This volume promises new perspectives on the blues. Let's see what it has to offer to popular music scholars: starting with the first article we find ourselves in the middle of some conceptual and methodological disputes in the field, as there are apparently either ‘blues researchers’ (p. 19) or ‘outsiders’ (p. 20), i.e. Western theorists and musicians. Gerhard Kubik consequently wishes to avoid the ‘conceptual gimmicks characteristic of a European music theory approach’ (p. 14) and the jargon of music critics or musicologists, which might explain ‘blue notes’ as deviations from a diatonic scale. Whether his own terminology, including ‘hexatonic three-part harmony shifting’ (p. 15) and the ‘unlikelihood of an equiheptatonic origin of the blue notes’ (p. 17) actually is that different may be left undecided. While his exploration of a cognitive system of non-Western origin provides some interesting results, his statistical approach might not be every popular music scholar's choice.

Much more accessible is Andrew M. Cohen's article reconsidering the notion of blues stylistic regions through an analysis of particular guitar picking styles, which is well provided with visual images and notational examples/tablature. Although reducing the notion of musical style to this particular aspect, it would be very interesting to place the resulting ‘geography of blues thumbing styles’ (p. 169) in the context of common popular music narratives and histories concerned with questions of place and origin. Yet there remains a focus on statistical proof and evidence in most of the articles which shows an underlying concept of research and scientific knowledge which seems rather alien to most approaches in the field of popular music studies, which are less concerned with ‘proof’ than with understanding particular processes.

The volume also features a number of interesting case studies, such as Luigi Monge's textual linguistic analysis of Son House's ‘Dry Spell Blues’, which examines the dichotomy between the sacred and the profane in this ‘blues prayer’. The symmetrical structure he extracts and the literal and metaphorical levels of meaning he highlights provide some interesting insights into the songwriting process. Whether this is to be regarded as ‘an intimate psychological self-portrait’ (p. 231) of the artist, which may be linked directly to biographical details, however, seems more problematic. Moreover, an analysis of how musical details support these textual interpretations would be of interest.

Such a comprehensive analysis is to be found in James Bennighof's article on aesthetic value in Delta blues, which uses a particular recording of Robert Johnson's ‘Rambling on My Mind’ as an example. He addresses the issue of tacit value judgements in blues and other vernacular musics and the need to specify assessment criteria in order to be able to compare pieces with one another. He also considers that the premises for such an analysis are necessarily different from those customarily applied to concert music. He shows how a critical analysis of this piece can address its emotional intensity and visceral appeal while interpreting these aesthetic qualities in relation to its cultural context, stylistic norms and technical limitations. He examines the unique combination of musical choices within a particular recorded performance in relation to general style characteristics, Johnson's customary techniques, the artist's complete recorded work and the persona he adopts, showing how music and text work together. The article thus offers an outstanding approach as to how to establish a common ground for aesthetic discussions of popular music.

A fascinating insight into a musical practice is provided by Katherine Cartwright's article on Ella Fitzgerald's ‘St. Luis Blues’. Through her analysis of the use of quotation and reference within the piece, she shows the vast web of connections between Fitzgerald and other musicians. Tracing down the sources of particular phrases, lines and stanzas, she outlines the ‘creative pathways and connections between people, events, places, times, idioms, [and] genres’ (p. 285). It is also a very interesting observation as to how these musical references contribute to the creation of a blues persona. Whether this kind of ‘musical evidence’ (p. 311) can be used to disprove the medial discourses which attested to a lack of essential blues qualities in Fitzgerald's voice, though, is methodologically debatable. But the author chose an excellent example to illustrate how musicians reference each other, which certainly isn't limited to the jazz idiom and tells us also a lot about musical learning and improvisational techniques in general. As a side line, the article also reports how these musical ideas circulated among musicians at the time through live performances, records and local radio stations.

This is something that David Evans's article on the cultural meaning of the nicknames of blues singers also does. He shows how these names draw a comprehensive picture of the blues world and it is very interesting to see how the range of inspiration for these names broadened with the emergence of mass media, the movies and television. Evans also relates changes in nicknaming patterns in the post-war era to changes in the recording industry and to a revised social attitude towards blues singers through the civil rights movement. Yet, as he points out, nicknaming flourishes especially in marginalised groups, such as hoboes, gamblers, prostitutes, criminals and prisoners, and the blues world he outlines intersected with other worlds of entertainment that contributed to the store of nicknames. In this regard, the female nicknames in his sample are especially interesting, since it was considered rather undignified for women to have nicknames at all.

Bob Groom's article engages with the notion of disillusion in the decade after World War II through an analysis of the lyrics of contemporary recordings. This provides a portrait of a time when returning American troops were doomed to disappointment due to a lack of jobs, the early 1950s recession and a slowdown of the civil rights movement. The examples he chooses tell the story of men being summoned to war, of returning black soldiers encountering hostility in their home country, and of women trouble as a result of the long absence. Groom places these portraits in the context of the historical events of the time. Again, a musical analysis would be of interest in conjunction with the lyrics.

Also concerned with historical events is the article by Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff, which explores the commercial ascendancy of the blues as it is preserved in sheet music and the entertainment columns of black community newspapers, which comment upon the African American vaudeville stage. The article creates a lively portrait of the contemporary theatre scene and its performers, but it also links this to the evolving sheet music business, copyright issues and the commercialisation of black cultural inventions in a racist society. It thus does a remarkable job in outlining the context in which folk-blues songs and their commonly shared ingredients were turned into a copyrightable commodity.

W.C. Handy certainly was a central figure in this regard, and Elliott S. Hurwitt's article highlights the fact that the lawyer and music critic Abbe Niles played an important role in shaping Handy's image and reputation as the ‘Father of the Blues’, which was also a commercial claim at the time. The article thus deals with issues of copyright and plagiarism as well, showing how inappropriate such a legal conception of ‘music’ is to this day to most musical practices. The article illustrates this rather abstract subject matter through two intersecting biographies and puts it into the context of the time. Moreover, it gives an impression of the media landscape of the period, its outreach and how a medial image like Handy's was shaped at the time.

While these articles are concerned with reconstructing history through various sources, John Minton sets out to disprove a particular history with his article on the emergence of zydeco. Through his extensive research he wants to show that its relation to Louisiana's Creole folk culture is purely symbolic and that it emerged in urban Texas instead as both a musical and linguistic entity (see p. 376). The problem is that he is more concerned with the exact origin of the term than its function when criticising ‘this urge to invent a romanticized rural past for newly coined urban traditions’ (p. 358). The article is thus more an example of ideological critique than discourse analysis, although the musicians' quotes he puts forward are a prime example of how such terms are used by artists to position themselves within a particular tradition. This would also explain the contradictions and ‘terminological confusions’ he finds in both definitions of ethnic identity and musical style, as well as the ‘anachronistic’ use of the term zydeco with regard to pre-war styles. The notion of a musical genre simply cannot be reduced to particular stylistic criteria. The more interesting question to ask would be why this story is told the way it is. Through the musicians' quotes he employs, however, Minton outlines a vivid picture of the musical practices within the urban Creole community.

Regarding the promise of new perspectives on the blues and the development of scholarship, it has to be noted that four of the essays have previously been published in American Music, and as far back as 1993. Evans states that the aim of the collection was to ‘make this scholarship more accessible not just to specialists in American music but to scholars in related disciplines and the many seriously interested lovers of blues music’ (p. 3), yet a certain acquaintance with a canon of recordings and literature as well as the methodological approaches employed may be a prerequisite. Although the volume appears in the series ‘African American Music in Global Perspective’, it remains a US-centric discourse and there prevails a focus on some blues ‘classics’ among the case studies. The sheer length of the articles and the often difficult lines of argument make the collection not particularly suitable for teaching. However, what it offers to scholars is an insight into the discourses and the patterns of argument in this research field. And through the case studies and examples covered, it depicts a detailed image of a musical practice. Both could and should be related to other musical practices and to popular music history in general, as well as to the relevant literature – so here's a task for popular music scholars.