As Robert Springer reminds us in the preface to this collection of essays drawn from two conferences held at the University of Metz in 2000 and 2002, the words of the Blues were first subjected to sustained attention almost half a century ago in Paul Oliver's classic survey, (Reference Oliver1960) Blues Fell this Morning. Studies by Jeff Todd Titon (Reference Titon1977Early Downhome Blues) and David Evans (Reference Evans1982Big Road Blues) have since shown what can be done by focusing on, respectively, a small corpus of songs and a local tradition. Michael Taft's concordance, (Reference Taft1984) Blues Lyric Poetry, and the compilation of a database of Blues lyrics at the University of Regensburg, have meanwhile established a solid base for future enquiry. With such reliable scholarship in place, researchers into Blues lyrics are almost uniquely well placed to pursue genealogical enquiry into individual songs.

The first four essays in the volume present close readings. David Evans, with more topicality than he could possibly have foreseen, examines songs associated with the Mississippi flood of 1927. His opening chapter provides not only a compendium of lyric references to the flood of 1927, but also a thorough account of the events, an exploration of overlapping references to other floods (most notably the Ohio and Mississippi floods of 1937), and an analysis of the intersection of commercial pressures and audience interest. The whole is a detailed yet never dull account of the way in which a natural disaster was memorialised through a tightly controlled oral medium. Luigi Monge ploughs a parallel furrow with highly nuanced readings of song lyrics referring to the death of over two hundred people in the Natchez Rhythm Club fire in April of 1940. Particularly suggestive in Monge's account is the chronological development traced from personal to collective response, from subjective narration to objectified memory.

Paul Oliver's contribution is a piece of patient detective work that traces the bully song back to St Louis in the second half of the nineteenth century. Howlin' Wolf seems to have called it right when he referred to the song as an ‘old levee camp number’, the song apparently having been sung on the levee district before being popularised by May Irwin. Among the various recorded versions, the common focus of the bully song is a set of colourfully named characters (Razor Jim, Pistol Pete, etc.), a dance and a fight. Despite its old-time qualities, the song was a hit as late as 1966, no doubt due in part to the enduring relevance of its theme.

A different perspective is opened up by Tom Freeland and Chris Smith's attempt to relate the ballad Eaton Clan to the trial of Ruey Eaton for the murder of a US Deputy Marshal. The significant feature of this song is that the Eatons were part of a white underclass, yet they were sung about by African Americans. Whether or not their claim that the ballad was originally a broadsheet composition that formed part of the Eaton family's attempt at self-justification finds widespread acceptance, the example of black singers drawing upon stories familiar to white audiences provides a counterweight to the concentration on a self-sufficient African-American culture elsewhere in the volume.

The remaining four chapters are more diverse. Guido van Rijn adopts a broad-brushed approach in surveying Blues songs of the Coolidge era (1923–1928). The lyrics he examines understandably address prohibition, migration and unemployment and Jim Crow: quite how much can be drawn from these lyrics about the experiences of the ‘average African American’ remains unclear. By contrast, Robert Springer's essay is explicitly concerned with methodology within Blues research. The clarity with which he lays bare the roots of thinking about oral formulae in the work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord is admirable. In drawing upon models of creativity that stress ongoing processes of transmission above inspired personal authorship, poetic satisfaction above literal documentation, Springer also significantly complexifies his own attempt to map out regional blues lyric formulas.

John Cowley's historical overview of Blues and music from the English-speaking West Indies from the 1920s to the 1950s plunges the reader back into historical detail with a dense account of the recording careers of, among others, Sam Hanning and Louis Jordan. The survey, as the first of its kind, is an important contribution; it is a shame that the sheer weight of material results in individual lyrics being given comparatively short shrift. Finally, Randall Cherry traces the multiple Blues characters in Ethel Waters's early career, describing the way in which she brought charm and sophistication to the Blues, thus widening its potential audience to Harlemites and whites. The focus on her delivery of a song, and in particular her combination of innocence and knowing, is highly suggestive, if perhaps tempered by Giddins's suggestion that Waters, by combining Blues, pop and an intangible swing, can be claimed as one of the first jazz singers.

The book closes without a conclusion, the abrupt ending mirroring the speed with which the reader is thrown from a brief preface into the details of Evans' opening study. The absence of an explanatory frame lends an odd feeling of suspension to the whole: a critical reader might wonder from the beginning about how far songs can be analysed solely through their texts, the extent to which the Blues can be understood in isolation from other song genres, whether lyrics can be treated as documentary evidence for historical events, and how textual traditions operated between recorded examples. Individual authors have clearly considered these problems and variously address them through the collection; even so, a sense of methodological unease awaits anyone reading the contributions in sequence. The volume might not of course have been intended to be read in this way, but given the richness of the material presented, the whole seems only a generous fore- and afterword away from standing as a book of great interest to a general audience. For my part, I would not want to end without recording what I found most valuable in reading this collection: the attention to detail in almost all the essays is testament to passionate engagement with the lyrics of this repertory; the combination of this with scholarly professionalism is in an inspiring model for those working on song in any field.