All Music Guide To The Blues

Reviews and rates the best recordings of 8,900 blues artists in all styles.

Arranged in sixteen musical categories, provides entries for twenty thousand releases from four thousand artists, and includes a history of each musical genre.

With informative biographies, essays, and "music maps, " this book is the ultimate guide to the best recordings in rhythm and blues. 20 charts.

This fun-to-read, easy-to-use reference has been completely updated, expanded, and revised with reviews of over 12,000 great albums by over 2,000 artists and groups in all rock genres. 50 charts.

Covers more than eighteen thousand recordings and more than 1,700 musicians from across the jazz spectrum and includes a history of the different types of jazz, the evolution of jazz instruments, and essays on styles.

Chasing the Blues explores the roots of the blues---the music birthed in the Mississippi Delta by African Americans who fashioned a new form of musical expression grounded in their shared experience of brutal oppression. They used the power of music to survive that oppression, creating a simple-in-structure, emotionally complex form that transformed and upended culture and became the bedrock of popular song. Tracing the music back to its geographical and cultural origins in the Delta is key to understanding how the blues were shaped. Over time, the Delta blues have touched virtually every form of popular music (rock and roll, soul, R&B, country-western, gospel), creating the soundscape of our lives. What makes this book unique? Fathoming how the music flowed from living and working conditions in the heart of the Deep South; appreciating how life-changing events like the Flood of 1927 sparked a mass migration away from plantation life, spreading the blues to the cities in the North and becoming the soundtrack to the civil rights movement; how blues musicians interacted, "cross-fertilizing" their music by learning, influencing, and imitating each other. The habits of travel are shifting, and there is more interest and a larger market for diving deep into destinations closer to home. Interest in Black history and culture and the role Black Americans played in shaping America is at an all-time high. By appreciating the roots of this most American style of music, readers will have a richer experience listening to songs and visiting blues' holy and sacred sites.

The second edition of this acclaimed critical compendium doubles the number of albums reviewed, and features capsule biographies of hundreds more musicians, also expanding its scope to cover gospel performers and recordings as well. Multiple authors for biographies and each album review within the entries make for some redundancies and contradictions, but the varying perspectives are ultimately a strength of the work. An impressive wealth of information gathered in one place; some readers may want to use a magnifying glass. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Collects reviews for one thousand enduring classic rock albums ranging from the extremely popular to more obscure works.

The most comprehensive guide to jazz and blues recordings in print, including reviews of more than ten thousand albums. An essential book for any music fan's library.

This guide gives you the lowdown on all the grittiest singers, bottleneck guitarists, belt-it-out divas and wailing harmonica players that made the most influential music of last century. From music legend B.B. King to folk hero Robert Johnson, profiles are included of hundreds of artists and reviews of their best albums.