Fifty-eight biographies of Paramount blues artists with sensational new information based on years of research: Lovie Austin, Charles Avery, Viola Bartlette, Ed Bell, Eloise Bennett, Arthur "Blind" Blake, Lucille Bogan, Ardell Bragg, Henry Brown, Willie Brown, Hattie Burleson, Bob Call, Ben Covington, Ben Curry, Teddy Darby, Emmett Dickenson, Aletha Dickerson, Mattie Dorsey, Sally Duffie, Amos Easton, Bernice Edwards, Kid Edwards, Will Ezell, Leroy Roscoe Garnett, Clifford Gibson, Roosevelt Graves, Lee Green, George Hannah, Walter Hawkins, Bertha Henderson, Edna Hicks, Eddie House, James Jackson, Charlie Jackson, Louise Johnson, Tommy Johnson, Moses Mason, Hattie McDaniel, Charles McFadden, Sodarisa Miller, Marshall Owens, Charley Patton, Joe Reynolds, Elzadie Robinson, Isadore Rodgers, J.D. Short, Henry Sims, Danny Small, Bessie Mae Smith, Charlie Spand, Freddie Spruell, Frank Stokes, Joel Taggart, Elvie Thomas and Geeshie Wiley, Willard Thomas, Wesley Wallace, Nolan Welsh, "Jabo" Williams.

The first complete examamination of Paramount Records - the label that introduced Ma Rainey, Charley Patton, Skip James, and other blues greats to the world - and the company that produced it.

A comprehensive dictionary of blues lyrics invites listeners to interpret what they hear in blues songs and blues culture, including excerpts from original interviews with Dr. John, Bonnie Raitt, Hubert Sumlin, Buddy Guy, and many others.

Skip James (1902–1969) was perhaps the most creative and idiosyncratic of all blues musicians. Drawing on hundreds of hours of conversations with James himself, Stephen Calt here paints a dark and unforgettable portrait of a man untroubled by his own murderous inclinations, a man who achieved one moment of transcendent greatness in a life haunted by failure. And in doing so, Calt offers new insights into the nature of the blues, the world in which it thrived, and its fate when that world vanished.

“The essential history of this distinctly American genre.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution In this “expertly researched, elegantly written, dispassionate yet thoughtful history” (Gary Giddins), award-winning author Ted Gioia gives us “the rare combination of a tome that is both deeply informative and enjoyable to read” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). From the field hollers of nineteenth-century plantations to Muddy Waters and B.B. King, Delta Blues delves into the uneasy mix of race and money at the point where traditional music became commercial and bluesmen found new audiences of thousands. Combining extensive fieldwork, archival research, interviews with living musicians, and first-person accounts with “his own calm, argument-closing incantations to draw a line through a century of Delta blues” (New York Times), this engrossing narrative is flavored with insightful and vivid musical descriptions that ensure “an understanding of not only the musicians, but the music itself” (Boston Sunday Globe). Rooted in the thick-as-tar Delta soil, Delta Blues is already “a contemporary classic in its field” (Jazz Review).