Rhythm Oil: Journey Through the Music of the American South Book

The essence of blues and rock and roll, with legends like Robert Johnson, B.B. King, Elvis Presley, and James Brown as only Stanley Booth could portray them.

Here are Stanley Booth's acclaimed writings about the South and the music that emanates from it. Rythm Oil--you don't have to know how to spell "rhythm" to have it in your body and soul--is a potion sold on Beale Street in Memphis. The home of Sun Records, B.B. King, Elvis Presley, Howlin' Wolf, and Jerry Lee Lewis, Memphis is also the home of fantastic stories and broke-down dreams. As Booth makes his way from Memphis to the Mississippi Delta to the depths of the Georgia woods exploring the sounds, the music, and the culture of the American South, "he has produced some of the most gracefully written, thoughtful, and thought-stirring musings on the characters--the famous and the forgotten, the infamous and the unknown--who command the kingdom or drift through the shadowland of the South's rich-chorded patrimony" (Nick Tosches, Los Angeles Times).