Winner of a National Book Critics Circle award, a rollicking and unforgettable memoir by the man who helped bring the music of the blues into the mainstream

Without Lomax it's possible that there would have been no blues explosion, no R&B movement, no Beatles and no Stones and no Velvet Underground. --Brian Eno

A self-described song-hunter, the folklorist Alan Lomax traveled the Mississippi Delta in the 1930s and '40s, armed with primitive recording equipment and a keen love of the Delta's music heritage. Crisscrossing the towns and hamlets where the blues began, Lomax gave voice to such greats as Leadbelly, Fred MacDowell, Muddy Waters, and many others, all of whom made their debut recordings with him.

The Land Where the Blues Began is both a fascinating recollection of a pivotal time in American music history and an intimate portrait of the struggles blues musicians faced in the Jim Crow South. The blues were an organic expression of Black humanity in a place where slavery had been outlawed but where segregation, violence, and racial inequality were still the law of the land. Lomax's role as a liaison to white America, relating the emotion and musical virtuosity displayed by those musicians, would change American popular music forever. Through candid conversations with bluesmen and vivid, firsthand accounts of the landscape where their music was born, Lomax's discerning reconstructions . . . give life to a domain most of us can never know . . . one that summons us with an oddly familiar sensation of reverence and dread (The New York Times Book Review).

Artistic expression has always been a way for oppressed peoples to speak truth to power, assert their dignity, and simply live in a world rife with injustice. The Land Where the Blues Began is an enthralling chronicle of the journey to bring this irrepressible art out of the Delta where it began and into the ears of every American.

Gorgeous. One of the music--and art--books of the year. (The Guardian)

A characteristically idiosyncratic tribute by an underground icon to the musical innovators who helped inspire him, R. Crumb's Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country is a must-have collection for Crumb aficionados, comics fans, and music lovers alike.

Anyone who knows R. Crumb's work as an illustrator knows of his passion for music. And all those who collect his work prize the Heroes of the Blues, Early Jazz Greats, and Pioneers of Country Music trading card sets he created in the early to mid-1980s.

Now they are packaged together for the first time in book form, along with an exclusive 21-track CD of music selected and compiled by Crumb (featuring original recordings by Charley Patton, Dock Boggs, Jelly Roll Morton, and others).

A bio of each musician is provided, along with a full-color original illustration by the cartoonist. Includes an introduction by Terry Zwigoff, award-winning director of Crumb.

Charting the history of the blues from its rural roots in the American South and focusing on the key musicians and singers who brought it recognition worldwide, The Blues: A Visual History is a unique and fully illustrated account of the development of the blues. This deceptively simple, 12-bar musical form has become the common denominator that has driven the popular music of the last hundred years. As John Lee Hooker put it: The music we play . . . that music is the roots. Rock music, everything else, is like a branch on the same tree. It all comes from the blues.

• 350 stunning photographs and illustrations
• A wealth of archive photography
• Rare graphic memorabilia
• Foreword by Marshall Chess, veteran record producer with his family's legendary Chicago rhythm-and-blues label, Chess Records

Author Mike Evans is a musician, editor, and author whose books include the best-selling Elvis: A Celebration, and Ray Charles: The Birth of Soul. Consultant editor Robert Gordon is a Grammy Award-winning writer and filmmaker specializing in the music of the American south, and Scott Barretta is a blues specialist writer, broadcaster, and lecturer.

Sure to strike a chord with guitarists and blues fans, this authoritative and photo-filled volume includes over 150 of the genre's greatest players and performers from the prewar era to present.

From blues pioneers like Robert Johnson, Son House, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Memphis Minnie to today's hottest guitar slingers such as Derek Trucks, Joe Bonamassa, Gary Clark Jr., and Samantha Fish, The Ultimate Book of Blues Guitar Legends is your guide to the instruments and musicians that made blues a cornerstone of American culture and the very foundation of rock and roll. Author and guitar journalist Pete Prown presents his subjects by blues-defining eras and subgenres, including: early acoustic and country blues, Chicago blues, the British Invasion, blues rock, and more.

Prown's knowledgeable discussions examine specific noteworthy guitars each player made famous, as well as effects pedals, amplifiers, and career overviews that include the players' first-person revelations and insights.

Illustrated with photos of the guitarists in action, the book also features sidebars on influencers who were pioneers of various styles and subgenres, techniques like slide guitar, blues jargon, and influential women who helped shape the blues.

Guitarists profiled include:
Robert Johnson
Son House
T-Bone Walker
Clarence Gatemouth Brown
Lightnin' Hopkins
B. B. King
Freddie King
Albert King
Albert Collins
Otis Rush
Buddy Guy
John Lee Hooker
Mississippi John Hurt
Muddy Waters
Howlin' Wolf
Brian Jones
Keith Richards
Michael Bloomfield
Eric Clapton
Jimi Hendrix
Peter Green
Jeff Beck
Jimmy Page
Mick Taylor
Alvin Lee
Duane Allman
Dickey Betts
Johnny Winter
Roy Buchanan
Carlos Santana
Billy F Gibbons
Rory Gallagher
Lowell George
Robin Trower
Stevie Ray Vaughan
Jimmie Vaughan
Robert Cray
Bonnie Raitt
Gary Moore
Kenny Wayne Shepherd
Jonny Lang
Sonny Landreth
Warren Haynes
Derek Trucks
Joe Bonamassa
Gary Clark Jr.
Christone Ingram

In conversations on regional blues, the traditions of the Mississippi Delta, the Carolina Piedmont, Chicago, Houston, Memphis, New Orleans, and Los Angeles are frequently lauded. But until now, little attention has been paid to the Midwest, despite the presence and popularity of blues in these heartland communities. Wichita Blues: Music in the African American Community seeks to address this gap in music history by exploring the lively Wichita blues tradition. In interviews with nineteen African American Wichita blues performers, author Patrick Joseph O'Connor reveals the evolution of the blues from the 1930s to the 1960s and beyond.

Utilizing twenty-five years of fieldwork, Wichita Blues details the history of performance and camaraderie among the musicians of this often-neglected regional sound. The personal interviews offer unique insight into topics that shape Wichita's sound, including how migration from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas brought varied artists to the area and the ways musical traditions cross racial divides and generations. The artists articulate the poetics of the blues and the diverse regional influences that can be detected in their music. In exploring the Wichita blues tradition, O'Connor traces African American history in Kansas, ranging from the Exoduster movement in the late nineteenth century and minstrel shows across the state to Black cowboys and growing urban African American communities in Topeka and Wichita.

Including a foreword by renowned music scholar David Evans, Wichita Blues allows seasoned blues musicians to tell their own stories and paints a picture of the vibrant Black music scene in the city.

Out of the Blue: Life on the Road with Muddy Waters begins with a moment lifted from a young musician's dreams. Brian Bisesi, a guitarist barely out of his teens, is invited on stage to fill in for a missing member of the band backing blues legend Muddy Waters. This life-changing quirk of fate opens the door into a world of challenges and opportunities that Bisesi, an Italian American reared in the comforts of a New York City suburb, can barely imagine. Despite their differences, Bisesi and Waters hit it off, and what might have been a one-night stand turns into a career. From 1978 to 1980, Bisesi works for Waters as his road manager, bean-counter, and at times his confidant, while often sitting in with the band.

Bisesi's years with the band take him to Europe, Japan, Canada, and across the United States as Waters tours--and parties--with rock gods like Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, a Beatle, and the gamut of musicians who came of age with Waters and introduced a younger generation to the blues. In Out of the Blue, Bisesi captures it all: from the pranks and tensions among bluesmen enduring a hard life on the road, to observations about Waters's technique, his love of champagne and reefer, his eye for women, and his sometimes-acrid views of contemporary music. Bisesi has sharp insights into the ill-conceived management decisions that led to the dissolution of Waters's longest-serving band in June of 1980. This book will rivet, amuse, and occasionally infuriate blues aficionados. It is a raucous and intimate portrait of the blues scene at a pivotal moment in time that fascinates music historians and blues fans alike.

With an incredible blues career spanning over sixty years, which rightly earned him the title The Godfather of British Blues, John shares his experiences and encounters in what will be a must read autobiography for any true blues fans.

John Mayall played with them all; Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Jack Bruce, Mick Fleetwood, Mick Taylor, Andy Fraser... the list goes on. John continued to tour all over the world and perform to sell-out crowds well into his 80s.

John Mayall's story is like no other in the annals of rock and blues. Born in the UK in 1933, he laid the foundations of British blues, nurtured a generation of future superstars and then took the music back to the land of its birth.

This extraordinary autobiography offers a vivid glimpse of Britain well before the rock revolution of the sixties, at a time when young men like John found themselves conscripted for national service that, in his case, included eighteen months in Korea. What followed when he returned was an odyssey of musical trail-blazing.

From Manchester, England, to Laurel Canyon in California, and many points in between, John's account of his long life is both affectionate and compelling - a guided tour through more than sixty years of the music business and its stars, brought to vivid life by one of its undisputed pioneers.

Deep Inside the Blues collects thirty-four of Margo Cooper's interviews with blues artists and is illustrated with over 160 of her photographs, many published here for the first time. For thirty years, Cooper has been documenting the lives of blues musicians, their families and homes, neighborhoods, festivals, and gigs. Her photographic work combines iconic late-career images of many legendary figures including Bo Diddley, Honeyboy Edwards, B. B. King, Pinetop Perkins, and Hubert Sumlin with youthful shots of Cedric Burnside, Shemekia Copeland, and Sharde Thomas, themselves now in their thirties and forties. During this time, the Burnside and Turner families and other Mississippi artists such as T-Model Ford, James Super Chikan Johnson, and L. C. Ulmer entered the national and international spotlight, ensuring the powerful connection between authentic Delta, Hill Country, and Piney Woods blues musicians and their audience continues.

In 1993, Cooper began photographing in the clubs around New England, then in Chicago, and before long in Mississippi and Helena, Arkansas. On her very first trips to Mississippi in 1997 and 1998, Cooper had the good fortune to photograph Sam Carr, Frank Frost, Bobby Rush, and Otha Turner, among others. The blues come out of the field, Ulmer told Cooper. Seeing those fields, as well as the old juke joints, country churches, and people's homes, inspired her. She began recording interviews with the musicians, sometimes over a period of years, listening and asking questions as their narratives unfolded. Many of the key blues players of the period have already passed, making their stories and Cooper's photographs of them all the more poignant and valuable.

The drama of In Cold Blood meets the stylings of a Coen brothers film in this long-lost manuscript from musicologist Robert Mack McCormick, whose research on blues icon Robert Johnson's mysterious life and death became as much of a myth as the musician himself

This is a human and humane book, an insightful exploration of the biographer's craft. [...] McCormick's book makes you feel what we lost when Johnson died young. --New York Times

Reads like noir fiction. It's a detective story riddled with fatalism and ambiguity carried out by someone who, like the archetypal noir hero, isn't a detective but an ordinary guy in a dismal, often violent setting searching for what can't be found. --Wall Street Journal

When blues master Robert Johnson's little-known recordings were rereleased to great fanfare in the 1960s, little was known about his life, giving rise to legends that he gained success by selling his soul to the devil. Biography of a Phantom: A Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey is musicologist Mack McCormick's all-consuming search, from the late 1960s until McCormick's death in 2015, to uncover Johnson's life story. McCormick spent decades reconstructing Johnson's mysterious life and developing theories about his untimely death at the age of 27, but never made public his discoveries. Biography of a Phantom publishes his compelling work for the first time, including 40 unseen black-and-white photographs documenting his search.

While knocking on doors and sleuthing for Johnson's loved ones and friends, McCormick documents a Mississippi landscape ravaged by the racism of paternalistic white landowners and county sheriffs. An editor's preface and afterword from Smithsonian curator John W. Troutman provides context as well as troubling details about McCormick's own impact on Johnson's family and illuminates through McCormick's archive the complex legacy of white male enthusiasts assuming authority over Black people's stories and the history of the blues.

While Johnson died before achieving widespread recognition, his music took on a life of its own and inspired future generations. Biography of a Phantom, filled with lush descriptive fieldwork and photographs, is an important historical object that deepens the understanding of a stellar musician.

In honor of the Year of the Blues, the long-awaited reissue of a myth-shattering examination of a most enduring form of American music

The Father of the Delta Blues, Charley Patton (1891-1934) was born and raised around Mississippi's cotton plantations. During the 1920s, he was the first of the region's great stars, performing for packed houses throughout the South and making popular recordings in New York City. His music -- ranging from blues and ballads to ragtime and gospel -- is distinctive for his gravelly, high-energy singing and the propulsive beat of his guitar. Patton had a lively stage presence, originating many of the guitar-playing antics now associated with Jimi Hendrix and other latter-day musicians. His influence, among both his contemporaries and subsequent blues artists, is incalculable.
Noted guitarist John Fahey presents a textual and musicological examination of Patton's music. This new edition of the original 1970 publication is enhanced by Fahey's notes from the Grammy-winning, out-of-print box set Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton. Available for the first time outside the set, Fahey's reconsideration of Patton's music offers fresh perspectives and key corrections of the historical record.

Praised as suave, soulful, ebullient (Tom Waits) and a meticulous researcher, a graceful writer, and a committed contrarian (New York Times Book Review), Elijah Wald is one of the leading popular music critics of his generation. In The Blues, Wald surveys a genre at the heart of American culture.
It is not an easy thing to pin down. As Howlin' Wolf once described it, When you ain't got no money and can't pay your house rent and can't buy you no food, you've damn sure got the blues. It has been defined by lyrical structure, or as a progression of chords, or as a set of practices reflecting West African tonal and rhythmic approaches, using a five-note blues scale. Wald sees blues less as a style than as a broad musical tradition within a constantly evolving pop culture. He traces its roots in work and praise songs, and shows how it was transformed by such professional performers as W. C. Handy, who first popularized the blues a century ago. He follows its evolution from Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith through Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix; identifies the impact of rural field recordings of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton and others; explores the role of blues in the development of both country music and jazz; and looks at the popular rhythm and blues trends of the 1940s and 1950s, from the uptown West Coast style of T-Bone Walker to the down home Chicago sound of Muddy Waters. Wald brings the story up to the present, touching on the effects of blues on American poetry, and its connection to modern styles such as rap.
As with all of Oxford's Very Short Introductions, The Blues tells you--with insight, clarity, and wit--everything you need to know to understand this quintessentially American musical genre.

A visual storytelling celebration of American roots music in its rich variety through unseen and newly scanned photographs by the founder of the legendary Arhoolie Records.

Founded in 1960 by Chris Strachwitz, the one-man operation Arhoolie Records eventually produced more than four hundred albums during more than forty years in operation, exploring the far corners of American vernacular music--blues, gospel, Cajun, zydeco, hillbilly, Texas-Mexican norteño music, and more.

From the very beginning, Strachwitz brought his camera along with recording equipment as he met and recorded now-legendary artists such as Lightnin' Hopkins, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Clifton Chenier, and Big Joe Williams. This book collects more than 150 of his best, most intimate, and exciting images--many never-before-seen--each with rich captions by Strachwitz and award-winning music journalist Joel Selvin, along with a substantial 20,000-word essay by Selvin about Arhoolie, Strachwitz, and the music.

INTIMATE AND AMAZING PHOTOGRAPHS: Although Strachwitz would always self-deprecatingly claim that the photographs he took while meeting and recording musicians were strictly documentary, and *maybe* of some use for a record sleeve later, they are much more than that. Lyrical, candid, real: His rapport with the musicians and their families is glowing and evident in these photographs.

RIVETING MUSIC HISTORY PHOTO BOOK: These are never-before-seen photos, and photos like you've never seen before. Every image is from freshly remastered scans, and the authors dove deep into the Arhoolie archives to uncover images almost no one has had the chance to see.

CRUCIAL AMERICAN MUSIC AND CULTURAL HISTORY: Strachwitz's wide-ranging interest and unbridled enthusiasm for all sorts of roots music led to his crisscrossing the country from artist to artist based on recommendations, rumor, tips, radio broadcasts--the result being a portrait (in sound for the label, and image in this book) of vital American music in a wide range of genres. He has rich stories for each photograph and artist.

AN INVALUABLE DOCUMENT: Arhoolie fundamentally shaped our understanding of American music. Renowned music writer Joel Selvin has not only worked with Strachwitz to draw out the stories behind the photographs, but he has contributed an invaluable long-form essay about Arhoolie, Strachwitz, and the label's cultural legacy to anchor this incredible book.

Perfect for:

• Fans of American roots music, including the blues, folk, Cajun, Creole, zydeco, Mexican American border music, and more
• Fans of Lightnin' Hopkins, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Big Mama Thornton, Lydia Mendoza, Clifton Chenier, Flaco Jiménez, Mance Lipscomb, Narciso Martínez, Big Joe Williams, and the other fantastic artists whose records Arhoolie released over the years
• Birthday, holiday, graduation, or anytime gift for musicians and music lovers
• Collectors of music history, American cultural history, Black history, and music photography books

Gary Moore is definitely in my list of top five guitar influences, right up there with Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Michael Schenker. He just blew me away from the first time I heard him. Kirk Hammett

The most powerful, genuine, authentic blues-rock guitarist of his day. Jack Bruce

Gary opened the door for me and a lot of other blues-rock guitarists. He was a legend, a musical titan and a very nice man. Joe Bonamassa

Gary Moore delighted entire generations with his passionate guitar playing, from the driving rock of Thin Lizzy in the 1970s to his explorations in subsequent decades of jazz fusion, heavy metal, hard rock, blues rock, and more. Throughout that time, he could be seen on the world's biggest stages, yet the real Gary Moore was always hidden in plain sight, giving little away. Now, however, through extensive and revealing interviews with family members, friends, and fellow musicians, acclaimed rock biographer Harry Shapiro is able to take readers right to the heart of Gary's life and career.

Despite his early death in 2011, Moore still has legions of devoted fans across the world who will be enthralled by this unique insight into the life of a guitar genius who did it his way and whose music lives on. Beginning with Gary as a teenage guitar prodigy in war-torn Ireland and continuing through the many highs and lows of more than forty years in rock, Shapiro paints an intimate portrait of a musician widely hailed as one of the greatest Irish bluesmen of all time.

The Ultimate Chord Reference Book for 3-String Cigar Box Guitar Players.

The Complete Cigar Box Guitar Chord Book is the most extensive library of chords ever assembled for the 3-string cigar box guitar. It's amazing that over 2000 chords are possible with only 3 strings, considering that two of the three strings on the cigar box guitar are tuned to the same note in GDG tuning. There are many possible chords though some more practical and easier to play. This extensive library will cover all the chords required to play any style of music.

A must-have for all cigar box guitar musicians

I have offered as many chords as possible in each of the 12 keys in music, as well as multiple voicings of each chord providing lots of chord choices. While there is the extensive library, I have also included the most played and user-friendly chords for most players.

Learning your favourite chords is the first step quickly followed by learning to switch the chords and play songs and chord progressions. There are many chord progressions in the book that are taken directly from some of the most popular songs ever written. There is a good selection of blues chord progressions that cover many of the standard blues changes in all keys. Also, take some time and play through some standard strumming and fingerpicking patterns. You will see these familiar patterns in many of your favourite songs. If you need to brush up on your chord theory there are several pages dedicated to how chords are formed, the chord numbering system, and chord formulas.

For more information visit: brentrobitaille.com

(Berklee Labs). Learn to play the blues in several styles jazz, Latin, fusion, rock and funk in all keys with step-by-step instructions, practice tips and play-along audio tracks. Even if you are a complete beginner, this easy-to-understand instructional guide will help you develop essential reading, technique, rhythmic syncopation, performance and composing skills, and get you improvising in no time! The audio is accessed online using the unique code inside each book and can be streamed or downloaded. The audio files include PLAYBACK+, a multi-functional audio player that allows you to slow down audio without changing pitch, set loop points, change keys, and pan left or right. Jeff Harrington is an assistant professor in the Woodwind Department at Berklee College of Music. He received his B.M. from Berklee and his M.M. from the New England Conservatory of Music. Harrington is a tenor saxophonist and recording artist, and has performed internationally with artists including Ricky Ford, Milt Hinton, Toots Thielemans and Makoto Ozone.

BIG BOSS MAN THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF BLUESMAN JIMMY REED

Want to become the coolest possible version of yourself?

Time to jump into learning the blues guitar. Even if you don't read music, Blues Guitar For Dummies lets you pick up the fundamentals and start jamming like your favorite blues artists.

Blues Guitar for Dummies covers the key aspects of blues guitar, showing you how to play scales, chords, progressions, riffs, solos, and more. This hands-on guide is packed with musical examples, chords charts, and photos that let you explore the genre and play the songs of all the great blues musicians. This accessible how-to book will give you the skills you need to:

• Choose the right guitar, equipment, and strings
• Hold, tune, and get situated with your guitar
• Play barre chords and strum to the rhythm
• Recognize the structure of a blues song
• Tackle musical riffs
• Master melodies and solos
• Make your guitar sing, cry, and wail
• Jam to any type of blues

Additionally, the book comes with a website that shares audio samples of all the examples covered in the lessons. Go online to practice your riffs and chords and develop your style as a blues musician.

Order your copy of Blues Guitar For Dummies today and get ready to start shredding!

P.S. If you think this book seems familiar, you're probably right. The Dummies team updated the cover and design to give the book a fresh feel, but the content is the same as the previous release of Blues Guitar For Dummies (9780470049204). The book you see here shouldn't be considered a new or updated product. But if you're in the mood to learn something new, check out some of our other books. We're always writing about new topics!

You don't have to be a jazz expert to give your students a great introduction to improvisation.

The Classroom Guide to Jazz Improvisation provides what music educators have sought for decades: an easy, step-by-step guide to teaching jazz improvisation in the music classroom. Offering classroom-tested lesson plans, authors John McNeil and Ryan Nielsen draw on their combined 54 years of teaching experience and extensive work as professional jazz musicians to remove the guesswork and mystique from the teaching process.

Each lesson is founded in the authors' realization that the brain responds differently to improvisation than it does rote memory. The resulting lesson plans are flexible, easy to use, and equip students with a quick understanding of the simple choices they can make to create effective jazz lines. Lessons are designed for a range of settings, from ensemble rehearsal to private instruction. Music educators may find relief in the concrete, straightforward materials on rhythm section instruments like bass, drums, piano, and guitar. Beyond the nuts and bolts of improvisation, this book contains carefully curated listening lists, honest discussions about the meaning of the music, and talking points to advocate for jazz programs to administrators and parents.

With an inviting and conversational approach, The Classroom Guide to Jazz Improvisation is an essential resource for all music educators, from early career teachers to seasoned instructors.

The Mariachi Voice is a practical resource for all educational program directors, voice professors, historians, singers, and students of Mariachi who want to learn and encourage the tradition of Mariachi music in the United States. It explores and dissects the similarities and differences between classical and Mariachi fields regarding voice, while also providing useful classroom-tested lesson plans, voice history, and pedagogy for teaching the Mariachi singer. With this book, program instructors can more easily assist students in connecting safely and more deeply to their voices, share new songs, and introduce Mexican Spanish Lyric Diction --including the application of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)-- to Mariachi with exercises to facilitate diction, song learning, and overall technique while learning the style.

An expert in Mariachi scholarship and performance, author Juanita Ulloa further includes interviews with vocal artists of Mariachi music, notably singer Linda Ronstadt and the grandchildren of well-known Mexican singer Jorge Negrete. Her career touring as a professional singer/pianist, voice professor, ethnomusicologist, and educator led her to the creation of the Operachi style, a crossover style between classical and Mariachi training.