Blues Books

BluesPrint.org will constantly be adding new books related to blues history, Artists, and Playing the Blues. Check back periodically for the latest reviews.

Yonder Comes the Blues

Paul Oliver's Savannah Syncopators offers a unique and personal look at the African retentions in the Blues. Available from Amazon.com as part of the collection Yonder Comes The Blues. Yonder comes the blues is perhaps one of the most complete and detailed recounts of the Roots of Blues through modern times.

Deep Blues

This is one of the best books on blues as a musical form and as a force that has shaped American Culture. Palmer tells a complete story of the blues that is engaging and easy to understand. This book will interest the novice and experienced blues fan.

Delta Blues

Even casual fans know the tales of deals with the devil in which the supplicant bargains for preternatural musical talents. Gioia merrily dissects those and other myths while, for all intents and purposes, comprehensively updating Robert Palmer’s Deep Blues (1981). Applying sound research methods, Gioia addresses the contention that the blues masters weren’t trying to create great art but merely trying to eke out a living by pointing out that the artistry latter-day fans descry results from their dedication as performers, regardless of aesthetic intentions. Adherence to internalized stock artistic conceits, amplified by cultural isolation, eventuated in a body of art almost in spite of the fortunes of the individual performers. And speaking of individual performers, Gioia updates the biographies of blues players from legendary dealer-with-the-devil Robert Johnson to B. B. King, according special attention to less-celebrated musicians, such as Reverend Robert Wilkins, whose “That’s No Way to Get Along” became the Rolling Stones’ “Prodigal Son.”