All Music Guide To The Blues

Reviews and rates the best recordings of 8,900 blues artists in all styles.

The second edition of this acclaimed critical compendium doubles the number of albums reviewed, and features capsule biographies of hundreds more musicians, also expanding its scope to cover gospel performers and recordings as well. Multiple authors for biographies and each album review within the entries make for some redundancies and contradictions, but the varying perspectives are ultimately a strength of the work. An impressive wealth of information gathered in one place; some readers may want to use a magnifying glass. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Chasing the Blues explores the roots of the blues---the music birthed in the Mississippi Delta by African Americans who fashioned a new form of musical expression grounded in their shared experience of brutal oppression. They used the power of music to survive that oppression, creating a simple-in-structure, emotionally complex form that transformed and upended culture and became the bedrock of popular song. Tracing the music back to its geographical and cultural origins in the Delta is key to understanding how the blues were shaped. Over time, the Delta blues have touched virtually every form of popular music (rock and roll, soul, R&B, country-western, gospel), creating the soundscape of our lives. What makes this book unique? Fathoming how the music flowed from living and working conditions in the heart of the Deep South; appreciating how life-changing events like the Flood of 1927 sparked a mass migration away from plantation life, spreading the blues to the cities in the North and becoming the soundtrack to the civil rights movement; how blues musicians interacted, "cross-fertilizing" their music by learning, influencing, and imitating each other. The habits of travel are shifting, and there is more interest and a larger market for diving deep into destinations closer to home. Interest in Black history and culture and the role Black Americans played in shaping America is at an all-time high. By appreciating the roots of this most American style of music, readers will have a richer experience listening to songs and visiting blues' holy and sacred sites.

This comprehensive guide is a must-have for the legions of fans of the beloved and perennially popular music known as soul and rhythm & blues. The latest in the definitive All Music Guide series, the All Music Guide to Soul offers nearly 8 500 entertaining and informative reviews that lead readers to the best recordings by more than 1 500 artists and help them find new music to explore. Informative biographies, essays and “music maps” trace R&B's growth from its roots in blues and gospel through its flowering in Memphis and Motown, to its many branches today. Complete discographies note bootlegs, important out-of-print albums, and import-only releases. “Extremely valuable and exhaustive.” – The Christian Science Monitor

Arranged in sixteen musical categories, provides entries for twenty thousand releases from four thousand artists, and includes a history of each musical genre.

The industry CD guide "bible" is revised and updated. Since it's first guide was published in 1992 the All Music Guide has become the final word in music, an indispensable buying tool, and essential for every music fan's library. It's the mother of all music reference books and the most respected book of its type - nothing can compare in scope, detail, and authority. Revised edition features: * Over 20,000 CDs from over 4,000 artists in 16 genres * All up to date, rated and reviewed by AMG's ace music critics * Compilations, box sets, reissues, and collections from the past and present as well as artist bios and discographies From blues to jazz to rock to rap, reggae, and beyond, the All Music Guide is every music lover's ultimate handy reference.

The most comprehensive guide to jazz and blues recordings in print, including reviews of more than ten thousand albums. An essential book for any music fan's library.

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.