Blue Texas?

The post title does not represent the biennial wish of the Texas Democratic Party -- at least until they realize they might be saddled with Governor Beto. No, it's helping me point you to a link on Ted Gioia's Substack newsletter, The Honest Broker.

Gioia describes how a couple of books let him to give a talk on Mississippi Delta blues music while in Austin, and how thoroughly he was then castigated by another speaker for omitting any reference to Texas' own blues history and tradition. In the post, Gioia helps you avoid his mistake by offering some representative and potentially defining tracks of Texas blues for your listening. Which you should, by the way, do.

Much of the time, writing about music gets to be a little tiresome once we wander outside the purposeful realm of the review or critique. The difficulty of describing something aural with words links up with the malleability of the words themselves to create what's just as likely to be fannish fog as focused insight. Check out any of the blurbs for entries from the old Daytrotter Sessions at Wolfgangs.com for numerous examples.

Gioia, however, seems to have been granted the gift of fog removal and sharpening focus and is, as usual, worth reading on the subject while listening to the tracks he suggests. As mentioned before, as long as Substack puts Ted Gioia's thinking and writing about music within my reach, it justifies its existence.