Fascinating... Hamilton's book deserves to be read, particularly by those who think they've read it all before. In future, all searches for the blues must start here

Provocatively entertaining...Assiduously researched and beautifully written, what this book reminds us is that the blues has always meant something quite different to white audiences than to black ones

Iconoclastic... Marybeth Hamilton proves herself a fine and sensitive detective... It shakes the foundation myth of so much music that followed, as well as explaining a great deal about what it is to be a record collector, itself a dying calling in the age of the iPod

An important and often beautifully written piece of historical revisionism

Hamilton has a keen, unforgiving eye...an eloquent book about people making the forgotten important

Hamilton's outstanding book profiles the folklorists and collectors who shaped the concept of Delta blues... A plausible and provocative book. And it has transformed my view of the blues

Hamilton tells such a good story that she turns a work of scholarship into a page-turner

Hamilton has done a good job of researching a subject that blues fans will find fascinating

Evocative and engaging