Blues Legends [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

by Charles K. Cowdery (Author), Raeburn Flerlage (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The blues had a child and they called it rock and roll. But it's impossible to look past the parent when so much unbridled talent has and continues to contribute to this increasingly popular music form. This Blues. So much feeling. So much mood. So well captured. You can feel the soul stirring in 20 stunning photo-biographies featuring Muddy Waters, T-Bone Walker, B. B. King, Memphis Minnie, John Lee Hooker, plus 17 more. Each of their works--their rise to fame--is eloquently captured in every mini-biography. Look at all the stories, from the blues' slavery beginnings through the strains that sparked rock and roll. Then hear it smoldering in the 10-song accompanying CD designed to heighten this unequaled collection.

From the Inside Flap
"The blues had a child and they called it rock and roll." That is the simplified explanation fo the relationship between these two musical forms, and it also explains how most people today discover the blues, through its "child." But the blues were and are much more than the midwife of rock and roll. They are a significant part of America's cultural history.

Springing from the field songs of African Americans, the blues were born after slavery in juke joints and at dances when the field singers had access to guitars. Blues Legends traces blues history from this birth to the Delta Blues of Mississippi and Arkansas, through those blues strains that evoled independently in the Southwest and Southesat, all the way up to the revewed interest in the blues sparked by raok and roll in the sixties and seventies. Profiled are such great legends as Muddy Waters, T-bone Walker, Memphis Minnie, and John Lee Hooker.

These profiles provide an unpretentious yet informative account of the blues tradition, making this book one that belongs on the shelf of any blues lover.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Gibbs Smith; 1st edition (September 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879056886
• ISBN-13: 978-0879056889
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 7.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #995,131 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nice History, Great Photos, January 20, 2001

By A Customer

This splendid little book is a very nice and compact history of blues, which would make a nice intro for someone not too familiar with the music, but it's the fantastic photos by Rae Flerlage that really set it apart from the competition. Flerlage is a fantistic photographer who was a fixture on the South and West Side club scenes for a long time, and his photos capture something of the essence of the great performances that made the blues from the 20s to the 50s so exciting. Lots of cigarette smoke and sweat in these pictures -- these clubs must have rocked!