Blues

It started with a question about the blues: what makes the music of the downtrodden black man so alluring to white middle-class ears? And thats where it gets interesting. Because …

In June of 1964, three young, white blues fans set out from New York City in a Volkswagen, heading for the Mississippi Delta in search of a musical legend. So begins Preachin' the …

"e;Everybody has to start somewhere. Businessmen start on the ground floor and try to work their way up the corporate ladder. Baseball players bide their time in the minor …

Poised to become a jazz classic, Gary Giddins' Visions of Jazz: The First Century contains no fewer than 78 chapters illuminating the lives of virtually all major figures in jazz …

Eddie Condon (1905-1973) pioneered a kind of jazz popularly known as Chicago-Dixieland, though musicians refer to it simply as Condon style. Played by small ensembles with driving …

Dial Records catered to jazz musicians and record collectors. Charlie Parker was one of the major jazz artists to record with Dial. His Dial sessions occurred at the personal …

Most often associated with modern artists such as Bob Dylan, Elton John, Don McLean, Neil Diamond, and Carole King, the singer-songwriter tradition in fact has a long and complex …

The noted blues scholar Paul Oliver here examines the many different skeins of the blues form, relating them to other black traditions - musical and religious - and tracing the …

Jimi Hendrix called Earl Hooker ""the master of the wah-wah pedal."" Buddy Guy slept with one of Hooker's slides beneath his pillow hoping to tap some of the elder bluesman's …

Celebrating the Duke offers readers a perceptive, panoramic survey of jazz as revealed, in illuminating detail, through the lives and music of its heroes and heroines, including …