100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own

Search the Internet for the 100 best songs or best albums. Dozens of lists will appear from aficionados to major music personalities. But what if you not only love listening to the blues or country music or jazz or rock, you love reading about it, too. How do you separate what matters from what doesn’t among the hundreds—sometimes thousands—of books on the music you so love? In the Best Music Books series, readers finally have a quick-and-ready list of the most important works published on modern major music genres by leading experts. In 100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own, Edward Komara, former Blues Archivist of the University of Mississippi, and his successor Greg Johnson select those histories, biographies, surveys, transcriptions and studies from the many hundreds of works that have been published about this vital American musical genre. Komara and Johnson provide a short description of the contents and the achievement of each title selected for their “Blues 100.” Entries include full bibliographic citations, prices of copies in print, and even descriptions of specific editions for book collectors. 100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own also includes suggested blues recordings to accompany each recommended work, as well as a concluding section on key reference titles—or as Komara and Johnson phrase it: “The Books behind the Blues 100.” 100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own serves as a guide for any blues fan looking for a road map through the history of—and even history of the scholarship on—the blues. Here Komara and Johnson answer the question of not only what is a “blues” book, but which ones are worth owning.

In recent years an almost overwhelming number of books have appeared covering various aspects of American folk music and its history. Before 1970, most comprised collections of songs with a sprinkling of biographical information on noted performers. Over the past decade, however, scholars, journalists, and folk artists themselves have contributed biographies and autobiographies, instructional books and historical surveys, sociological studies and ethnographic analyses of this musical genre. In 100 Books Every Folk Music Fan Should Own, performer and historian Dick Weissman offers a reliable route through the growing sea of book-length studies, establishing for future scholars a foundation for their research. Beginning with early twentieth-century collections of folk songs, the author brings readers to the present by exploring modern studies of important events, critical collections of primary sources, the most significant musical instruction guides, and in-depth portraits of traditional and contemporary American folk musicians. For each title selected, Weissman provides his own brief summary of its contents and assessment of its significance for the reader—whether fan or scholar. Folk music fans, scholars, and students of the American folk music tradition—indeed, any reader seeking guidance on the best books in the field—will want a copy of this vital work.

Over the course of the last six decades, Elvis Presley has sold more than a billion records; his music has touched nearly every modern listener. Despite an avalanche of books on his life, there are, surprisingly, few about his musical creativity. In Counting Down Elvis: His 100 Finest Songs, Mark Duffett urges readers to put aside the misleading stereotypes and rumor-filled debates about Elvis and listen once again to the legend who emerged from Memphis. Elvis had a unique approach to music—one that was both powerful and versatile. In a career stretching across more than twenty years, Presley changed the face of popular music, drawing together genres—from country and blues to contemporary folk—and placing a unique stamp on all of them. Counting Down Elvis: His 100 Finest Songs explores the full range of Presley recordings, from his earliest numbers to posthumous hits, combing through gold records and unpolished gems to distill the best that Presley has to offer.

This book provides a sequel to Robert Ford's comprehensive reference work A Blues Bibliography, the second edition of which was published in 2007. Bringing Ford's bibliography of resources up to date, this volume covers works published since 2005, complementing the first volume by extending coverage through twelve years of new publications. As in the previous volume, this work includes entries on the history and background of the blues, instruments, record labels, reference sources, regional variations, and lyric transcriptions and musical analysis. With extensive listings of print and online articles in scholarly and trade journals, books, and recordings, this bibliography offers the most thorough resource for all researchers studying the blues.

Building on his 2006 book, Which Side Are You On?, Dick Weissman's A New History of American and Canadian Folk Music presents a provocative discussion of the history, evolution, and current status of folk music in the United States and Canada. North American folk music achieved a high level of popular acceptance in the late 1950s. When it was replaced by various forms of rock music, it became a more specialized musical niche, fragmenting into a proliferation of musical styles. In the pop-folk revival of the 1960s, artists were celebrated or rejected for popularizing the music to a mass audience. In particular the music seemed to embrace a quest for authenticity, which has led to endless explorations of what is or is not faithful to the original concept of traditional music. This book examines the history of folk music into the 21st century and how it evolved from an agrarian style as it became increasingly urbanized. Scholar-performer Dick Weissman, himself a veteran of the popularization wars, is uniquely qualified to examine the many controversies and musical evolutions of the music, including a detailed discussion of the quest for authenticity, and how various musicians, critics, and fans have defined that pursuit.

Traces the development and characteristics of the Delta blues, and describes the most influential blues musicians and recordings of the 1920s and 1930s

Selling Folk Music: An Illustrated History highlights commercial sources that reveal how folk music has been packaged and sold to a broad, shifting audience in the United States. Folk music has a varied and complex scope and lineage, including the blues, minstrel tunes, Victorian parlor songs, spirituals and gospel tunes, country and western songs, sea shanties, labor and political songs, calypsos, pop folk, folk-rock, ethnic, bluegrass, and more. The genre is of major importance in the broader spectrum of American music, and it is easy to understand why folk music has been marketed as America's music. Selling Folk Music presents the public face of folk music in the United States via its commercial promotion and presentation throughout the twentieth century. Included are concert flyers; sheet music; book, songbook, magazine, and album covers; concert posters and flyers; and movie lobby cards and posters, all in their original colors. The 1964 hootenanny craze, for example, spawned such items as a candy bar, pinball machine, bath powder, paper dolls, Halloween costumes, and beach towels. The almost five hundred images in Selling Folk Music present a new way to catalog the history of folk music while highlighting the transformative nature of the genre. Following the detailed introduction on the history of folk music, illustrations from commercial products make up the bulk of the work, presenting a colorful, complex history.

"Charlie Patton (1891-1934) was born in central Mississippi. By 1908, he had begun his performing career, initially at small house parties, then at barrelhouses and other settings that could accommodate a hundred people or more. Until his death in 1934, Patton was a top draw for the numerous African Americans then living and working in the Delta. In 1929 and 1930, he recorded several hits for Paramount Records, on the basis of which he was sought by the American Record Company in January 1934 for what would be his last recordings. He was immensely influential to other bluesmen, including Tommy Johnson, Kid Bailey, Robert Johnson, and Howlin' Wolf. Since 1991, his collected recordings have been available to the wider public. This book was previously published in 1988 under the authorship of Wardlow (b. 1940) and Calt (1946-2010). Its sole printing of 3,000 paperback copies sold out within seven years, and since 1988 additional recordings of Patton and his associates have been recovered and widely reissued to the public, particularly on Jack White's Third Man Records. Komara (b. 1966) has updated Wardlow and Calt's original edition and has written a new afterword discussing a resurgence of Delta-blues-style rock and the continuing influence of Patton and the music genre he helped pioneer"--