Books
HAND ME MY TRAVELIN’ SHOES:
In Search of Blind Willie McTell [2007, 2008, 2009]
JONATHAN LETHEM:
“A superb meditation on a rare American figure…a brilliant exhibition of how musical study becomes cultural study; and an elegant and passionate book that expands until its subjects seem to be time and memory themselves.”
100bookshelf (literary & music blog)
“Michael Gray’s Hand Me My Travelin’ Shoes is not just one of my favorite music books, it’s one of my favorite books in general… a beautiful portrait of a time and place – both past and present – as well as a fascinating glimpse into a most mysterious man.”
DAILY TELEGRAPH:
“A vivid social and cultural history of the American South, a colourful account of Gray’s own journeys in McTell’s footsteps, and an absorbing study in the business of biographical detective-work.”
THE GUARDIAN:
“A wonderful book about a spellbinding musician.”
THE OBSERVER:
“Gray’s wonderful book, part travelogue, part musical journey, part social history, is painstakingly researched and frequently illuminating. It brings to light not just an elusive artist but a lost world.”
UNCUT:
“* * * * * Gray, the author of titanic tomes on Dylan, is a fastidious researcher and here presents not just an authoritative portrait of the great bluesman, but also vivid history of the South… Gray is also a sharply observant travel writer and some of the book’s best writing is devoted to brilliantly evocative descriptions of the backwaters he visits and the people he meets.”
MORNING STAR:
“Gray’s credentials as an assiduous researcher are already, surely, unbeatable… this is a wonderful book, fascinating in its detail, wide-ranging in its vision, not only of an artist…but also of an era and geography…”
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY:
“More than a search for the bluesman Blind Willie McTell, this is an evocation of a whole vanished world… Part biography, part genealogy, part history, part travel writing, this wonderful book is suffused with empathy for its subject.”
MOJO:
“Genealogical detective tale, scrapbook of a musical life, an account of Georgia now and then… At the end of a fascinating journey we know much more not only about McTell, but about the world of intractable otherness that blues musicians of his time had to negotiate. **** ”
JAPAN TIMES, TOKYO:
"One of the best books bar none that I have read in a very, very long time."
MILWAUKEE SHEPHERD-EXPRESS:
“A detailed, atmospheric, cultural rendering of rural Southern life during McTell’s lifetime. The story of the artist and his times are clearly delineated by a brilliant historian and the specifics of a way of life are captured in ways that only a poet knows. Hand Me My Travelin’ Shoes is a travelogue, biography, cultural doctrine and social and political history… Gray is as insightful as anyone could possibly be on all fronts.”
SEAN WILENTZ, WORD:
“A wonderful biography.”
RECORD COLLECTOR:
“The blues is the bedrock of popular music, and while its story has been told many times, rarely has it been told as effectively as this.”
THE BOB DYLAN ENCYCLOPEDIA [2006, 2008]
LIBRARY JOURNAL:
“Amazingly well-researched and surprisingly readable...”
VILLAGE VOICE:
“A work of oceanic immersion. It has wit, opinion, style and asks to be read, not just consulted… staggeringly erudite, meticulously sourced, coherently schematized.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY:
“Michael Gray outdistances them all with this voluminous collection… covering the topics thoughtfully and thoroughly… Gray’s knowledge of his subject is seemingly boundless, yet he manages to maintain a critical eye… this impartiality… fuels the book and gives it weight. Insightful and entertaining, Gray’s tome will broaden appreciation of the artist, his influences and his legacy.”
TIME:
“Seriously now, do get… Michael Gray’s The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, which has all you need to know, and more, about the little big man.”
DAILY TELEGRAPH:
“This is a book to fall in love with.”
FOREWORD MAGAZINE BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDS:
Music Book of the Year.
EVENING STANDARD (LONDON):
“It stands comparison with David Thomson’s Biographical Dictionary of Cinema as a sustained piece of entertaining, opinionated, heartfelt and argumentative writing… The book is thronged with life… [and] leads you irresistibly from one connection to another… Throughout there is a rich sense of what these people have meant to Dylan - and what he has meant to them, and to all of us who have merely listened and been moved.”
THE VICTORY REVIEW (Pacific Northwest):
“Extensive, perceptive, thoughtful analysis and commentary on each entry, not just as they relate to Bob, but where each stands in its own right. The book offers some of the keenest, most carefully researched information and commentary on each person, place or thing as is likely to be found in succinct form.”
WHAT’S ON IN LONDON:
“Utterly brilliant... Its breadth of scope is extraordinary... Strikingly intelligent, poetic, subtly humorous and buzzing with an awareness of the richness of life, [Gray is] the perfect match for his subject.”
THE GUARDIAN (UK) Book of the Week:
“Michael Gray’s book embodies a lifetime of critical engagement with Dylan’s art. It’s probably the most comprehensive work on the subject, and also one of the most entertaining. The scale of research is colossal… There’s also original material… Gray has read everything remotely related to the subject; he has also listened to everything, and with great care… alert to the fluidity of ideas and associations in Dylan’s art and microscopically attentive to his choice and delivery of words… The living, breathing, struggling Bob Dylan is always there, an individual with a unique voice, responsible for his achievements and failings.”
PHILADELPHIA CITY PAPER:
“You certainly can’t go wrong with The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia… The book is meticulously researched… Insightful and witty.”
GQ:
“Michael Gray’s magisterial book The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia is…particularly welcome, as it analyses Dylan’s life, music, cultural relevance and legacy with style, humour and authority. A must-buy for any music or Dylan fan with any interest in the last half-century… provides a limitless well of knowledge.”
NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS (Nov. 2010):
"Michael Gray’s Song & Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan and The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia (Continuum, 2006; revised edition 2008) are both very much worthwhile."
COLLECTIVE MAGAZINE:
“A masterpiece for the coolest of coffee tables.”
SONG & DANCE MAN III:
The Art of Bob Dylan (2000)
CHRISTOPHER RICKS:
“Immense and immensely illuminating… It is wonderfully comic and serious and sharp. I am enjoying it hugely and learning from every page.”
ANDREW MOTION, naming it one of his Three Best Books of the Year 2000, in the Observer:
“Wonderful… The best book there is on Dylan, now better than ever.”
ROLLING STONE:
“Monumental, endlessly illuminating.”
THE TIMES, London:
“In examining the influences that shaped Dylan into one of the most influential postwar artists, Gray draws on everyone from Elvis to Eliot, Robert Johnson to Rimbaud... This huge work is overwhelming… ‘It’s all been written in the book,’ sang Bob Dylan. Now it really has.”
RECORD COLLECTOR, London:
“The original ‘Song & Dance Man’ was a pioneering piece of rock scholarship… Written with great intelligence and passion… the result was the first important book about a rock artist’s output, not just their life… But these 250 pages are merely a fragment of the 900-page monster which Gray has [now] unleashed… magnificent… soaked in insight… contains gems of perception on almost every page.”
UNCUT, London:
“* * * * *The third edition of Michael Gray’s pioneering tome… confirms once again Gray’s position as the doyen of Dylan scholars... even in its initial modest form, [it] was profoundly significant... His book invented a new school of rock criticism which made most of the writing that had gone before seem superficial, irrelevant and trivial... The third edition of Gray’s lifetime study displays an almost insane degree of scholarship... an intellectual tour de force... ”
GREIL MARCUS:
“Extraordinarily useful… I have always admired Gray’s reach, tone, and acuity but the research here is just amazing.”
ASAHI, Tokyo:
“Essential… a marvellous work of literary archaeology, cool analysis and inspired guesswork.”
Q, London:
“This book is an event... the vibrant complexity of its ideas ties synapses in a sheepshank... delivering prodigious analyses of Dylan’s artistry and his polymath sources in pre-war blues, nursery rhymes, fairy tales and Hollywood movie dialogue... Gray maintains a ruthless integrity regarding Dylan himself. * * * * * ”
FOLK ROOTS, London:
“This major update of a seminal work deserves to be read and studied by anyone with even the slightest interest in song lyrics and it’s essential as a storehouse of knowledge on folk, country and blues records.”
STEPHEN SCOBIE, Professor of English, University of Victoria:
“His research is formidable, and his knowledge is encyclopedic… [he puts] an argument with great cogency, confidence and authority… a quite splendid critic… Line by line, word by word, syllable by syllable, Gray can explain how the text [of a song] works poetically. It’s a rare gift: many of us can feel instinctively the poetic value of a line without being able to explain nearly so clearly how it actually works… indispensable.”
AIDAN DAY, Professor of English, Edinburgh University:
“This brilliant work establishes itself at once as the book on its subject, the one to which all those in the field will refer for many years to come.”
THE OBSERVER, London, 2003:
“A mammoth work of scholarship, often enthralling and never less than illuminating… A must for anyone interested in the great adventure that is Bob Dylan’s work.”
JEFFREY CARROLL, English Professor, University of Hawaii, 2010:
“Song & Dance Man III is staggeringly good.”
TIM MARTIN, Daily Telegraph, 2011:
"Those seeking serious insight into the man and the music should look out for the formidably learned Michael Gray’s Song and Dance Man III and The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, the definitive works."
EVERY SMITH BLOG, 2012:
"Ever since his seminal Song & Dance Man was published in 1972, Gray’s meticulous and exhaustive excavation of Bob’s work has been a fundamental source of information and inspiration for me. Yes, I have read Heylin and Ricks, Greil Marcus and Paul Williams, Robert Shelton and Howard Sounes, Andrew Muir and Stephen Scobie. I have shelves full of The Telegraph, The Bridge and Isis. But it is to Song & Dance Man and The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia that I return constantly to check a fact or a reference and then find myself, an hour or so later, reading a third or fourth entry and forgetting the nature of my original enquiry. This is primarily because of the fascination of the subject matter of course; but also because Michael Gray writes very well."
