Nothing but the Blues: The Music and the Musicians

Like Abbeville's "Country: The Music and the Musicians", "Nothing but the Blues" is an illustrated, comprehensive history of music and musicians, also covering promoters, producers and others who have shaped this powerful and enduringly popular American musical art form. A "guide to the best" discography is included at the back of the book which will appeal to blues fans and record collectors. Tracing its origins to slave-era work songs and "hollers", blues is more popular than it has ever been. Larry Cohn, principal author of "Nothing but the Blues", is the producer of a five-year CBS/Sony Music historical reissue of classic blues recordings. The first two-CD set in the series, featuring the music of blues "father" Robert Johnson, earned Cohn a Grammy. While country music commands a large but unfocused audience, the blues draws on a more concentrated and committed audience, many of them avid blues recording collectors, who subscribe to scores of blues-oriented publications. In 12 essays commissioned specially for the book, "Nothing but the Blues" traces the African American origins of the music, its early development as popular entertainment, its first recordings, its regional differentiation, its many stylistic dimensions, and its contemporary manifestations. County blues, urban blues, Cajun and Zydeco influences, the evolution of rhythm and blues, rock 'n' roll, and the blues revival are all fully covered.