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NEW YORK TIMES "This is a human and humane book, an insightful exploration of the biographer’s craft. [...] McCormick’s book makes you feel what we lost when Johnson died young." WALL STREET JOURNAL "Reads like noir fiction. It''s a detective story riddled with fatalism and ambiguity carried out by someone who, like the archetypal noir hero, isn''t a detective but an ordinary guy in a dismal, often violent setting searching for what can''t be found. In another sense, NPR FRESH AIR "It''s a completely engrossing exploration of the South, one that only elevates and deepens what Robert Johnson achieved as an iconoclastic musician who was said to have sold his soul to the devil for his mastery. McCormick''s book also has the added gift of revealing how a great biography can be assembled." KIRKUS REVIEWS, STARRED REVIEW "This edited version of the manuscript could stand on its own as a revelation, but the contextual material adds to the intrigue. [...] A worthwhile investigation into a true legend of the blues." LIBRARY JOURNAL, STARRED REVIEW "This page-turner, crime-thrillerlike odyssey leads readers through the American South for details about the blues guitarist. [...] VERDICT McCormick conveys a wild enthusiasm for his research and the music of Robert Johnson that readers will find contagious." BOOKLIST "This volume is a significant contribution to scholarship on Black culture and the blues, told by a flawed man whose perseverance, patience, diligence, and methodical methods provide valuable insights into Robert Johnson and the milieu from which his music sprang." MOJO MAGAZINE "McCormick shaped those findings into this incisive, empathetic, and insightful musical spy tale. UNCUT MAGAZINE “McCormick had grand ambitions for Biography Of A Phantom. Inspired by Truman Capote’s SALVATION SOUTH "Revelations abound within TEXAS MONTHLY "Mack McCormick was a peculiar American hero: a searcher driven to go places no one else went, where he found, interviewed, and recorded guitarists, pianists, and singers who still stir us today. To Mack, scholarship wasn’t everything, not compared with curiosity, moxie, and old-fashioned hustle. Often more interested in telling a good story than in getting his facts straight, he perhaps had more in common with the artists he loved than with the journalists, historians, and academics with whom he now--finally--shares bookshelf space. If you love music, you have to feel some sort of unsettled affection for Mack and his beautiful, damaged mind." NO DEPRESSION MAGAZINE "Ultimately, the resulting biography manages to offer new insights for Johnson obsessives as well as the merely curious." WASHINGTON EXAMINER "
Über den Autor / die Autorin
ROBERT "MACK" MCCORMICK (1930–2015) was an American musicologist and folklorist who researched the lives of blues musicians while supporting himself by writing, census taking, and in 1968 and 1971, working with musicians in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. JOHN W. TROUTMAN is curator of American music at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.
