Audiobooks by Elijah Wald

Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs and Hidden Histories

Bestselling music historian Elijah Wald follows Jelly Roll Morton on a journey through the hidden worlds and forbidden songs of early blues and jazz In Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs and Hidden Histories, Elijah Wald takes readers on a journey into the hidden and censored world of early blues and jazz, guided by the legendary New Orleans pianist Jelly Roll Morton. Morton became nationally famous as a composer and bandleader in the 1920s, but got his start twenty years earlier, entertaining customers in the city's famous bordellos and singing rough blues in Gulf Coast honky-tonks. He recorded an oral history of that time in 1938, but the most distinctive songs were hidden away for over fifty years, because the language and themes were as wild and raunchy as anything in gangsta rap. Those songs inspired Wald to explore how much other history had been locked away and censored, and this book is the result of that quest. Full of previously unpublished lyrics and stories, it paints a new and surprising picture of the dawn of American popular music, when jazz and blues were still the private, after-hours music of the Black "sporting world." It gives new insight into familiar figures like Buddy Bolden and Louis Armstrong, and introduces forgotten characters like Ready Money, the New Orleans sex worker and pickpocket who ended up owning one of the largest Black hotels on the West Coast. Revelatory and fascinating, these songs and stories provide an alternate view of Black culture at the turn of the twentieth century, when a new generation was shaping lives their parents could not have imagined and art that transformed popular culture around the world-the birth of a joyous, angry, desperate, loving, and ferociously funny tradition that resurfaced in hip-hop and continues to inspire young artists in a new millennium.

Elijah Wald (Author), Mela Lee, TBD (Narrator)

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The Blues: A Very Short Introduction

Praised as 'suave, soulful, ebullient' (Tom Waits), Elijah Wald is one of the leading popular music critics of his generation. In The Blues, Wald surveys a genre at the heart of American culture. It has been defined by lyrical structure, or as a progression of chords, or as a set of practices reflecting West African 'tonal and rhythmic approaches,' using a five-note 'blues scale.' He traces its roots in work and praise songs, and shows how it was transformed by such professional performers as W. C. Handy, who first popularized the blues a century ago. He follows its evolution from Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith through Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix; identifies the impact of rural field recordings of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton, and others; explores the role of blues in the development of both country music and jazz; and looks at the popular rhythm and blues trends of the 1940s and 1950s, from the uptown West Coast style of T-Bone Walker to the 'down home' Chicago sound of Muddy Waters. Wald brings the story up to the present, touching on the effects of blues on American poetry, and its connection to modern styles such as rap. As with all of Oxford's Very Short Introductions, The Blues tells you-with insight, clarity, and wit-everything you need to know to understand this quintessentially American musical genre.

Elijah Wald (Author), Brian Telestai (Narrator)

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Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties

On the evening of July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan took the stage at Newport Folk Festival, backed by an electric band, and roared into his new rock hit, "Like a Rolling Stone." The audience of committed folk purists and political activists who had hailed him as their acoustic prophet reacted with a mix of shock, booing, and scattered cheers. It was the shot heard round the world-Dylan's declaration of musical independence, the end of the folk revival, and the birth of rock as the voice of a generation-and one of the defining moments in twentieth-century music. In Dylan Goes Electric!, Elijah Wald explores the cultural, political, and historical context of this seminal event that embodies the transformative decade that was the sixties. Wald delves deep into the folk revival, the rise of rock, and the tensions between traditional and groundbreaking music to provide new insights into Dylan's artistic evolution, his special affinity to blues, his complex relationship to the folk establishment and his sometime mentor Pete Seeger, and the ways he reshaped popular music forever.

Elijah Wald (Author), Sean Runnette (Narrator)

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American Epic: When Music Gave America Her Voice

The companion book to the groundbreaking PBS and BBC documentary series celebrating the pioneers and artists of American roots music-blues, gospel, folk, Cajun, Appalachian, Hawaiian, Native American-without which there would be no jazz, rock, country R&B, or hip hop today. In the 1920s and 1930s, as radio took over the pop music business, record companies were forced to leave their studios in major cities in search of new styles and markets. Ranging the mountains, prairies, rural villages, and urban ghettos of America, they discovered a wealth of unexpected talent-farmers, laborers, and ethnic minorities playing styles that blended the intertwining strands of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Fortunately, thanks to the continuing efforts of cultural detectives and record devotees, the stories of America's earliest musicians can finally be told. Bernard MacMahon and Allison McGourty spent years traveling around the US in search of recollections of those musical pioneers. Their fascinating account, written with the assistance of Elijah Wald, continues the journey of the series and features additional stories.

Allison McGourty, Bernard Macmahon, Elijah Wald (Author), Mike Chamberlain (Narrator)

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The Mayor of MacDougal Street: A Memoir

Now the inspiration for a major motion picture written and directed by the Coen brothers. Dave Van Ronk was one of the founding figures of the 1960s folk revival, but he was far more than that. A pioneer of modern acoustic blues, a fine songwriter and arranger, a powerful singer, and one of the most influential guitarists of the '60s, he was also a marvelous storyteller, a peerless musical historian, and one of the most quotable figures on the Village scene. The Mayor of MacDougal Street is a firsthand account by a major player in the social and musical history of the '50s and '60s. It features encounters with young stars-to-be like Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, and Joni Mitchell, as well as older luminaries like the Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, and Odetta. Colorful, hilarious, and engaging, The Mayor of MacDougal Street is a feast for anyone interested in the music, politics, and spirit of a revolutionary period in American culture. "In Greenwich Village, Van Ronk was king of the street, he reigned supreme."-Bob Dylan

Dave Van Ronk, Elijah Wald (Author), Sean Runnette (Narrator)

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