Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations
Greil Marcus
(Author)
21,000+ Reviews
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Description
Greil Marcus has been one of the most distinctive voices in American music criticism for over forty years. His books, including Mystery Train and The Shape of Things to Come, traverse soundscapes of folk and blues, rock and punk, attuning readers to the surprising, often hidden affinities between the music and broader streams of American politics and culture.
Drawn from Marcus's 2013 Massey Lectures at Harvard, his new work delves into three episodes in the history of American commonplace song: Bascom Lamar Lunsford's 1928 "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground," Geeshie Wiley's 1930 "Last Kind Words Blues," and Bob Dylan's 1964 "Ballad of Hollis Brown." How each of these songs manages to convey the uncanny sense that it was written by no one illuminates different aspects of the commonplace song tradition. Some songs truly did come together over time without an identifiable author. Others draw melodies and motifs from obscure sources but, in the hands of a particular artist, take a final, indelible shape. And, as in the case of Dylan's "Hollis Brown," there are songs that were written by a single author but that communicate as anonymous productions, as if they were folk songs passed down over many generations. In three songs that seem to be written by no one, Marcus shows, we discover not only three different ways of talking about the United States but three different nations within its formal boundaries.Product Details
Price
$42.00
Publisher
Harvard University Press
Publish Date
October 07, 2015
Pages
176
Dimensions
4.7 X 7.1 X 0.7 inches | 0.5 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9780674187085
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About the Author
Greil Marcus is the author of Mystery Train (1975), Lipstick Traces (1989), The Old, Weird America (1997; 2001) and Double Trouble (2000).
Reviews
Superb.--Rob Sheffield "Rolling Stone" (10/19/2015 12:00:00 AM)
[Marcus's] book is a prose poem describing American popular culture's embodiment in the media.--Nigel Smith "Times Literary Supplement" (10/21/2016 12:00:00 AM)
[This] volume find[s] Marcus doing what he does best: hearing what you didn't hear or nailing precisely what you did.--David Cantwell "New Yorker" (12/2/2015 12:00:00 AM)
[Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations is] wonderful: emblematic of Marcus's interest in how words and melodies find truths that survive the centuries, or appear likely to... He just makes your spine tingle with the feeling he has for music and the things he can perceive in it.--Danny Eccleston "Mojo" (1/1/2016 12:00:00 AM)
Greil Marcus may be the single most influential American music critic of the past half century. A compelling stylist and seemingly omnivorous listener, reader, and viewer of Americana, he teases out echoes of American art and of U.S. history's spiritual dimensions to find a depth in pop forms that few others seek as seriously... Brisk and brilliant.--Josh Garrett-Davis "Los Angeles Review of Books" (1/5/2016 12:00:00 AM)
Wildly, lyrically, Marcus writes in Three Songs of seemingly 'authorless' compositions--songs by no one that belong to everyone, that change as they appear and reappear with new interpreters... In this alluring mystico-musicology, songs bend singers to their disembodied will, not vice versa.--Sara Marcus "New Republic" (8/31/2015 12:00:00 AM)
Greil Marcus walks a fine line between grand, romantic, almost dreamy poetic prose and analysis. The enterprise could easily have turned purple, but he does it with consummate skill: distinctive and readable, capturing the sense of a nation haunted by its songs. And the notion that the ultimate accolade might be an artist's work acquiring anonymity is all the more resonant in an age of cheap fame.--Steven Carroll "Sydney Morning Herald" (10/17/2015 12:00:00 AM)
Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations is a beautiful and hypnotic treatise about how songs journey from origin to ether, from nowhere to everywhere, from a single voice to a common one. As always, Marcus writes with an exhilarating musicality that posits the reader inside the notes, directly upon the sonic road itself, at once both visceral and transcendent.--Carrie Brownstein
Greil Marcus remains pop's most visionary writer, following the thread that flows like the ghostly Mississippi beneath America's musical traditions. He's always essential reading.--Bruce Springsteen
[Marcus's] book is a prose poem describing American popular culture's embodiment in the media.--Nigel Smith "Times Literary Supplement" (10/21/2016 12:00:00 AM)
[This] volume find[s] Marcus doing what he does best: hearing what you didn't hear or nailing precisely what you did.--David Cantwell "New Yorker" (12/2/2015 12:00:00 AM)
[Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations is] wonderful: emblematic of Marcus's interest in how words and melodies find truths that survive the centuries, or appear likely to... He just makes your spine tingle with the feeling he has for music and the things he can perceive in it.--Danny Eccleston "Mojo" (1/1/2016 12:00:00 AM)
Greil Marcus may be the single most influential American music critic of the past half century. A compelling stylist and seemingly omnivorous listener, reader, and viewer of Americana, he teases out echoes of American art and of U.S. history's spiritual dimensions to find a depth in pop forms that few others seek as seriously... Brisk and brilliant.--Josh Garrett-Davis "Los Angeles Review of Books" (1/5/2016 12:00:00 AM)
Wildly, lyrically, Marcus writes in Three Songs of seemingly 'authorless' compositions--songs by no one that belong to everyone, that change as they appear and reappear with new interpreters... In this alluring mystico-musicology, songs bend singers to their disembodied will, not vice versa.--Sara Marcus "New Republic" (8/31/2015 12:00:00 AM)
Greil Marcus walks a fine line between grand, romantic, almost dreamy poetic prose and analysis. The enterprise could easily have turned purple, but he does it with consummate skill: distinctive and readable, capturing the sense of a nation haunted by its songs. And the notion that the ultimate accolade might be an artist's work acquiring anonymity is all the more resonant in an age of cheap fame.--Steven Carroll "Sydney Morning Herald" (10/17/2015 12:00:00 AM)
Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations is a beautiful and hypnotic treatise about how songs journey from origin to ether, from nowhere to everywhere, from a single voice to a common one. As always, Marcus writes with an exhilarating musicality that posits the reader inside the notes, directly upon the sonic road itself, at once both visceral and transcendent.--Carrie Brownstein
Greil Marcus remains pop's most visionary writer, following the thread that flows like the ghostly Mississippi beneath America's musical traditions. He's always essential reading.--Bruce Springsteen
