Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music Book

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).

The blues grew out of the plantations and prisons the swampy marshes and fertile cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta. This book brings to life the stirring music of the Delta evoking the legendary figures who shaped its sound and ethos: Robert Johnson Charley Patton Muddy Waters John Lee Hooker Howlin' Wolf and B B King.

Delta Blues : Paperback : WW Norton & Co : 9780393337501 : 0393337502 : 12 Feb 2010 : "The essential history of this distinctly American genre.""-Atlanta Journal-Constitution"