{"id":10876,"date":"2016-05-31T05:30:16","date_gmt":"2016-05-31T09:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=10876"},"modified":"2016-05-31T08:12:10","modified_gmt":"2016-05-31T12:12:10","slug":"book-review-rollin-n-tumblin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2016\/05\/31\/book-review-rollin-n-tumblin\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Rollin&#8217; &#8216;n&#8217; Tumblin&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10877\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/rollin_tumblin.jpg\" alt=\"rollin_tumblin\" width=\"300\" height=\"462\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/rollin_tumblin.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/rollin_tumblin-195x300.jpg 195w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>I don&#8217;t claim to know whether <strong>Reverend Keith A. Gordon<\/strong>&#8216;s title is an honorific, or if he&#8217;s truly a man of the cloth. But what I do know is that he&#8217;s here to spread the good news. And that news takes the form of a new book crammed full of album reviews (with some book reviews thrown in for good measure).<\/p>\n<p>Gordon has seen his blues (and related genre) reviews published in print and online in a variety of outlets, most notably <i>Blues Revue<\/i>, <i>Blues Magazine<\/i>, and <i>BLURT<\/i>. What he&#8217;s done now is put together well over 100 of those reviews into printed book form.<\/p>\n<p>Gordon knows his stuff, so a review won&#8217;t simply review the music, but place it into its proper context. The Rev offers the context a reader needs \u2013 the artist&#8217;s previous works, other influential artists etc. \u2013 and bakes it into every review. <i>Rollin&#8217; &#8216;n&#8217; Tumblin&#8217;<\/i> focuses on reviews of albums that have been released (or reissued) in the last decade or so. What that means is that those interested in newer\/contemporary blues acts have a fine guide in this volume, but those who are interested in picking up a good reissue, compilation or archival release have plenty of advice from Gordon.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"float: left; padding: 10px; width: 120px; height: 240px;\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ss&amp;ref=as_ss_li_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=musoscribe-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=0985008482&amp;asins=0985008482&amp;linkId=a5958f806f2e90ddb1c68836d12957ce&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The book is laid out well, if a bit idiosyncratically. For reasons known only to himself, Gordon organizes the artists reviewed in <i>Rollin&#8217; &#8216;n&#8217; Tumblin&#8217;<\/i> alphabetically&#8230;<i>by first name<\/i>. And since there&#8217;s no index, that means that if you&#8217;re looking for info on something from a particular artist, you&#8217;ll have to scan the entire Table of Contents. Happily, that&#8217;s only four pages of information \u2013 set in type and size that older folks will appreciate \u2013 so it won&#8217;t take long to find whether or not he&#8217;s reviewed, say, Real Gone Music&#8217;s reissue of <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2013\/07\/24\/album-review-don-nix-living-by-the-days\/\"><strong>Don Nix<\/strong>&#8216;s <i>Living By the Days<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Gordon has chosen well for this volume; there&#8217;s focus on both well-known and relatively obscure artists from today and the past. And he digs deep into the reviews, often providing a song-by-song rundown of an entire album. The black-and-white reproductions of the album covers are faint, but then that&#8217;s not why most reader will dig into a book such as this. More of a reference work than a tome designed to be read cover to cover, <i>Rollin&#8217; &#8216;n&#8217; Tumblin&#8217;<\/i> is a useful consumer guide to the world of currently-available blues (and blues-informed) music.<\/p>\n<p>The book&#8217;s subtitle is <i>The Reverend&#8217;s Archives, Volume 2<\/i>, so if this is your kind of thing, there&#8217;s more where it came from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t claim to know whether Reverend Keith A. Gordon&#8216;s title is an honorific, or if he&#8217;s truly a man of the cloth. But what I do know is that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10877,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10,65],"tags":[2712],"class_list":["post-10876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-book","category-review","tag-rev-keith-a-gordon","cat-9-id","cat-10-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10876"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10906,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10876\/revisions\/10906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}