Musicians and music scholars rightly focus on the sounds of the blues and the colorful life stories of blues performers. Equally important and, until now, inadequately studied are the lyrics. The international contributors to Nobody Knows Where the Blues Come From explore this aspect of the blues and establish the significance of African American popular song as a neglected form of oral history. “High Water Everywhere: Blues and Gospel Commentary on the 1927 Mississippi River Flood,” by David Evans, is the definitive study of songs about one of the greatest natural disasters in the history of the United States. In “Death by Fire: African American Popular Music on the Natchez Rhythm Club Fire,” Luigi Monge analyzes a continuum of songs about exclusively African American tragedy. “Lookin’ for the Bully: An Enquiry into a Song and Its Story,” by Paul Oliver traces the origins and the many avatars of the Bully song. In “That Dry Creek Eaton Clan: A North Mississippi Murder Ballad of the 1930s,” Tom Freeland and Chris Smith study a ballad recorded in 1939 by a black convict at Parchman prison farm. “Coolidge’s Blues: African American Blues from the Roaring Twenties” is Guido van Rijn’s survey of blues of that decade. Robert Springer's “On the Electronic Trail of Blues Formulas” presents a number of conclusions about the spread of patterns in blues narratives. In “West Indies Blues: An Historical Overview 1920s-1950s,” John Cowley turns his attention to West Indian songs produced on the American mainland. Finally, in “Ethel Waters: ‘Long, Lean, Lanky Mama,’” Randall Cherry reappraises the early career of this blues and vaudeville singer

Listen to the Blues! Exploring A Musical Genre provides an overview of this distinctly American musical genre for fans of the blues and curious readers alike, with a focus on 50 must-hear artists, albums, and subgenres. Unlike other books on the blues, which tend to focus on musician biographies, Listen to the Blues! devotes time to the compositions, recordings, and musical legacies of blues musicians from the early 20th century to the present. Although the author references musical structure, harmony, form, and other musical concepts, the volume avoids technical language; therefore, it is a volume that should be of interest to the casual blues fan, to students of blues music and its history, and to more serious blues fans. The chapters on the impact of the blues on popular culture and the legacy of the blues also put the genre in a broader historical context than what is found in many books on the blues. The book opens with a background chapter that provides an overview of the history and structure of blues music. A substantial, encyclopedic chapter that focuses on 50 must-hear blues musicians follows, as does a chapter that explores the impact on popular culture of blues music and musicians and a chapter that focuses on the legacy of the genre. A bibliography rounds out the work.

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.

First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Winner, Best History, 2012 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research When Mississippi John Hurt (1892-1966) was "rediscovered" by blues revivalists in 1963, his musicianship and recordings transformed popular notions of prewar country blues. At seventy-one he moved to Washington, D.C., from Avalon, Mississippi, and became a live-wire connection to a powerful, authentic past. His intricate and lively style made him the most sought after musician among the many talents the revival brought to light. Mississippi John Hurt provides this legendary creator's life story for the first time. Biographer Philip Ratcliffe traces Hurt's roots to the moment his mother Mary Jane McCain and his father Isom Hurt were freed from slavery. Anecdotes from Hurt's childhood and teenage years include the destiny-making moment when his mother purchased his first guitar for $1.50 when he was only nine years old. Stories from his neighbors and friends, from both of his wives, and from his extended family round out the community picture of Avalon. US census records, Hurt's first marriage record in 1916, images of his first autographed LP record, and excerpts from personal letters written in his own hand provide treasures for fans. Ratcliffe details Hurt's musical influences and the origins of his style and repertoire. The author also relates numerous stories from the time of his success, drawing on published sources and many hours of interviews with people who knew Hurt well, including the late Jerry Ricks, Pat Sky, Stefan Grossman and Max Ochs, Dick Spottswood, and the late Mike Stewart. In addition, some of the last photographs taken of the legendary musician are featured for the first time in Mississippi John Hurt.

The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music Volume 8 is one of six volumes within the 'Genre' strand of the series. This volume discusses the genres of North America in relation to their cultural, historical and geographic origins; technical musical characteristics; instrumentation and use of voice; lyrics and language; typical features of performance and presentation; historical development and paths and modes of dissemination; influence of technology, the music industry and political and economic circumstances; changing stylistic features; notable and influential performers; and relationships to other genres and sub-genres. This volume features over 100 in-depth essays on genres ranging from Adult Contemporary to Alternative Rock, from Barbershop to Bebop, and from Disco to Emo.

An avant garde set of improvisational essays, Richard Grossinger’s The Bardo of Waking Life is a meditation on the Tibetan Buddhist bardo realm which, in popular culture, is viewed as the bridge between lives, the state people enter after death and before rebirth. This book examines waking life and its history and language as if it were a bardo state rather than ultimate reality, and thus seeks a context for life (and dreams), even as it addresses more "mundane issues" including genetic theory, the war in Iraq and George W. Bush's presidency, North Korea, advertising, global warming, Prison Industrial Culture, childhood trauma, even country western music. Written with playfulness and precision, Bardo takes a new, probing approach to all the important questions of creation, destruction, and existence. In these intellectual field notes, Grossinger proves thematically fearless as he crosses quantum mechanics with totemic hexes and draws transcendental insight from the ephemeral space-time we call daily life. If, as Tibetan cosmology holds true, all conditional realms are bardos, then the state we all share is nothing less than the bardo of waking life.