Blues
Recommended Books
The recommended books below include print reference sources and books on a wide sampling of blues topics. Reference sources on blues are classified in ML 102.B6 (dictionaries and encyclopedias), ML 128.B49 (bibliographies), and ML 156.4.B6 (discographies). Other books can be found in biographies (especially ML 420) and in types and styles of popular music (ML 3521). Books are sorted by their call numbers for ease of browsing. Hover over the info icon to see a description.
Encyclopedia of the Blues by
This comprehensive two-volume set brings together all aspects of the blues from performers and musical styles to record labels and cultural issues, including regional evolution and history. Organized in an accessible A-to-Z format, the Encyclopedia of the Blues is an essential reference resource for information on this unique American music genre. For a full list of entries, contributors, and more, visit the Encyclopedia of the Blues website.
Call Number: ML102.B6 E53 2006 V.1-2 (Music Reference)Publication Date: 2006
Chicago Blues: Portraits and Stories by
Through revealing portraits of selected local artists and slice-of-life vignettes drawn from the city's pubs and lounges, Chicago Blues encapsulates the sound and spirit of the blues as it is lived today. As a committed participant in the Chicago blues scene for more than a quarter century, David Whiteis draws on years of his observations and extensive interviews to paint a full picture of the Chicago blues world, both on and off the stage. In addition to portraits of blues artists he has personally known and worked with, Whiteis takes readers on a tour of venues like East of Ryan and the Starlight Lounge, home to artists such as Jumpin' Willie Cobbs, Willie D., and Harmonica Khan. He tells the stories behind the lives of past pioneers, including Junior Wells, pianist Sunnyland Slim, and harpist Big Walter Horton, whose music reflects the universal concerns with love, loss, and yearning that continue to keep the blues so vital for so many.
Call Number: ML394 .W5 2006Publication Date: 2006
Spinning Blues into Gold: The Chess Brothers and the Legendary Chess Records by
Muddy Waters. Howlin' Wolf. Chuck Berry. Etta James. Bo Diddley. The greatest artists who sang the blues made their mark with Leonard and Phil Chess, whose Chess Records was synonymous with the sound that swept up from the south, embraced Chicago, and spread out into mid-century America. Spinning Blues into Gold is the impeccably researched story of the men behind the music and the remarkable company they created. Chess Records-and later Checkers, Argo, and Cadet-was built by Polish immigrant Jews, brothers who saw the blues as a unique business opportunity. From their first ventures, a liquor store and then a nightclub, they promoted live entertainment. And parlayed that into the first pressings sold out of car trunks on long junkets through the midsection of the country, ultimately expanding their empire to include influential radio stations. The story of the Chess brothers is a very American story of commerce in the service of culture. Long on chutzpah, Leonard and Phil went far beyond their childhoods as the sons of a scrap-metal dealer. They changed what America listened to: the artists they promoted planted the seeds of rock 'n' roll and are still influencing music today. The story of the Chess brothers and the music they made captures the rich and volatile mix of race, Jews and music. Cohodas takes us deep into the world of independent record producers, sometimes abrasive and always aggressive men striving to succeed. Leonard and Phil worked hand-in-glove with disenfranchised Black artists, the intermittent charges of exploitation balanced by the reality of a common purpose that brought them fame. From beginning to end, the lives of the Chesses were entwined with those of the artists socially, financially, and creatively.
Call Number: ML405 .C64 2000Publication Date: 2000
Father of the Blues, An Autobiography by
W.C. Handy's blues, Memphis Blues," "Beale Street Blues," "St. Louis Blues", changed America's music forever. In Father of the Blues, Handy presents his own story: a vivid picture of American life now vanished. W.C. Handy (1873-1958) was a sensitive child who loved nature and music but not until he had won a reputation did his father, a preacher of stern Calvinist faith, forgive him for following the "devilish" calling of black music and theatre. Here Handy tells of this and other struggles: the lot of a black musician with entertainment groups in the turn-of-the-century South his days in minstrel shows, and then in his own band how he made his first 100 from "Memphis Blues" how his orchestra came to grief with the First World War his successful career in New York as publisher and song writer his association with the literati of the Harlem Renaissance. Handy's remarkable tale, pervaded with his unique personality and humor, reveals not only the career of the man who brought the blues to the world's attention, but the whole scope of American music, from the days of the old popular songs of the South, through ragtime to the great era of jazz.
Call Number: ML410.H18 B6Publication Date: 1941
The Road to Robert Johnson: The Genesis and Evolution of Blues in the Delta from the 1800s through 1938 by
This highly-anticipated book traces the development of the legendary Robert Johnson's music in light of the people and songs that directly and indirectly influenced him. It includes much information about life in the Delta from the late 1800s to Johnson's controversial death in 1938, and features fascinating historical photos, maps, musical examples, and much more.
Call Number: ML420.J735 K66 2007 (Music Oversize)Publication Date: 2007
King of the Blues: The Rise and Reign of B.B. King by
The first full and authoritative biography of an American--indeed a world-wide--musical and cultural legend. Riley "Blues Boy" King (1925-2015) was born into deep poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi. Wrenched away from his sharecropper father, B.B. lost his mother at age ten, leaving him more or less alone. Music became his emancipation from exhausting toil in the fields. Inspired by a local minister's guitar and by the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker, encouraged by his cousin, the established blues man Bukka White, B.B. taught his guitar to sing in the unique solo style that, along with his relentless work ethic and humanity, became his trademark. In turn, generations of artists claimed him as inspiration, from Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton to Carlos Santana and the Edge. King of the Blues presents the vibrant life and times of a trailblazing giant. Witness to dark prejudice and lynching in his youth, B.B. performed incessantly (some 15,000 concerts in 90 countries over nearly 60 years)--in some real way his means of escaping his past. Several of his concerts, including his landmark gig at Chicago's Cook County Jail, endure in legend to this day. His career roller-coasted between adulation and relegation, but he always rose back up. At the same time, his story reveals the many ways record companies took advantage of artists, especially those of color. Daniel de Visé has interviewed almost every surviving member of B.B. King's inner circle--family, band members, retainers, managers, and more--and their voices and memories enrich and enliven the life of this Mississippi blues titan, whom his contemporary Bobby "Blue" Bland simply called "the man."
Call Number: ML420.K473 D43 2021Publication Date: 2021
Charley Patton: Voice of the Mississippi Delta by
Fifty years after Charley Patton's death in 1934, a team of blues experts gathered five thousand miles from Dockery Farms at the University of Liege in Belgium to honor the life and music of the most influential artist of the Mississippi Delta blues. This volume brings together essays from that international symposium on Charley Patton and Mississippi blues traditions, influences, and comparisons. Originally published by Presses Universitaires de Liège in Belgium, this collection has been revised and updated with a new foreword by William Ferris, new images added, and some essays translated into English for the first time. Patton's personal life and his recorded music bear witness to how he endured and prevailed in his struggle as a Black man during the early twentieth century. Within this volume, that story offers hope and wonder. Organized in two parts--"Origins and Traditions" and "Comparison with Other Regional Styles and Mutual Influence"--the essays create an invaluable resource on the life and music of this early master. Written by a distinguished group of scholars, these pieces secure the legacy of Charley Patton as the fountainhead of Mississippi Delta blues.
Call Number: ML420.P323 C53 2018Publication Date: 2018
Blues Empress in Black Chattanooga: Bessie Smith and the Emerging Urban South by
As one of the first African American vocalists to be recorded, Bessie Smith is a prominent figure in American popular culture and African American history. Michelle R. Scott uses Smith's life as a lens to investigate broad issues in history, including industrialization, Southern rural to urban migration, Black community development in the post-emancipation era, and Black working-class gender conventions. Arguing that the rise of blues culture and the success of female blues artists like Bessie Smith are connected to the rapid migration and industrialization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Scott focuses her analysis on Chattanooga, Tennessee, the large industrial and transportation center where Smith was born. This study explores how the expansion of the Southern railroads and the development of iron foundries, steel mills, and sawmills created vast employment opportunities in the postbellum era. Chronicling the growth and development of the African American Chattanooga community, Scott examines the Smith family's migration to Chattanooga and the popular music of Black Chattanooga during the first decade of the twentieth century, and culminates by delving into Smith's early years on the vaudeville circuit.
Call Number: ML420.S667 S36 2008Publication Date: 2008
Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary by
This fascinating compendium explains the most unusual, obscure, and curious words and expressions from vintage blues music. Utilizing both documentary evidence and invaluable interviews with a number of now-deceased musicians from the 1920s and '30s, blues scholar Stephen Calt unravels the nuances of more than twelve hundred idioms and proper or place names found on oft-overlooked "race records" recorded between 1923 and 1949. From "aggravatin' papa" to "yas-yas-yas" and everything in between, this truly unique, racy, and compelling resource decodes a neglected speech for general readers and researchers alike, offering invaluable information about Black language and American slang.
Call Number: ML3521 .C35 2009 (Music Reference)Publication Date: 2009
Delta Blues by
The blues grew out of the plantations and prisons, the swampy marshes and fertile cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta. With original research and keen insights, Ted Gioia--the author of a landmark study of West Coast jazz and the critically acclaimed The History of Jazz--brings to life the stirring music of the Delta, evoking the legendary figures who shaped its sound and ethos: Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, B. B. King, and others. Tracing the history of the Delta blues from the field hollers and plantation music of the nineteenth century to the exploits of modern-day musicians in the Delta tradition, Delta Blues tells the full story of this timeless and unforgettable music. No cultural force boasts such humble origins or such world-conquering reverberations. In this evocative rags-to-riches tale, Gioia shows how the sounds of the Delta altered the course of popular music in America and in the world beyond.
Call Number: ML3521 .G56 2008Publication Date: 2008
Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues by
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, folklorist William Ferris toured his home state of Mississippi, documenting the voices of African Americans as they spoke about and performed the diverse musical traditions that form the authentic roots of the blues. Now, Give My Poor Heart Ease puts front and center a searing selection of the artistically and emotionally rich voices from this invaluable documentary record. Illustrated with Ferris's photographs of the musicians and their communities and including a CD of original music, the book features more than twenty interviews relating frank, dramatic, and engaging narratives about black life and blues music in the heart of the American South. Here are the stories of artists who have long memories and speak eloquently about their lives, blues musicians who represent a wide range of musical traditions--from one-strand instruments, bottle-blowing, and banjo to spirituals, hymns, and prison work chants. Celebrities such as B.B. King and Willie Dixon, along with performers known best in their neighborhoods, express the full range of human and artistic experience--joyful and gritty, raw and painful. In an autobiographical introduction, Ferris reflects on how he fell in love with the vibrant musical culture that was all around him but was considered off limits to a white Mississippian during a troubled era. This magnificent volume illuminates blues music, the broader African American experience, and indeed the history and culture of America itself.
Call Number: ML3521 .G58 2009Publication Date: 2009
Whose Blues? Facing up to Race and the Future of the Music by
Mamie Smith's pathbreaking 1920 recording of "Crazy Blues" set the pop music world on fire, inaugurating a new African American market for "race records." Not long after, such records also brought black blues performance to an expanding international audience. A century later, the mainstream blues world has transformed into a multicultural and transnational melting pot, taking the music far beyond the black southern world of its origins. But not everybody is happy about that. If there's "No black. No white. Just the blues," as one familiar meme suggests, why do some blues people hear such pronouncements as an aggressive attempt at cultural appropriation and an erasure of traumatic histories that lie deep in the heart of the music? Then again, if "blues is black music," as some performers and critics insist, what should we make of the vibrant global blues scene, with its all-comers mix of nationalities and ethnicities? In Whose Blues?, award-winning blues scholar and performer Adam Gussow confronts these challenging questions head-on. Using blues literature and history as a cultural anchor, Gussow defines, interprets, and makes sense of the blues for the new millennium. Drawing on the blues tradition's major writers including W. C. Handy, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Amiri Baraka, and grounded in his first-person knowledge of the blues performance scene, Gussow's thought-provoking book kickstarts a long overdue conversation.
Call Number: ML3521 .G95 2020Publication Date: 2020
The Land Where the Blues Began by
Lomax, who has done more than anyone else to make Black music of the South known as a glorious expression of American art, sums up sixty years of "discovering the African American musical heritage in this journey through the Mississippi Delta.
Call Number: ML3521 .L64 1993Publication Date: 1993
Hidden History of Mississippi Blues by
Although many bluesmen began leaving the Magnolia State in the early twentieth century to pursue fortune and fame up north, many others stayed home. These musicians remained rooted to the traditions of their land, which came to define a distinctive playing style unique to Mississippi. They didn't simply play the blues, they lived it. Travel through the hallowed juke joints and cotton fields with author Roger Stolle as he recounts the history of Mississippi blues and the musicians who have kept it alive. Some of these bluesmen remain to carry on this proud legacy, while others have passed on, but Hidden History of Mississippi Blues ensures none will be forgotten.
Call Number: ML3521 .S76 2011Publication Date: 2011
Audio and Video Resources
Compact Discs:
Martin Scorsese presents The Blues (A PBS documentary series)
- A Musical Journey: Compact Disc 13901 (5-CD set plus booklet)
- Feels Like Going Home: A Film by Martin Scorsese (Soundtrack): Compact Disc 13937
- Warming by the Devil's Fire: a Film by Charles Burnett (Soundtrack): Compact Disc 13922
- The Road to Memphis: A Film by Richard Pearce and Robert Kenna (Soundtrack): Compact Disc 13939
- Red, White and Blues: A Film by Mike Figgis (Soundtrack): Compact Disc 13936
The Blues: Smithsonian box set collection (4 CDs plus booklet): Compact Disc 5728
The Great Blues Men (a sampler): Compact Disc 1642
DVDs and Online Videos:
Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues (A series of films by various directors) DVD Video 621 - 627
Blues Masters: History of the Blues: DVD Video 3813
Blues Playlist on Kanopy.com (log in required from off campus)
Interlibrary Loan
Users are encouraged to search for items beyond University Libraries' catalog via RILM Abstracts of Music Literature and WorldCat. Materials not available in print or online may be requested through Interlibrary Loan. Please allow up to seven days for electronic delivery and up to fourteen days for delivery of physical items.