Various: R. Crumb's Heroes of Blues, Jazz and Country

A present from Lucy a couple of Christmases ago. It's actually a 238-page book, with a "bonus" music CD tucked in the back. The book is effectively a compilation of card-portraits that Robert Crumb did of his favourite, errr, blues, jazz and country artists from the first part of the 20th century.

Crumb obviously loves the music. Here he is last month with an old 78 rpm record. I like it too. There are some surprises: somehow I'd never noticed before how ("Nobody can sing the blues like") Blind Willie McTell actually sings the blues; I'd anticipated something like Howlin' Wolf, but the voice is much sweeter, almost effeminate.

But I don't go completely overboard for the recordings. I'm sure it would be different if I were American, but all that Old Weird America mythologising that Greil Marcus does is just, well, mythologising — a creative fiction.

Crumb's portraits buy into the mythology, and then add a nostalgia that seems to romanticise the suffering those struggling and unregarded-in-their-lifetimes musicians almost certainly experienced. I don't like them much.

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