All these people, discovering virtually the same music at almost the exact same time. That was why it was so surprising, in a sense, when the Rolling Stones and John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers and Eric Clapton came along. I didn't know if anything like that existed. It wasn't a question of trying to convert anybody else, or joining a club that already existed. You'd go to a Skip James show at Club 47, there would only be 20 to 30 people in the room. We encountered others who were drawn to the music, but they weren't people that I knew.

Was there a social aspect to your blues obsession, a scene that you became part of? He's not a greater blues singer than these other blues singers, but he's in the same position.' I just said, 'Oh my God, Elvis was a blues singer. So RCA was putting out his old records and there were two albums that came out, A Date with Elvis and For LP Fans Only, which included maybe eight of his Sun sides, which I'd never heard before and which were mostly blues. His records permeated the culture, so I knew all the hits and stuff, but during that period, '59 and '60, Elvis was in the army and his manager, Colonel Parker, had embargoed any further recording sessions. I had never really listened to Elvis in a serious way. I’ve heard Skip’s name plenty of times, but until I read your essay on him, I never sat down and properly listened. GQ: The first thing I want to say is thank you for opening my ears to Skip James.

“When I write, I always try to live up to what Sam Philips told me,” he says, “’If you don’t tell the goddamn truth, you ain’t the motherfucker I thought you were.’”

Guralnick is 76 years old and, like many of the artists he loves, his powers are undiminished by age.

It will be a rewarding journey, trust me. If you haven’t read those, you might need to start there, and then work your way back to Looking to Get Lost. That includes Elvis Presley, about whom Guralnick wrote a masterful two-volume biography, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love. Many of the blues and country artists he covers in this collection- Robert Johnson, Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Howlin’ Wolf, Tammy Wynette, Chuck Berry - are huge figures, but because Guralnick is such a fine-grained storyteller and so driven by a deep passion for the music, even familiar characters emerge in a revealing new light. After reading his essay on Skip James, I lost a solid two hours on Spotify. As good a writer as Guralnick is, he would be the first to argue that there is no substitute for listening. Peter Guralnick’s new book Looking to Get Lost: Adventures in Music and Life is a slow read - slow because it’s impossible not to keep stopping and listening to music.

Peter guralnick elvis presley