Blues

So You Want to Sing the Blues: A Guide for Performers shines a light on the history and vibrant modern life of blues song. Eli Yamin explores those essential elements that make the …

This book offers an oral history of musical genres from the Palmetto state musicians who helped define the sounds.From Jabbo Smith, Dizzy Gillespie, and Drink Small to Johnny …

In 1977, when the Voyager deep space probes were launched on their journey into interstellar space, they each carried a gold record containing music from a wide variety of …

Curtis Mayfield. Etta James. The Chi-Lites. Chess Records. Jerry Butler. Fontella Bass. Chicago was soul music from the late 1950s through the late 1970s. Chicago Soul chronicles …

From the Minds of Jazz Musicians, Volume II: Conversations with the Creative and Inspired is a follow-up to Volume I's celebration of contemporary jazz artists who have toiled, …

Making it in Hell, says Bruce Jackson, is the spirit behind the sixty-five work songs gathered in this eloquent dispatch from a brutal era of prison life in the Deep South. Through …

From record album liner notes to serious academic pieces, Martin Williams has been perceptively chronicling the development of jazz for over three decades. In this, his newest …

It's nineteen fifty-something, in a dark, cramped, smoke-filled room. Everyone's wearing black. And on-stage a tenor is blowing his heart out, a searching, jagged saxophone journey …

'You the funkiest man alive.' Miles Davis' accolade was the perfect expression of John Lee Hooker's apotheosis as blues superstar: recording with the likes of Van Morrison, Keith …

"Billie Holiday deserves a biography in which her musicianship isn't overshadowed by the tragic events of her life. O'Meally has written that book," says Entertainment Weekly …