Tag: blues music
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In praise of Paul Oliver
The name Paul Oliver probably won’t ring a bell for you, unless you’re a vernacular architectural historian or a blues enthusiast. But if you belong to either camp or (unlikely, but possible) both, then you’ll almost certainly feel a debt to him. Born in Nottingham in 1927 and brought up in London, he was many…
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Poor boy long ways from home
Has a song title ever said so much in so few words? This one has the reputation of being one of the oldest blues songs. That’s a claim that’s hard to substantiate, but this song certainly has a long history, and it’s still alive and well today. ‘Poor boy long ways from home’, often shortened…
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Grass for pillow: early Japanese travel poems
Last year Penguin published a selection of classical Japanese writings about travel. Travels with a writing brush, edited by the Australian translator Meredith McKinney, didn’t receive much attention at the time, but it’s a wonderful and wonderfully varied introduction to poetry and prose written in Japan between the seventh and seventeenth centuries. For anyone who’s…