Out standing more-than-just-a-biography. Check out our review of this in 'CD/DVD/STUFF'

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Product Description

Blind Willie McTell, 1903-1959, was one of the most gifted musical artists of his generation, with an exquisite voice and a sublime talent for the twelve-string guitar. As Bob Dylan wrote, 'nobody can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell' - yet his repertoire was infinitely wider than that. Why, then, did he drift in and out of the public eye, being 'rediscovered' time and again through chance meetings; and why, until now, has so little been written about the life of this extraordinary man? Blind from birth, McTell never behaved as if he were handicapped by his lack of sight and he explodes every stereotype about blues musicians. Michael Gray has travelled the American South and beyond to unearth the fascinating story of McTell's life - uncovering the secrets of his ancestry, the hardships he suffered and the successes he enjoyed at a time when recording contracts didn't lift you out of singing on the street. In this personal and moving odyssey into a lost world of early blues music, a vulnerable black population and more, Gray peels back the many layers of a tragic, occasionally shocking but ultimately uplifting story. He gives us an intimate portrait of a remarkable man, showing how his life connects to the tumultuous sweep of history. Getting the story is part of the story itself, and Gray's quest for facts and details reveals that little may have changed in the Deep South even today. Part biography, part travelogue, part social history, this is an atmospheric, unforgettable tale.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #239074 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

Review
'A superb meditation on a rare American figure, one who grows more mysterious and iconic the more Gray reveals of his facts and context; a brilliant exhibition of how musical study becomes cultural study; and an elegant and passionate book that expands until its subjects seems to be time and memory themselves.' Jonathan Lethem

Metro
Gray has a journalist's eye for detail... he also has a music
lover's poetic appreciation for a great craftsman largely forgotten by
history. A wonderfully tantalising picture emerges of McTell as both a
bluesman and as someone intent on transcending definition, be it by his
blindness or his race.

Guardian
"Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes" is a wonderful book about a
spellbinding musician.

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Customer Reviews

Fascinating account of blues musician & the world where he recorded his music
Michael Gray's astonishingly detailed biography of Blind Willie McTell brings both the man and the world in which he made his music into vivid life. Almost like one of Willie's songs, Grays' book rambles through 150 years of American history - from Willie McTell's white Confederate great-grandfather to today's record companies and his current descendants puzzling over the royalties of songs that were recorded by Taj Mahal and the Allman Brothers. Willie remains a fascinatingly Protean figure. Always fiercely independent despite his blindness, he carried in his head a vivid mental image of the world as he rambled and recorded from Georgia to Chicago. There is a sense of how each person interviewed met a subtly different McTell. His clear tenor voice and idiosyncratic virtuoso 12 string guitar remain undimmed by the passing of time and inspired one of Bob Dylan's most haunting songs.

Well researched but dull in places. Still worth a look though.
There is a terrific long magazine article about Blind Willie McTell lurking inside this book. The effort it took researching it doubtless made Gray feel he deserved to put his name to the rather grander output of a book. The trouble is that often the little hard-won information there is about the bluesman is sometimes overshadowed by the story about how the author tracked it down. So rather than being the story of Blind Willie McTell, its the story of how Michael Gray researched the story of Blind Willie McTell. At least in titling the book "In search of..." author and pubisher are honest about this. You read at length about trips to libraries, archives, registrars, and county halls in search of documents. A lot of it hinges on birth, death and marriage certificates for McTell and many of his friends, family and acquintances. Its impressive what Gray tracks down but I am left wondering if it is all that interesting. Strangely there seems more detail of the family story in the 19th century than the 20th. The context-setting of the civil war period and its aftermath are quite excellent. Elsewhere though, facts can be scarce, and the travelogue of the contemporary south which Gray falls back on at these points, failed to really engage me. I'd give this book three and a half stars I suppose. For people interested in McTell it is worth reading, make no mistake. I just found some of the writing a little dull, and the book as a whole a little too long. It does contain the most complete discography of McTell in existence, and a lengthy explanation of what he recorded where and in what circumstance - with tantalising mention of tracks that are no longer in existence (as far as we know). For that alone Gray deserves praise, and his book will be of interest to fans of this music.

Fascinating and insightful portrait
This is an eye-opening book, which has enriched my understanding and appreciation of Blind Willie McTell and the blues. Only the absence of maps and a family tree - essential given the welter of place names and people mentioned - prevents it getting five stars.