B B. King has never let up in his fight to become the living personification of the best of the blues for the whole world. He was indeed the first to introduce blues to Japanese, Russian, and Chinese audiences. Although he was born in the days of swing and big bands, his music has blossomed and prospered even as rhythm & blues, rock'n'roll, soul, funk, and rap have taken a turn at becoming the height of music fashion. ""I don't think there is a better blues guitarist in the world than B. B. Kin...
This latest entry in Backbeat's bestselling handbook series starts by exploring the humble beginnings of blues guitar through the early decades of the 20th century including profiles of such players as Robert Johnson Charley Patton and Son House. As the story moves into the '40s and '50s and blues players migrate to major urban centers author Adam St. James follows the evolution of the music at the hands of such electric blues kingpins as Muddy Waters Howlin' Wolf and B. B. King. Then it'...
This text provides an account of the making of America's fundamental music and the men and women who created it on riverboats, in whorehouses, at country dances, and in medicine shows. With guitars and the melancholic power of their voices these musicians developed a form of music, explaining its origins and evolution, the conflicts among blues scholars, and the hardship and danger that marked the lives of professional bluesman. Based on original interviews, it includes profiles of people like L...
Stevie Ray Vaughan Coloring Book for Adults (Stevie Ray Vaughan Coloring Book for Adults, #0)
by Bessie Price
Alcoholic. Epileptic. Technically challenged. Jimmy Reed nevertheless overcame these roadblocks to become perhaps the most successful R&B/pop cross-over artist of the '50s with songs like Big Boss Man and Bright Lights Big City. Musicians family members and those whose lives Reed touched offer revealing and heart-wrenching insights into this now-revered bluesman. While Reed's alcoholism was no secret its effect on his musicianship is less understood. This engaging book tells the real sto...
Feel Like Going Home: Portraits in Blues and Rock'n'Roll
by Peter Guralnick
Peter Guralnick's writing on music and musicians is unique in the literature of American popular culture. His first three books, Feel Like Going Home, Lost Highway and Sweet Soul Music, form a trilogy that has achieved classic status tracing twentieth-century American popular music back to its roots. In these books, Guralnick brings to life the people, the songs, and the performances that forever changed not only the American music scene but America itself. Feel Like Going Home includes portrai...
In this new collection of interviews, Steve Cushing once again invites readers into the vaults of Blues Before Sunrise, his acclaimed nationally syndicated public radio show. Icons from Memphis Minnie to the Gay Sisters stand alongside figures like schoolteacher Flossie Franklin, who helped Leroy Carr pen some of his most famous tunes; saxman Abb Locke and his buddy Two-Gun Pete, a Chicago cop notorious for killing people in the line of duty; and Scotty "The Dancing Tailor" Piper, a font of know...
