A TALK WITH PETER GURALNICK, BLUES HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR OF DREAM BOOGIE: THE TRIUMPH OF SAM COOKE
This Saturday, July 10, at 1 p.m. in the Delta Blues Museum classroom, Peter Guralnick will discuss his writing on blues (his first interview was with Howlin’ Wolf) and Sam Cooke, the Clarksdale-born music legend, with Marc Smirnoff, editor of theOxford American magazine. This event is free and open to the public. Guralnick will be available to sign books after the talk. This event is part of the Oxford American’s “The Most Southern Weekend on Earth” celebration of its “Best of the South” issue, featuring events in and around Clarksdale July 9-10 and live music at Ground Zero Blues Club, Clarksdale, MS. For more information, go to The Oxford American.
Peter Guralnick has been writing about American music–blues, country, soul, R&B, gospel, and rock-and-roll–for 45 years. His mastery of the facts and his deep feeling for the heart of popular music is unsurpassed. So is his gift for portraiture, whether he’s producing snapshots of blues and country musicians in Feel Like Going Home and Lost Highway, or taking a more panoramic approach in Sweet Soul Music, a history of soul music. His two-volume biography of Elvis–Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love–separated the man and his music from tabloid myths. Now Guralnick has pulled off a similar success with the authoritative, epic Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke.
“A friend of mine went to the Newport Folk Festival and came back with a bunch of records. Among them were a couple of blues records . . . I never heard anything like it. It just hit me, it just totally grabbed me, and from that point on, there was no turning around. I was totally into the blues and it led me to every other kind of music, gospel to country.”
-Peter Guralnick
The Delta Blues Museum is located at #1 Blues Alley in downtown Clarksdale. The museum is open Monday through Saturday, from 9 AM to 5 PM. For more information, call the museum at 662-627-6820 or visit the DBM Web site.