What gives authenticity to the Delta blues? For many listeners, it's simply the music - those dangerous, raw vocals of Son House and Robert Johnson, the tales of tormented drifters meeting the devil at the crossroads at midnight, and the surrounding mythology of the American south in the first half of the twentieth century. But when we move beyond caricature and oral legends, what do we really know about this history, this supposed Southern sanctuary of grizzled men uncorrupted by the city, commerce, and modernity? In her provocative new history, In Search Of The Blues, Marybeth hamilton radically challenges the defining elements of the "Delta blues," creating a drastic re-understanding of this most American form of music.

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Roth glances to Ola; he is not a fool,; he realizes Michael has begun to suspect him.

MICHAEL
I know it wasn't me...so that leaves you.

ROTH
There was this kid that I grew up with; he was a couple years younger than me, and sort of looked up to me, you know. We did our first work together, worked our way out of the street. Things were good and we made the most of it. During prohibition, we ran molasses up to Canada and made a fortune; your father, too. I guess as much as anyone, I loved him and trusted him. Later on he had an idea to make a city out of a desert stop-over for G.I.'s on the way to the West Coast. That kid's name was Moe Greene, and the city he invented was Las Vegas. This was a great man; a man with vision and guts and there isn't even a plaque or a signpost or a statue of him in that town. Someone put a bullet through his eye. No one knows who gave the order. When I heard about it I wasn't angry. I knew Moe; I knew he was headstrong, and talking loud, and saying stupid things. So when he turned up dead, I let it go, and said to myself: this is the business we've chosen. I never asked, who gave the go ahead because it had nothing to do with business.

He regards Michael silently a moment.