entry 1 jay patel

Petrusich leaves Brooklyn, New York, where she was staying, to travel to the south and try to understand the music that originated there and is characterized as Americana today. She talks about Alan Lomax who went around in the south and captured folk songs and published them to make a profit. He never gave credit to any of the people that actually sang the music. I found that behavior a little puzzling because he was getting away with it and never got punished with. I don't know all the rules of that time period but in today's world taking credit of other peoples' work is a serious offense and people do not usually get away with it. He may have gotten away with it because artists back then usually did not have an opportunity to make their music available to a mass audience especially if it was folk music that was usually isolated in certain regions.


The most interesting details or behavior that I found in this reading was the part where Petrusich goes to Elvis Presleys house and she drescribes what she saw in the house. She said that he had a weird taste in furniture and kept stuff that an overgrown teenager would have. She said that there numerous television sets everywhere and monkey figurines. The most interesting to me was that only seven rooms were open to the public to see and the rest was closed off. Only family could go into the closed off parts of the house. The interesting part for me was when Petrusich said that there were rumors that when Nicholas Cage was married to Lisa Marie had wondered into the closed off areas but no one knew if it was true or not. Also Petrusich said that no pictures of the closed off area were released to the media but on the internet you can find pictures of what people think its like.


Petrusich talks about how she tried to understand how people came to believe that Robert Johnson had made a deal with the devil to be able to play guitar like no one had ever heard it before. He was able to make sounds from his guitar that a five man band would make all by himself. Even though that its not true today but people back then had never heard anyone play like that before so they might have believed it. Petrusich doesn't believe in it herself but she explains their views without being bias or making fun of them.