The writing is confused and not clear much of the time although this applies to the style of the writing rather than the substance. Unfortunately, I have to concur for the most part. Another section that helps to pad the text but is more essential are transcriptions of all of the lyrics of Phillips’s recordings.Īnother reviewer criticized Corcoran’s writing, comparing it to a sophomore term paper. He does this to some extent but many details he passes over, with the seeming assumption that the readers know about such things already. If Corcoran wanted to pad the text he would have done well to give us more exposition about the setting and the region in which Phillips lived his life.
While it is a nice touch, it doesn’t really tell us anything substantive. The small volume of informative text is augmented by photos of the recording logs of each and every record that Phillips ever made. Sometimes the art-deco style illustrations tend to overwhelm the content, while inadvertently pointing out the paucity of the information within. The Washington Phillips set, Washington Phillips and His Manzarene Dreams, is constructed with attractive, old-fashioned paper and artwork. Both have been given a special mini book/CD treatment. Michael Corcoran, whose book, All Over the Map: True Heroes of Texas Music, I criticized in a review, revived his reputation in my mind by taking a deeper look into the two most interesting figures from that book: Arizona Dranes and Washington Phillips.
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