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Elijah Wald is a musician, writer, and historian who has been playing guitar for more than fifty years. His published work includes thousands of articles and a dozen books, among them Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music, The Mayor of MacDougal Street, and Dylan Goes Electric! He has also done research on early American parlor guitar and is currently researching unrecorded African American music of the early twentieth century.