Customer Reviews

A Guide to the Blues: History, Who's Who, Research Sources

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This book is rife with factual errors which render it useless as a reference volume, (its intended purpose). Birth dates, death dates, birth and death places, career histories and the current state of an artist's career are so frequently wrong as to require anything stated as fact in this book to be double checked.

Even worse, the book's original edition contained substantial passages reprinted, largely intact and without attribution, from Bruce Cook's "Listen to the Blues," most notably those sections discussing Charley Patton and Robert Johnson. While I am not accusing Mr. Sonnier of willful plagiarism, it can be noted that at the time of his book's publication (1996), Mr. Cook's book had been out of print for many years. I caught this matter because Cook's book was republished at about the same time and I was reading the two of them simultaneously. When notified of this problem, Sonnier's publisher withdrew the book from distribution.

I do not know if there was a second edition which solved all these problems, but the first edition must be avoided at all costs. It is impossible to conceive of an audience for whom it would be both appropriate and adequate.