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

In the early twentieth century, blues music was developed by African Americans in the Deep South. With roots in spirituals, folk music, work songs, and native music, blues contains a medley of influences that create a distinctive culture and sound. Blues moved north with the Great Migration and influenced many popular forms of music such as bluegrass, rock and roll, and country. This compelling volume details the history of blues music and the careers of major performers. It examines the ways the genre reflects the lives and conditions of African Americans during each period of its development and considers the evolution and resurgence of blues in the present day.

F. Scott Fitzgerald named it, Louis Armstrong launched it, Paul Whiteman and Fletcher Henderson orchestrated it, and now Arnold Shaw chronicles this fabulous era in The Jazz Age. Spicing his account with lively anecdotes and inside stories, he describes the astonishing outpouring of significant musical innovations that emerged during the "Roaring Twenties"--including blues, jazz, band music, torch ballads, operettas and musicals--and sets them against the background of the Prohibition world of the Flapper.

Beginning with the emergence of commercial American music in the nineteenth century, Volume 1 includes essays on the major performers, composers, media, and movements that shaped our musical culture before rock and roll. Articles explore the theoretical dimensions of popular music studies; the music of the nineteenth century; and the role of black Americans in the evolution of popular music. Also included--the music of Tin Pan Alley, ragtime, swing, the blues, the influences of W. S. Gilbert and Rodgers and Hammerstein, and changes in lyric writing styles from the nineteenth century to the rock era.