Nothing But the Blues: The Music and the Musicians, edited by Lawrence Cohn

New York: Abbeville Press, 1993.

Nothing but the Blues is one of the most wide-ranging and comprehensive books on the blues, consisting of 11 chapters, each by a different writer recruited for the project by Larry Cohn, a longtime record producer whose own resume of documenting the blues dates backs to articles he penned in the early 1960s. As Cohn writes in his preface, ‘What we have tried to achieve here is an expert overview of the major aspects of the blues.’ To that end, those aspects include: roots and influences (by Samuel Charters), Texas and the Deep South (David Evans), women and the blues (Richard Spottswood), gospel (Mark Humphrey), urban blues (Mark Humphrey), East Coast Piedmont styles (Bruce Bastin), white country blues (Charles Wolfe), field recording trips (John Cowley), rhythm & blues (Barry Pearson), the 1960s blues revival (Jim O’Neal), and the blues today (Mary Katherine Aldin). While the writers cover some familiar historical territory, various chapters incorporate previously unpublished research and offer fresh perspectives and insights. The 423-page book, handsomely illustrated with many rare photos from the collections of Frank Driggs and others, won an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Book Award and a Ralph J. Gleason Book Award.