Fun 2 Know Podcast

On today's show: music historian Elijah Wald. I was just hanging out in my South Philly neighborhood when I happened to get introduced to Elijah, a music historian who has written over a dozen books, mainly on the subject of roots music but also on subjects as diverse as hitchhiking, the cultural phenomenon known as “the Dozens” and the genetics industry. Elijah won a Grammy for his liner notes in 2002, had the book he co-authored with Dave Van Ronk adapted for the Coen Bros. 2013 film, INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS as well as making the scene as a guitarist rooted in the folk blues tradition. It's just one of Elijah's books that we focused on in this episode, the 2009 publication, “How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music” from the Oxford University Press. The Beatles don't actually appear until near the book's climax, the book's main focus is as a corrective to past musical tomes that distort 20th century history by focusing on the canon of artistically “important ar