Deep Blues, by Robert Palmer, New York: Viking Press, 1981.
In one of the most widely read books on blues ever published, Robert Palmer delineates the ‘deep blues’ stream that flowed from the Delta up through Memphis to Chicago. Palmer lucidly discusses the contributions of early icons Charley Patton, Son House, Robert Johnson, on through Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Elmore James, and ends with the more modern depths plumbed by Otis Rush and Son Seals in Chicago. Palmer, then the main pop music critic for the New York Times, went on to work on a Deep Blues documentary film a decade later and earned further blues credentials as a producer for Fat Possum Records. Palmer’s musical expertise and incisive interpretations helped make this one of the best tellings of a familiar tale, and if subsequent research and examination has revealed errors and misconceptions in the work, the same can be said of just about any musical history or biography written prior to the explosion of information on the internet. Titled simply Deep Blues in its original hardcover edition, this book has since appeared with the subtitle A Musical and Cultural History from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago’s South Side to the World.
— Jim O’Neal
www.stackhouse-bluesoterica.blogspot.com