Hawkeye Herman’s list of blues related books on the Mississippi Valley Blues Society web site is a very impressive and nearly complete resource for blues reference material. I say nearly complete only because there are new books coming out all the time and also there are a few other areas that people really interested in the story of the blues could investigate to get a complete picture.

Most importantly, someone who s actively involved in the promoting of the blues should probably have a good knowledge of the subject at hand. I think that includes all of us who want to see blues endure as an art form.

Hawkeye’s list is long and almost overwhelming to someone starting from scratch. I would like to add my recommendations to help slim the list down a bit for folks who are looking for a place to start.

Trying to get a clear picture of the story of the blues is not an easy task in spite of the wealth of material available. The first books strictly on the subject of blues were not written until the 1950s. Early researchers found the task difficult due to the unreliability of the gathered data. In interviewing the people involved different, and often conflicting stories would be told. Sometimes the older blues musicians would remember things differently the next time they were talked to. If you read enough books written over the years you will see that the facts of the story have evolved and changed. This fact has lead to the blues type urban legend reporting. This includes things like the overemphasis on Robert Johnson’s role in the story. There is also the silly misconception that the blues were somehow magically born somewhere near the Sunflower river in the delta when some old guy taught Charlie Patton how to play guitar. Blues wasn’t born anywhere, it evolved from many sources. Your goal should be to read enough to gain enough knowledge to form your own opinions and to recognize when some of the presented facts are cloudy.

Many people today start by reading Robert Palmer’s “Deep Blues”. While I think that is an excellent introduction to delta blues and it’s influence on rock music it gives a very incomplete picture of the story of the blues. Palmer’s book is well researched, rich in detail, and he was an excellent writer. I have read and re-read it many times. If it is the only or even the first book you read on the subject you will end up with not enough information. His approach is to show the direct route of blues to rock. That is not the whole story. Some people might object to my criticism of the Palmer book by saying that rock blues is a very important element of the present blues culture. Of course they are right and I like electric blues just as much as the next guy, but it must be recognized that blues began as a folk music. That is music for the folks, by the folks. Nowadays it is not cool in some circles to talk about folk music. It is more hip to use the term roots music. That is what blues is and has always been, the taproot of the tree of American music. It feeds and nourishes and gives life to all modern forms of American music. Think of reading about the blues as digging at those roots to experience that nourishment.

The best place to start reading about blues history is with the first guys to write on the subject, Paul Oliver and Samuel Charters. Both wrote the first books exclusively about the blues back in the fifties. Most of them were out of print for many years, I had to get several of mine at used books stores, but luckily due to the recent interest in the subject, lots of them have been reissued. Two good ones to start with would be Oliver’s “Songsters and Saints” and Charter’s “The Country Blues”. Those books should give you a more complete picture of the beginnings of the blues. They discuss all the aspects of the blues and the many possible musical forms it evolved from and evolved into. Most of their other books are great as well and by reading several of them you can get a picture of how the understanding of the story of the blues changed over time as both men gathered more knowledge and more facts became known.

A good place to branch out on your knowledge, once you have some of the basic facts, is in the writings of Peter Guralnick. His books go beyond basic blues history and explore how the music relates to other musical forms such as country and rock. I really like his “Feel Like Going Home”. It is a very personal book with many colorful bios of both blues and early rock giants. Ok, he makes a big deal of delta blues as well, but it’s still a cool book. Another author who does an excellent job of exploring the connections between black and white music is Tony Russell with his small but interesting little book “Blacks Whites and Blues”. For more intellectual and scholarly discussions of the subject you cannot miss with any of the books of either David Evans or William Ferris. I like Evan’s “Big Road Blues” and Ferris’ “Blues From The Delta”.

Another way to get a good feel for the blues life is to read one of the several autobiographies of old time bluesmen. You have to remember that these guys were storytellers and not historians. Some of the facts get mixed up at times. You have to decide what to believe. After all, you did not really believe that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil when he said it, did you? “I Am The Blues”, the Willie Dixon story is a good read. My favorite is “Big Bill Blues”, the life of Big Bill Broonzy. It is full of wild stories, fantastic tales, and lots of humor. It puts a real human face on life of the so-called “bluesman”.

There are a couple of areas not covered in Hawkeye’s list that are often neglected, but I feel are quite important to having a full understanding of how we got to where we are today in the blues culture. By the end of the fifties the blues had all but died out with its original black audience. The African American culture moved on to other more modern forms of music. A young white audience of blues fans and musicians stepped forward to try to revive and preserve the music. Without them I’m not sure if blues culture would exist as it does today. They tracked down not only the music, but the old musicians as well. There are a couple of good books on the folk culture and its influence on the preservation of blues music. “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” by Eric Von Schmidt and Jim Rooney tells the story of the Cambridge folk scene and the part blues music played in it. “Hoot” by Robbie Woliver tells a similar story about the Greenwich Village music scene. “No Direction Home” the life and music of Bob Dylan by Robert Shelton also has much information on the music scene in New York city in those early days.

Another area rich in interesting blues information are books on how to play the blues. Now I realize that non-musicians may have trouble getting into books on technique, but these books are written by folks who got the closest to the old blues guys. They shared a common love for the music and that created a bit of a bond that is obvious in the little tidbits of information they pass on in their how-to books. I would recommend you have some of your musician friends lend you some of their books. (They all have them, believe me) And maybe you could even get them to demonstrate some of the common blues licks taught in those books. Stefan Grossman and Woody Mann have written tons of these books on all areas of blues playing. More basic books have been written by Jerry Silverman and the Traum brothers. I have always thought it odd that these guys have been out teaching for more than 40 years, and yet you rarely see them at anybody’s blues fest. What a wealth of knowledge is being missed.

If you get tired of all this reading, educational videos are just the ticket. Again if you are not a musician, some of it may go way over your head, but the advantage of videos are that they have a great deal of entertainment value as well as being educational. You cannot miss with any of the Roy Book Binder stuff. They are fun and informative. He has two of his own and I also really like the one he did with John Jackson. My favorite guitar tapes are from Kenny Sultan. He has just the right attitude about playing the blues. You don’t even have to have any knowledge of playing blues music to enjoy “Learning to Sing The Blues” by Gaye Adegbalola. She talks about singing techniques and demonstrates them with some great vocals of her own, a pure pleasure. Almost everyone you can think of has a video from Roy Rodgers to Keb Mo. A lot can be found on the Homespun video label, but there are many others as well.

Along with the teaching books I would also recommend checking some of the musician magazines. In recent years there have been many new blues oriented publications brought to the market. Except perhaps for “Living Blues”, I find many of the articles in them to be pretty superficial. The musician magazines do a much more thorough job on giving music background and musicians bios. “Guitar Player”, “Guitar World Acoustic”, and “Acoustic Guitar” all regularly have articles on blues players and even devote whole issues to the blues. Folk publications like “Sing Out” and “Dirty Linen” also have many articles on blues history and personalities.

I think all that could keep you busy for awhile and if you threw yourself into it, you could become a blues expert in no time. There is one area I could discuss that could get me into real trouble. There are some books I think are a waste of time to read. I will not name them. Many recent writers and a few of the older ones as well seem to have run out of new information and have started making it up or at least use less than reliable sources. Now I have always forgiven the old blues guys who like to fun us all and play fast and easy with the truth. Hell, they deserve the fun of shucking and jiving us white folks. We never did give them enough respect or pay them enough money. But these guys who are trying to make a writing career from misinforming us blues fanatics who are hungry for just a little more information should be ashamed of themselves.

I will also get in trouble with this next statement. Hawkeye had many jazz books on his list, but I do not think much honest blues information can be had from them. I tried to read many jazz books years ago when it was hard to find books on blues. While a number of jazz books had some blues background in them, it was often not a pleasant read. Jazz writers usually have a bad attitude about the blues. They think of it as just some bastard stepchild of jazz and pretty distasteful to talk about. Of course since blues probably predates jazz by close to 20 years I always found that attitude to be a pretty bitter pill to swallow.

Getting a good background and starting with some of the really good books in the field will give you the confidence and knowledge to decide for yourself what other areas you may want to explore in discovering the mysteries of the story of the blues. Just keep digging at those old roots and you may discover that knowledge may just feed your passion for the music more than you thought possible.

As Always, Bon Ton Roulett Y’All