7 Guitars was one of ten plays by playwright August Wilson that chronicled 100 years of African-American history, one play per decade. Blues was a central theme in much of Wilson’s work, and the main character in 7 Guitars (set in 1948) is a fictitious bluesman, Floyd Schoolboy Barton, who has returned home from Chicago to Pittsburgh’s Hill District (where Wilson was raised), with a hit record to his credit: ‘That’s All Right’ (actually recorded by Jimmy Rogers in Chicago in 1950). Wilson (April 27, 1945 – October 2, 2005) won numerous awards for his work in the 1980s and 1990s, including two Pulitzer Prizes. 7 Guitars opened on Broadway in 1996 and was published in paperback by Plume in 1997 and in hardcover by Theatre Communications Group in 2007.
