” —RICHIE UNTERBERGER, ALLMUSIC • “His writing is some of the best on music that I’ve read. A brilliant writer. Absolutely brilliant.” —BONNIE RAITT • “I first contacted ROBERT in the late 1980s after I was given a copy of his ’81 masterpiece DEEP BLUES. The book knocked me sideways. It was everything I thought music writing should be – meticulously researched, serious, funny, exciting and deeply humane. But what impressed me the most was how clearly he understood how instruments are played and just how difficult it is to play them well.”—BRAD TOLINSKI • “Having access to PALMER’s writing gave me direction—in my listening, and then, later, in my own writing. His range and taste, his encyclopedic historical grounding, and his precise, clear language were striking, astonishing. Reading his work day in and day out, even from a distance of a few hundred miles, presented a road map for how to listen and how to think about music. His descriptions of sound were evocative, free of jargon, full of context. PALMER’s criticism for the TIMES—and, as I looked further, in ROLLING STONE and in the masterful DEEP BLUES and in numerous, always-insightful liner notes—established a sensibility and perspective I have aspired to in all the years since.”—ALAN LIGHT • “He was the first person who really ‘got it.’ Sure, he wrote about lyrical themes and melody, but he knew you couldn’t really love gut bucket blues without celebrating the beat. In fact, PALMER could find the blues everywhere, which is why his writings on rock and soul always had a depth I found inspiring as a young writer. He saw deep into the Southern core of western popular music and then traced it back, via the slave ships, to Africa…. PALMER was a touchstone that said the criticism of this music could be as precise, soulful, and color-blind as a backbeat.” —NELSON GEORGE • “He was one of those writers who had a very broad knowledge of all kinds of music. He understood the different strands that make up the popular music of America. And he had a very good and interesting take on it all. He respected it all…. He would introduce you to all kinds of new things.” —MICK JAGGER • “A lucid…entrancing study.” —GREIL MARCUS • “Easily the most pleasing history of the blues we’ve seen…. The writing is clear and crisp, and it’s an especially human telling of the story, which PALMER tells with rich detail and an emphasis on the people involved. DEEP BLUES is as much a social as a musical history.” —PLAYBOY • ABOUT THE AUTHOR: “ROBERT PALMER was born and educated in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he began writing about music and played the saxophone and clarinet in blues, rock, soul, and jazz bands. A founder and organizer of the Memphis Blues festivals in the middle and late sixties, in 1970 he moved to New York. He is chief pop music critic for THE NEW YORK TIMES, and a frequent contributor to ROLLING STONE and PENTHOUSE. His articles have appeared in ATLANTIC MONTHLY, SATURDAY REVIEW, the JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE, ETHNOMUSICOLOGY, and many other publications, and he has taught American music at Yale, Bowdoin, the Smithsonian Institution, Brooklyn College, and Memphis State University.” —THE PUBLISHER • “ROBERT PALMER (1945-1997) began writing for ROLLING STONE in the early 1970s and continued to do so throughout his life. From 1981 until 1988, he was the chief pop music critic at THE NEW YORK TIMES. The first person to hold that title. He is the author several books, including the definitive DEEP BLUES.”—SIMON & SCHUSTER • Alto saxophonist & clarinetist for THE INSECT TRUST (“This band, way too eclectic to categorize or market, made a couple of albums drawing from folk, soul, psychedelic rock, jazz, and more, disbanding around the early '70s.” —RICHIE UNTERBERGER, ALLMUSIC) • Co-Founder of FAT POSSUM RECORDS (“Specializes in the kind of electric juke-joint blues that is too raw for even the more commercial-minded independent blues labels to handle.” —RICHIE UNTERBERGER, ALLMUSIC) • Producer of albums by JUNIOR KIMBROUGH, R. L. BURNSIDE, & OTHERS • Clarinetist on “SILVER & GOLD” by BONO (with KEITH RICHARDS & RONNIE WOOD) • Writer of Liner Notes for Albums by RAY CHARLES, CHARLES MINGUS, YOKO ONO, JOHN LEE HOOKER, BO DIDDLEY, SAM RIVERS, LA MONTE YOUNG, ALBERT KING, ORNETTE COLEMAN, & OTHERS • “One of the few distinguished pop music critics to come out of the South.”—GREIL MARCUS • A “singular talent.”—NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE • “BOB was a kind of uber-tutor. Hanging around with him was like doing a PhD in whatever subject he was interested in. I was a fan, and I feel lucky to have met him.”—BONO • “BOB was the real deal, an avant-garde rock ’n’ roll musician from Arkansas, who could whip out his clarinet and actually jam with the musicians he was writing about. He hung out with everybody in that era, from THE ROLLING STONES to DAVID BOWIE to WILLIAM BURROUGHS…. My main gift from BOB—along with the brilliant pieces about GATO, THE STONES, ARCHIE SHEPP, MILES DAVIS, KEITH JARRETT, and many others I published—was the MASTER MUSICIANS OF JAJOUKA. BOB had followed BRIAN JONES’s trail to the old village in the Djebal hills of northern Morocco, and published his findings in ROLLING STONE in ’71. A year later, he famously took ORNETTE COLEMAN to Jajouka, where ORNETTE and BOB jammed and recorded with the village’s celestial band of panic faith healers.”—STEPHEN DAVIS • “He had durable taste. The music he praised, from SONIC YOUTH to MILTON NASCIMENTO to ORNETTE COLEMAN (who played ‘Here Comes the Bride’ at one of BOB’s weddings) to R. L. BURNSIDE to LA MONTE YOUNG, still sounds great. With his ear for the African diaspora, he was one of the first critics to understand, early on, the importance of hip-hop (and for BOB the connections to talking blues, the dozens and griot songs were almost too obvious). Trendiness didn’t sway him. Like his friend LESTER BANGS, BOB was after some passionate primal yawp, wherever he found it.”—JON PARELES • “So here’s my highest compliment: ROBERT PALMER was the most entertaining, the most coherent and the most informative music journalist with whom I’ve ever worked.”—BRAD TOLINSKI • “His work, like that of GREIL MARCUS and PETER GURALNICK, sets a standard for a critical appreciation of American culture.”—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY • “ROBERT PALMER was and is the best music writer I have ever read in my life. Nobody could write about the way music sounds better than ROBERT PALMER. I will never forget him for a thousand reasons.”—STEVEN WARD • “It’s almost as if, if you read BOB, you didn’t need to read anyone else.” —ANTHONY DECURTIS, ROLLING STONE • • For other details about this book, please see below. • TITLE: “DEEP BLUES” AUTHOR: ROBERT PALMER TYPE: HARDCOVER PAGES: 267 + INDEX PUBLISHER, LOCALE, & YEAR: The Viking Press (New York), 1981 EDITION: First Edition, First Printing* *RE: The statement “First Published in 1981 by The Viking Press” NOTE: This copy is an NOT ex-library edition. ISBN: 0-670-49511-5 CONDITION OF DUST JACKET: VERY GOOD.The price (14.95) is unclipped. There is a half-inch closed cut on the top edge near the spine on the back—closeby is a pink stain. There is also a tiny speck at the bottom of the back. Corners & spine tips are rubbed. The edges have light wear only. A crease runs up the entirety of the inside flap. DJ is lightly age-toned but also bright & clean. (Now protected in a Brodart archival cover.) CONDITION of BOOK ITSELF: VERY GOOD. Book is square. Front & back boards are clean with moderate age-toning along the edges. Spine is tight with bumped tips. Both tips are partially & lightly (but noticeably) smudged or stained. Corners & edges are lightly scuffed. Textblock edges are moderately age-toned & the top edge with v faint foxing speck; the other edges also have a few light smudges & scuffs & faint foxing specks. The faint foxing is restricted to the textblock edges and does NOT affect the interior. (Please see photos.) Pages are clean & bright–with no other writing than the inscription & signature on the Half Title page, no underlining, no doodling, no tears or holes, no stains, no foul odors, etc. THE AUTHOR’S INSCRIPTION & SIGNAUTRE: Appear, in blue ink, on the Half Title Page as follows: “For QUINT, With thanks for those great rhythm sections, dialogues, dialects, and crystal clear evenings and all the rest— ROCKIN’ ROBERT May 5, 1981.” AUTHENTICITY NOTE: We have compared the handwriting in this book with other (online) handwriting examples by ROBERT PALMER. To our eyes, the person who signed himself “ROCKIN’ ROBERT” is clearlyROBERT PALMER, the writer of this book. PALMER’s writing is fairly easy to compare: he had a distinctive lowercase “t” & a distinctive lowercase “f” and a distinctive “R”—both lowercase & uppercase, ETC. AUTHENTICITY NOTE 2: Sorry if this is too obvious, but when looking online for handwriting samples of the ROBERT PALMER who wrote this book it is vital to avoid confusing him with the ROBERT PALMER the singer. There are abundant online samples of PALMER the Singer’s handwriting & signature but not PALMER the Writer’s (though there are some!). AUTHENTICITY NOTE 3: Contributing to the authenticity of the inscription & signature is the name “QUINT,” the person to whom PALMER inscribed this copy & the inscription date of May 5, 1981. On May 8, 1981, the NEW YORK TIMES published an article by PALMER on the New Orleans Jazz Festival (titled “NEW ORLEANS IS A RHYTHM FESTIVAL”) & a key figure in the piece is QUINT DAVIS, the founder & producer of the JAZZ FEST. Here is an excerpt from that May 8, 1981 article: • “QUINT DAVIS produces the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival's Fair Grounds events and is co-producer of the festival's evening concerts…. MR. DAVIS is 32 years old and has an impressively long mane of blond hair, which he usually wears in a pony tail. It would be easy to mistake him for a holdout hippie, but he carries an encyclopedic knowledge of local and regional music in his head and oversees the Byzantine complexity of the multiple-stage Fair Grounds events without ever seeming to lose his bearings or his cool…. • On days when the festival will be operating at the Fair Grounds, MR. DAVIS arrives at 8 in the morning to make sure his staff of several hundred will be functioning efficiently. By noon, when the music starts, he is piloting a golf cart from stage to stage and keeping in touch with key staff members with the help of a walkie-talkie. He listens to the walkie-talkie with one ear and to the music he is closest to at any given moment with the other, and because he heard and hired most of the festival's thousands of performers himself, riding around with MR. DAVIS on his golf cart can be an education.” That’s a lot of emphasis on a guy named QUINT—but since PALMER himself helped run the MEMPHIS BLUES FESTIVALs in the 1960s & 70s it makes sense that he would gravitate to this QUINT. Also, in that description, PALMER describes QUINT’s “encyclopedic knowledge of local and regional music.” PALMER would have learned of QUINT’s encyclopedic knowledge by spending time with him—and it’s clear by the context that PALMER did spend time with the QUINT to whom he inscribed this copy. AUTHENTICITY NOTE 4: Finally, it is worth noting that in the MAY 5, 1981 inscription PALMER makes note of “rhythm” when writing: “With thanks for those great rhythm sections….” In the MAY 8, 1981 NEW YORK TIMES piece, PALMER emphasizes QUINT DAVIS, the Jazz Fest producer, and the RHYTHM of the music he heard at the Fest. This can be seen in another excerpt from the same piece: • “New Orleans is widely regarded as the birthplace of jazz and as a seedbed for rock-and-roll and rhythm and blues, but there is an underlying element that links all New Orleans music together and makes it special. That element is rhythm. • “The subtlety, complexity and buoyancy of New Orleans rhythms are reminders that authentic African music flourished in this city much longer than in any other in the United States. Sunday slave dances that included traditional African drumming were held regularly in the city's Congo Square from the early 18th century right up to the beginning of the Civil War, long after slave drumming had been made illegal elsewhere in North America. The result of this historical circumstance is a local rhythmic sensibility that is more reminiscent of the Caribbean or West Africa than of any other part of the United States, and it is this rhythmic sensibility that the Jazz and Heritage Festival celebrates…. The Jazz and Heritage Festival can do strange things to people, most of them good, most of them fundamentally rhythmic.” SUMMARY: Makes sense to us that ROBERT PALMER, in inscribing a book to QUINT DAVIS, would thank him “for those great rhythm sections….” SHIPPING NEWS: This book will be wrapped with care before being shipped in a cushioned and sturdy box. THANK YOU! ********************** /\___/\=•ᆺ•= “We believe it’s good business to be good to our customers.” *********** FLAPPINCAT’s HOUSE RULES ***********1. GENERAL TREATMENT. We enjoy treating FLAPPINCAT customers with honesty & respect & warmth because that’s how we like to be treated when we buy things on eBay.2. GENERAL ATTITUDE. We are grateful you choose to trust us with your business. We aim for that gratitude to permeate every part of how we engage with you.3. OUR DESCRIPTIONS. We describe every item we sell as clearly and accurately as we can. When it comes to describing condition, we tend toward being conservative. 4. 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Price: 225 USD

Location: Chapel Hill, North Carolina

End Time: 2025-01-17T21:34:36.000Z

Shipping Cost: 6.99 USD

Product Images

Item Specifics

Restocking Fee: No

Return shipping will be paid by: Seller

All returns accepted: Returns Accepted

Item must be returned within: 30 Days

Refund will be given as: Money Back

Special Attributes: 1st Edition, Dust Jacket, DJ protected in Brodart archival cover, Signed & Inscribed by the Author, Association Copy (New Orleans Jazz Fest)

Modified Item: No

Subject: Literature, Blues Music, Mississippi

Illustrator: N/A

Topic: Music

Year Printed: 1981

Region: North America

Country/Region of Manufacture: United States

Binding: Hardcover

Original/Facsimile: Original

Place of Publication: United States

Language: English

Author: Robert Palmer

Publisher: Viking Press

Signed: Yes

Personalized: Yes

Character Family: blues musicians