London and New York: Quartet Books, 1989. The multifaceted story of Willie Dixon--songwriter, producer, bassist, music publisher, singer, promoter, and more--is told by an equally wide-ranging and impressive cast of musicians (primarily Dixon himself), studio [...]
New York: Rinehart and Co., Inc., 1959. Reprinted with new introduction by the author: New York: Da Capo Press, 1975. The publication of The Country Blues by Sam Charters in 1959 was a major landmark [...]
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 [...]
New York: Da Capo Books. Helen Oakley Dance has been an active part of the music scene since the 1930s as an observer, promoter and record producer. Her marriage to noted jazz authority Stanley Dance [...]
The Blues has been described in many ways, but to Honeyboy Edwards it is 'a leading thing,' an irresistible feeling that has called him on - away from the home, away from the comfort, away [...]
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 [...]
New York: Dutton, 1989. Searching for Robert Johnson is, at 83 pages, the shortest piece of literature in the Blues Hall of Fame, but the intense public interest in Robert Johnson and the insightful work [...]
Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1966. Published in 1991 “with a new Afterword.” Urban Blues was an eye-opening, progressive look at the blues when it was first published in 1966, and though [...]
The essential connection between music and the specific places where musicians live and create their sounds would seem to be an obvious matter. How can one conceive of history of the subject in this country [...]
The Blues had a baby,' the Muddy Waters song title declares, ' and they named it 'Rock and Roll.'' Most books on Blues and Rock seem to lead their readers to believe that Rock came [...]