History of the Blues

I know nobody gafs, but it is nice to see some focus on the way "tradition" is constructed:

The reputations of other early blues artists have ballooned, in some cases to the verge of over­inflation. Children of the rock era have worked hard to validate the music of their own time by historicizing it, adopting blues history as rock’s pre­history, and canonizing a select group of blues founders who best fit the image rockers like to project. This narcissistic boomer retroactivism has codified a conception of blues-making as it was practiced by the great rural innovators — Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson and others who worked in and around the Mississippi Delta during the first years of the last century. From this point of view, a legitimate historic blues artist must have been poor, unschooled, inadequately recognized in his time and perhaps beset by tragedy, as well as African-American and male (despite the prevalence of women among the most prominent singers and composers in early blues).

From: "WC Handy Review" in the NY Times