When the English blues scholar Paul Oliver, who died in 2017 aged 90, was interviewed for a special issue of Popular Music in his honour, on the occasion of his 80th birthday (issue 26/1, January 2007), it was striking how much of the conversation revolved around a recurring flow of ideas for future research, to be undertaken by him or by anyone else who came with credentials appropriate to the enterprise (such as musicology, a discipline that he never considered himself well enough versed in to allow engagement). It didn't enter his mind that he might become a research subject himself. Now, with Christian O'Connell's book, he has; and it is his own methods that are under scrutiny, not, or not directly, the blues that he spent a long adult lifetime investigating (and for which he was such a knowledgeable and, for many who read his books or heard him speak live or on air, inspiring advocate), nor the social and economic life of the African American working class who created the music that continued to fascinate him. What is under the microscope is how he depicted both of those things.

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解释保罗奥利弗

2017 年去世，享年 90 岁的英国布鲁斯学者保罗·奥利弗（Paul Oliver）接受专刊采访时流行音乐以他的名义，在他 80 岁生日之际（2007 年 1 月第 26 期第 1 期），令人惊讶的是，谈话中有多少是围绕着他或其他任何人进行的未来研究的反复出现的想法。附带适合企业的证书（例如音乐学，他从未认为自己足够精通以允许参与的学科）。他没有想到自己可能会成为研究对象。现在，有了克里斯蒂安·奥康奈尔的书，他有了；受到审查的是他自己的方法，而不是或不是直接地，他花了很长的成年时间研究的忧郁（他是如此博学，对于许多读过他的书或听过他现场演讲的人或正在播出，鼓舞人心的倡导者），也不是创造了继续让他着迷的音乐的非裔美国工人阶级的社会和经济生活。显微镜下看到的是他如何描绘这两件事。