...it's one of the best books ever published about the blues. Trynka wrote that he was aiming to produce something as "honest and unfiltered as possible," and here it is.... for all its anecdotal riches, Portrait of the Blues also offers a wonderful guide to the development of the music itself. Trynka has painstakingly arranged excerpts from the interviews in order to provide a narrative feel, and readers see how the blues evolved from the holler of the Deep South into the witty mid-'70s funk of Johnny Guitar Watson. Wilmer's black-and-white photographs alone--a beautiful and often haunting distillation of life on the blues road--are worth the cover price.
Product Description
The story of the blues is told in this unique collection of firsthand interviews with over fifty major blues and blues-influenced players, including John Lee Hooker, B. B. King, and Buddy Guy; and presented with the stunning pictures of world-famous photographer Val Wilmer, taken over the last thirty years in the rural south and in urban blues centers such as Chicago, New Orleans, and Memphis.
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