Full Description
It is our most passionate music, rooted in ancient Africa but brought to blossom in America at the doorstep of the twentieth century. It is a living heritage of song born in poverty, persecution, and hard labor, born of love and love betrayed, of holiness and sin, the pleasures and the pains of the flesh, the experience of tragedy, comedy, drunkenness, despair, desolation, and pure joy. It is the blues.
At root, the blues is rich in its simplicity, but it has flowered across the years in a variety of rare complexity. Perhaps no form of popular art is more immediately appealing than the blues, yet so rewards a thorough knowledge of its finer points. In eleven authoritative essays commissioned especially for the book, Nothing But the Blues traces the African-American origins of the music, its early development as popular entertainment, its early recorded manifestations, its regional differentiation (Mid-South, Tidewater-Piedmont, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles), its many stylistic dimensions, and its contemporary manifestations. Country blues, urban blues, the evolution of rhythm and blues, rock 'n' roll, and the blues revival are all fully covered.
But the written history is only part of the story. Blues fans have always treasured rare photographs of their heroes, and Nothing But the Blues is gloriously illustrated with posed and candid shots of the musicians as well as photographs of such one-of-a-kind artifacts and documents as Leadbelly's NYPD rap sheet and classic recording contracts. Nothing But the Blues features an introduction by one of the genre's living legends, B. B. King, and a comprehensive "best of the best" discography, including current and rereleased recordings as well as the collectors' treasures to go after.
Blues is more popular than ever before. Not only are reissues of historical blues classics selling in unprecedented numbers, but a whole new crop of vital young blues artists is active in clubs and on record today. Nothing But the Blues is a lavishly illustrated comprehensive history of the music and the musicians, as well as the promoters, producers, and others who have shaped--and continue to shape--this powerful and enduringly popular American musical art form.
Contents
Foreword: B. B. King Preface: Lawrence Cohn 1. Workin on the Building: Roots and Influences by Samuel Charters 2. Goin Up the Country: Blues in Texas and the Deep South by David Evans 3. Country Girls, Classic Blues, and Vaudeville Voices: Women and the Blues by Richard K. Spottswood 4. Holy Blues: The Gospel Tradition by Mark A. Humphrey 5. Bright Lights, Big City: Urban Blues by Mark A. Humphrey 6. Truckin My Blues Away: East Coast Piedmont Styles by Bruce Bastin 7. A Lighter Shade of Blue: White Country Blues by Charles Wolfe 8. Dont Leave Me Here: Non-commercial Blues: The Field Trips, 1924-60 by John H. Cowley 9. Jump Steady: The Roots of R & B by Barry Pearson 10. I Once Was Lost, But Now Im Found: The Blues Revival of the 1960s by Jim ONeal 11. Standing at the Crossroads: The Blues Today by Mary Katherine Aldin Discography: Lawrence Cohn Bibliography: Lawrence Cohn Index
