Devil Sent The Rain; Music and Writing in Desperate America

New York: Harper Perennial [HarperCollins Publishers], 2011. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated] thus. Trade Paperback. Good. xviii, 262, 20, [4] pages. Autographed copy sticker on front cover, portion loose. Cover has some wear and soiling. Signed by author on title page. Includes Acknowledgments and Introduction. Also includes chapters on Jimmie Rodgers Died for Your Sins; A Light Went On and He Sang; The Blues: A Musical Journey; Sacred and Profane in Clarksdale; True Adventures with the King of Blugrass; Jimmy Martin, RIP; The Lost Man of Rock and Roll; Elegy for Carl Perkins; Trust the Song; Bob Dylan, 1997; Leaving the Farm; Gotta Serve Somebody; World Gone Wrong Again; Charlie Chan in New Orleans!; Blues Streak; Going Back to New Orleans; Seer and Seen: An Onlne Chat About New Orleans; An Exchange of Letters about Why New Orleans Matters; Other People's Houses; Intercontinental Drift; Citizen Mailer; Norman Mailer: A Remembrance; An Interview with Tom Piazza on the Future of the Book, The Devil and Gustave Flaubert, and Note in a Bottle. At the end there is a section that includes: About the Author, About the Book, and Read On: Further Listening and Reading. Tom Piazza is an American historical fiction and non-fiction writer best known for his Award-winning novel Why New Orleans Matters. He also has an impressive collection of books to his name. Tom's writing has featured in The New York Times, The Oxford American, and The Bookforum, among other periodicals. He is a Grammy Award winner for the album notes he made for Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues. Derived from a Kirkus review: Diverse work about roots and catastrophe by the gifted essayist and novelist. This collection of short pieces by Piazza mirrors the versatile author's many great strengths. The first of the three sections contains his writing about music, much of it drawn from his tenure as Southern Music columnist for the Oxford American. It is highlighted by his unforgettable, wildly colorful profile of the idiosyncratic bluegrass musician Jimmy Martin. Piazza also provides thoughtful considerations of prewar bluesman Charley Patton (one of whose songs supplies the book's title), country pioneer Jimmie Rodgers and pathfinding New Orleans jazzman Jelly Roll Morton; some smart pieces about Bob Dylan; the Grammy-winning notes for a boxed set overview of the blues; and sensitive profiles of rockabilly great Carl Perkins and gospel singer Rev. Willie Morganfield, cousin of bluesman Muddy Waters. The second section is on New Orleans, where Piazza is a longtime resident, and several of the pieces focus on his reactions to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The best of them weighs the disaster through the unlikely prism of several old Charlie Chan films. Also included are homages to Norman Mailer, Piazza's friend and literary mode. A brief third section wraps the book with a meditation on the moral core (or lack thereof) of Gustave Flaubert's fiction and a lovely report about shopping for 78s at a New Orleans flea market after the deluge. A good one.