King Of The Blues

The first full and authoritative biography of an American—indeed a world-wide—musical and cultural legend “No one worked harder than B.B. No one inspired more up-and-coming artists. No one did more to spread the gospel of the blues.”—President Barack Obama “He is without a doubt the most important artist the blues has ever produced.”—Eric Clapton Riley “Blues Boy” King (1925-2015) was born into deep poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi. Wrenched away from his sharecropper father, B.B. lost his mother at age ten, leaving him more or less alone. Music became his emancipation from exhausting toil in the fields. Inspired by a local minister’s guitar and by the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker, encouraged by his cousin, the established blues man Bukka White, B.B. taught his guitar to sing in the unique solo style that, along with his relentless work ethic and humanity, became his trademark. In turn, generations of artists claimed him as inspiration, from Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton to Carlos Santana and the Edge. King of the Blues presents the vibrant life and times of a trailblazing giant. Witness to dark prejudice and lynching in his youth, B.B. performed incessantly (some 15,000 concerts in 90 countries over nearly 60 years)—in some real way his means of escaping his past. Several of his concerts, including his landmark gig at Chicago’s Cook County Jail, endure in legend to this day. His career roller-coasted between adulation and relegation, but he always rose back up. At the same time, his story reveals the many ways record companies took advantage of artists, especially those of color. Daniel de Visé has interviewed almost every surviving member of B.B. King’s inner circle—family, band members, retainers, managers, and more—and their voices and memories enrich and enliven the life of this Mississippi blues titan, whom his contemporary Bobby “Blue” Bland simply called “the man.”

"A fresh new perspective that will be a true revolution to readers and will open new lines of discussion on . . . the importance of the city of New Orleans for generations to come." —Dr. Michael White, jazz clarinetist, composer, and Keller Endowed Chair at Xavier University of LA An untold authentic counter-narrative blues history and the first written by an African American blues artist All prior histories on the blues have alleged it originated on plantations in the Mississippi Delta. Not true, says author Chris Thomas King. In The Blues, King present facts to disprove such myths. This book is the first to argue the blues began as a cosmopolitan art form, not a rural one. As early as 1900, the sound of the blues was ubiquitous in New Orleans. The Mississippi Delta, meanwhile, was an unpopulated sportsman's paradise—the frontier was still in the process of being cleared and drained for cultivation.? Expecting these findings to be controversial in some circles, King has buttressed his conclusions with primary sources and years of extensive research, including a sojourn to West Africa and interviews with surviving folklorists and blues researchers from the 1960s folk-rediscovery epoch.? New Orleans, King states, was the only place in the Deep South where the sacred and profane could party together without fear of persecution, creating the blues.

Born 130 years ago in the heart of Mississippi, Charlie Patton (c. 1891–1934) is considered by many to be a father of the Delta blues. With his bullish baritone voice and his fluid slide guitar touch, Patton established songs like “Pony Blues,” “A Spoonful Blues,” and “High Water Everywhere” in the blues lexicon and, through his imitators, in American music. But over the decades, his contributions to blues music have been overshadowed in popularity by those of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, and other mid-century bluesmen and women who’ve experienced a resurgence in their music. King of the Delta Blues Singers, originally published in 1988, began a small renaissance in Patton and blues research. And now, with the wide availability of Patton’s complete discography on CD and as digital downloads, this completely revised second edition continues the story of Charlie Patton’s legacy. Gayle Dean Wardlow and the late Stephen Calt (1946–2010) originally probed Patton’s career in the Mississippi Delta, his early performances and recordings, and his musical legacy that continues to influence today’s guitarists and performers, including such musicians as Jack White and Larkin Poe. For this second edition, Wardlow and Edward Komara refined the text and rewrote major sections, updating them with new scholarship on Patton and Delta blues. And finally, Komara has added a new afterword bringing Patton into the contemporary blues conversation and introducing numerous musical examples for the modern researcher and musician. The second edition of King of the Delta Blues Singers will further cement Patton’s legacy among important blues musicians, and it will be of interest to anyone absorbed in the beginnings of the Delta blues and music biographies.

B. B. King has the blues running through his blood. Growing up in the rural poverty of the Mississippi Delta, King first experienced the blues at nine years old, when his mother passed away. The man of the house before the end of his first decade, he used this strife as a source of inspiration and launched one of the most celebrated musical careers in American history. King has led a remarkable life, and this riveting autobiography dramatizes his whirlwind adventures from the Memphis of the forties to the Moscow of the nineties with unflinching candor and sincerity. But most of all, B.B.'s story is the story of the blues—the evolution from country acoustic to urban electric, the birth and explosion of rock 'n' roll—and B.B.'s own long, but ultimately triumphant, struggle for crossover success, during which he remained unwaveringly true to the music of his heart.

Named one of the world’s great blues-rock guitarists by Rolling Stone, Mike Bloomfield (1943–1981) remains beloved by fans forty years after his untimely death. Taking readers backstage, onstage, and into the recording studio with this legendary virtuoso, David Dann tells the riveting stories behind Bloomfield’s work in the seminal Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the mesmerizing Electric Flag, as well as on the Super Session album with Al Kooper and Stephen Stills, Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, and soundtrack work with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson. In vivid chapters drawn from meticulous research, including more than seventy interviews with the musician’s friends, relatives, and band members, music historian David Dann brings to life Bloomfield’s worlds, from his comfortable upbringing in a Jewish family on Chicago’s North Shore to the gritty taverns and raucous nightclubs where this self-taught guitarist helped transform the sound of contemporary blues and rock music. With scenes that are as electrifying as Bloomfield’s solos, this is the story of a life lived at full volume.

This highly acclaimed biography from the author of Last Train to Memphis illuminates the extraordinary life of one of the most influential blues singers of all time, the legendary guitarist and songwriter whose music inspired generations of musicians, from Muddy Waters to the Rolling Stones and beyond. The myth of Robert Johnson’s short life has often overshadowed his music. When he died in 1938 at the age of just twenty-seven, poisoned by the jealous husband of a woman he’d been flirting with at a dance, Johnson had recorded only twenty-nine songs. But those songs would endure as musical touchstones for generations of blues performers. With fresh insights and new information gleaned since its original publication, this brief biographical exploration brilliantly examines both the myth and the music. Much in the manner of his masterful biographies of Elvis Presley, Sam Phillips, and Sam Cooke, Peter Guralnick here gives readers an insightful, thought-provoking, and deeply felt picture, removing much of the obscurity that once surrounded Johnson without forfeiting any of the mystery. “I finished the book," declared the New York Times Book Review, "feeling that, if only for a brief moment, Robert Johnson had stepped out of the mists.”

As Louis Armstrong forever tethered jazz to New Orleans and Clifton Chenier fixed Lafayette as home to zydeco, Slim Harpo established Baton Rouge as a base for the blues. In the only complete biography of this internationally renowned blues singer and musician, Martin Hawkins traces Harpo’s rural upbringing near Louisiana’s capital, his professional development fostered by the local music scene, and his national success with R&B hits like Rainin’ in My Heart, Baby Scratch My Back, and I’m A King Bee, among others. Hawkins follows Harpo’s global musical impact from the early 1960s to today and offers a detailed look at the nature of the independent recording business that enabled his remarkable legacy. With new research and interviews, Hawkins fills in previous biographical gaps and redresses misinformation about Harpo’s life. In addition to weaving the musician’s career into the lives of other Louisiana blues players—including Lightnin’ Slim, Lazy Lester, and Silas Hogan—the author discusses the pioneering role of Crowley, Louisiana, record producer J. D. Miller and illustrates how Excello Records in Nashville brought national attention to Harpo’s music recorded in Louisiana. This engaging narrative examines Harpo’s various recording sessions and provides a detailed discography, as well as a list of blues-related records by fellow Baton Rouge artists. Slim Harpo: Blues King Bee of Baton Rouge will stand as the ultimate resource on the musician’s life and the rich history of Baton Rouge’s blues heritage.

B.B. King's journey from sharecropper to musical icon, one who brought the music of America--the blues--to the world.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, folklorist William Ferris toured his home state of Mississippi, documenting the voices of African Americans as they spoke about and performed the diverse musical traditions that form the authentic roots of the blues. Now, Give My Poor Heart Ease puts front and center a searing selection of the artistically and emotionally rich voices from this invaluable documentary record. Illustrated with Ferris's photographs of the musicians and their communities and including a CD of original music, the book features more than twenty interviews relating frank, dramatic, and engaging narratives about black life and blues music in the heart of the American South. Here are the stories of artists who have long memories and speak eloquently about their lives, blues musicians who represent a wide range of musical traditions--from one-strand instruments, bottle-blowing, and banjo to spirituals, hymns, and prison work chants. Celebrities such as B. B. King and Willie Dixon, along with performers known best in their neighborhoods, express the full range of human and artistic experience--joyful and gritty, raw and painful. In an autobiographical introduction, Ferris reflects on how he fell in love with the vibrant musical culture that was all around him but was considered off limits to a white Mississippian during a troubled era. This magnificent volume illuminates blues music, the broader African American experience, and indeed the history and culture of America itself.

Our folio matches the monumental boxed set release from this unparalleled bluesman. The 77 titles include: Blues at Midnight * Don't Get Around Much Anymore * Into the Night * Let the Good Times Roll * Lucille * Never Trust a Woman * Right Time, Wrong Place * The Thrill Is Gone * When Love Comes to Town.