Blues history is steeped in Chicago's sidewalks; it floats out of its restaurants, airport lounges and department stores. It is a fundamental part of the city's heritage that every resident should know and every visitor should be afraid to miss. Allow Rosalind Cummings-Yeates to take you inside the Checkerboard and Gerri's Palm Tavern, where folks like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon and Ma Rainey transformed Chicago into the blues mecca. Continue on to explore the contemporary blues scene and discover the best spots to hear the purest sounds of Sweet Home Chicago.

Winner ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for Outstanding Book on Music
Foreword by Dr. John, Recommended by Bonnie Raitt and Joe Bonamassa
What a great resource, as fascinating as it is informative. Debra Devi s passion for the blues shines through. Bonnie Raitt

Find out what the words in your favorite blues songs "really" mean In "The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu," rock musician and "Huffington Post" blogger Debra Devi defines over 150 blues terms like mojo, hoodoo, buffet flat and killing floor with wild stories and fresh insights from her interviews with such blues stars as Hubert Sumlin, Robert Jr. Lockwood, Henry Gray, Little Milton Campbell, Bob Margolin, Jody Williams, Robben Ford, Jimmie Vaughan and more. As a musician myself, Devi explains, I thought I could make a contribution by talking to blues legends about what the words in these songs mean to them.

"The Language of the Blues" includes over 30 photos (17 color) and a remarkable foreword by Dr. John, who helped Devi uncover the illegal gambling origins of terms like gig and axe. Winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for Outstanding Book on Music, "The Language of the Blues" has earned praise from Bonnie Raitt, Joe Bonamassa, former Muddy Waters guitarist Bob Margolin, producer Hal Willner and even Ministry singer Al Jourgensen Joe Bonamassa says, Devi's book will teach you what you really need to know about blues history and where the blues are coming from. Al Jourgensen notes: Finally one can understand the mechanics behind the overwhelming viscera of the Blues. Debra Devi's work is a true guide book to the soul.

Devi combines her interviews with in-depth research into etymology, African language, voodoo and the origins of blues, rock and jazz. The result is a lively read "Reuters" calls one of the wittiest, bawdiest, most fascinating dictionaries ever. "Blues Revue" deems "The Language of the Blues" an essential purchase for scholars and fans and "New York Times" columnist Shelton Ivany adds, If you have any questions about blues songs, lyrics, musicians or events, chances are you will find your answers in this unparalleled publication. Don't think that "The Language of the Blues" might read like a dictionary or reference book, explains Bob Margolin. There's no plot, but you can open it at random and fall into the world of your favorite blues songs, finding out more about the lyrics than you would by guessing from context. I learned a lot more about the blues music I love.

Devi is an "American Blues Scene" columnist and former "Blues Revue" associate editor. She is the lead singer/guitarist for the rock band DEVI and a Fender Girl Rock Nation artist. Visit her at www.devi-rock.com.

This book is fascinating Take it to the bathroom and don't come out until you're done reading it. - Jimmy Vivino

This is a beautiful book. After hearing 'Hellhound on My Trail' in high school I bought every vintage blues record available at the time. Upon receiving "The Language of the Blues" I discovered my knowledge only scratched the surface. Debra Devi has written an invaluable reference book. And it's also great fun to read. - Hal Willner

Congratulations to Debra Devi for "The Language of the Blues." Its candor and witty honesty bring us into the world she describes so well with beautiful strength. This is a book that lovers of music and just plain old lovers will love to have in their collections. - Ed Sanders

It's never too late to play blues, rags & boogies is the latest addition to the best-selling piano tutor series, It's Never Too Late... by Pam Wedgwood. Through favourite repertoire in easy-to-play arrangements, classic tunes and great new pieces in blues, ragtime and boogie styles, this book helps pianists learn and explore all the different skills and techniques needed to play. Pam Wedgwood is one of the UK's favourite composers of popular piano music and creator of Jazzin' About, After Hours and Up-Grade. The ground-breaking It's never too late... Series gives adults the opportunity to learn the piano with a method devised especially for them. This best-selling tutor breaks the learning into manageable chunks, features online audio, and is packed with irresistible music and fascinating information - all the motivation needed to make learning fun!

Exploring the diverse landscape of American life, the stories in Blues and Trouble: Twelve Stories capture the lives of people caught between circumstance and their own natures or on the run from fate, from a Jewish couple encountering a dealer in Nazi memorabilia to the troubled family of a Gulf Coast fisherman awaiting a hurricane. Tom Piazza's debut short story collection, originally published in 1996, heralded the arrival of a startlingly original and vital presence in American fiction and letters. Set in Memphis, New Orleans, Florida, Texas, New York City, and elsewhere, the stories echo voices from Ernest Hemingway to Robert Johnson in their sharp eye for detail and their emotional impact. New to this volume is an introduction written by the author. Drawing themes, forms, and stylistic approaches from blues and country music, these stories present a tough, haunting vision of a landscape where the social and spiritual ground shifts constantly underfoot.

Blues Hall of Fame Inductee, 2019 - A "Classic of Blues Literature" In 1941 and '42 African American scholars from Fisk University-among them the noted composer and musicologist John W. Work III, sociologist Lewis Wade Jones, and graduate student Samuel C. Adams Jr.-joined folklorist Alan Lomax of the Library of Congress on research trips to Coahoma County, Mississippi. Their mission was "to document adequately the cultural and social backgrounds for music in the community." Among the fruits of the project were the earliest recordings by the legendary blues singer and guitarist Muddy Waters. The hallmark of the study was to have been a joint publication of its findings by Fisk and the Library of Congress. While this publication was never completed, Lost Delta Found is composed of the writings, interviews, notes, and musical transcriptions produced by Work, Jones, and Adams in the Coahoma County study. Their work captures, with compelling immediacy, a place, a people, a way of life, and a set of rich musical traditions as they existed in the 1940s.

As Louis Armstrong forever tethered jazz to New Orleans and Clifton Chenier fixed Lafayette as home to zydeco, Slim Harpo established Baton Rouge as a base for the blues. In the only complete biography of this internationally renowned blues singer and musician, Martin Hawkins traces Harpo's rural upbringing near Louisiana's capital, his professional development fostered by the local music scene, and his national success with R&B hits like Rainin' in My Heart, Baby Scratch My Back, and I'm A King Bee, among others. Hawkins follows Harpo's global musical impact from the early 1960s to today and offers a detailed look at the nature of the independent recording business that enabled his remarkable legacy. With new research and interviews, Hawkins fills in previous biographical gaps and redresses misinformation about Harpo's life. In addition to weaving the musician's career into the lives of other Louisiana blues players-including Lightnin' Slim, Lazy Lester, and Silas Hogan-the author discusses the pioneering role of Crowley, Louisiana, record producer J. D. Miller and illustrates how Excello Records in Nashville brought national attention to Harpo's music recorded in Louisiana. This engaging narrative examines Harpo's various recording sessions and provides a detailed discography, as well as a list of blues-related records by fellow Baton Rouge artists. Slim Harpo: Blues King Bee of Baton Rouge will stand as the ultimate resource on the musician's life and the rich history of Baton Rouge's blues heritage.

Part of a series of humorous guides to different styles of guitar playing. Each book is mix of irreverant humour and genuine musical instruction, containing bluffer's tips, techniques to steal, tips on writing, names to drop, and dress styles to adopt.

Over 300 guitar licks licks, intros and turnarounds in delta, Chicago, Texas, rock, country, swing, minor and slide blues styles. includes sections on how to read music, blues techniques and a handy table of scales. Everything is shown in easy-to-read standard music notation and TAB. The CD includes a demonstration of all the licks.

(Instrumental Folio). 14 songs for solo instruments, complete with a play-along CD. Includes: Bernie's Tune * Cry Me a River * Fever * Fly Me to the Moon * God Bless' the Child * Harlem Nocturne * Moonglow * A Night in Tunisia * One Note Samba * Opus One * Satin Doll * Slightly Out of Tune (Desafinado) * Take the "A" Train * Yardbird Suite.

Passionate and heartfelt, blues guitar is one of the most difficult of guitar styles to play well. In this tuition course Marten takes a new approach to teaching blues. He examines and explains famous guitarists' playing techniques, teaching the reader how to build and emulate their solos and how to expand their own musical vocabulary as a result. The hour long accompanying CD also includes backing tracks, allowing the reader to develop his own solos.

My Life in E-flat is the memoir of a woman who witnessed some of the most important movements in the history of jazz. Through her autobiography, Chan Parker provides intimate insights into the music and into life with Charlie Parker, the key figure in the development of bebop and one of the most important of all jazz musicians. Chan Parker was born Beverly Dolores Berg in New York City at the height of the Jazz Age. Her father was a producer of vaudeville shows and her mother was a dancer in Florenz Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolic. Parker became part of the jazz culture as a nightclub dancer and later as the wife of jazz saxophonists Charlie Parker and then Phil Woods. In a moving and candid portrait of Charlie Parker, the author describes in harrowing detail a man of incredible talent besieged with addictions and self-destructiveness. She painfully recounts his death at the age of 35 while married to her and its effect on her life as well as on the musical world. Parker's honest portrait of one of the most gifted musicians in jazz provides unique insight into the history of the music and the difficulties faced by African American performers during the 1940s. Parker also reflects on her struggle to find her own voice and on her work with Clint Eastwood on the film biography of Charlie Parker, Bird (1988).

The Commandments of R&B Drumming is a historical and in-depth study of R&B drumming, from soul to funk to hip-hop, written by world-renowned session & live drummer Zoro (Lenny Kravitz, Bobby Brown, Sean Lennon). Topics include practice tips, developing the funky bass drum and hi-hat, creating and playing with loops, and what are considered the Ten Commandments of Soul, Funk, and Hip-Hop (the top ten recordings from each era). This book not only pays homage to the R&B drummers of the past, but gives the reader a fortune of invaluable information both in history and playing.
This newly revised 10th anniversary edition features updated information and loads of new photos and album artwork throughout. It includes a play-along CD featuring various styles of R&B, and also includes an R&B history tree. 160 pages covering every imaginable angle, nook, and cranny of R&B for only $24.95 The book was voted the #1 educational drum book in the world by Modern Drummer magazine's Readers Poll and also deemed "a must-have for the soulful drummer," by Traps Magazine.
"Zoro's book is a milestone achievement and the most comprehensive book on the subject of R&B drumming I have ever seen."
-Vinnie Colaiuta
"I consider Zoro's book an essential investment "
-Dennis Chambers

An essential how-to guide for students and teachers, this publication is a complete step-by-step guide to playing jazz with confidence and style. Designed for the complete beginner, it breaks down the process of learning jazz into simple activities and contains a range of easy music examples. The accompanying CD provides examples, activities and some great trio playing to use as a backdrop to your own work. It is an indispensable companion to the ABRSM's Jazz Piano exams, with Part III dealing with the exam in detail.

As well as chronicling and listing every performance in Britain from June 1944, the author details The Glenn Miller Story, his appearance in two films during the war and the circumstances of his disappearance on a flight to France.

"The path the slave took to 'citizenship' is what I want to look at. And I make my analogy through the slave citizen's music -- through the music that is most closely associated with him: blues and a later, but parallel development, jazz... [If] the Negro represents, or is symbolic of, something in and about the nature of American culture, this certainly should be revealed by his characteristic music."

So says Amiri Baraka in the Introduction to Blues People, his classic work on the place of jazz and blues in American social, musical, economic, and cultural history. From the music of African slaves in the United States through the music scene of the 1960's, Baraka traces the influence of what he calls "negro music" on white America -- not only in the context of music and pop culture but also in terms of the values and perspectives passed on through the music. In tracing the music, he brilliantly illuminates the influence of African Americans on American culture and history.

I went to Africa to find the roots of the blues. So Samuel Charters begins the extraordinary story of his research. But what began as a study of how the blues was handed down from African slaves to musicians of today via the slave ships, became something much more complex. For in Africa Samuel Charters discovered a music which was not just a part of the past but a very vital living part of African culture. The Roots of the Blues not only reveals Charters's remarkable talent in discussing African folk music and its relationship with American blues it demonstrates his power as a descriptive and narrative writer. Using extensive quotations of song lyrics and some remarkable photographs of the musicians, Charters has created a unique contribution to our understanding of both African and American cultures and their music.

This fresh look at the neglected rhythm section in jazz ensembles shows that the improvisational interplay among drums, bass, and piano is just as innovative, complex, and spontaneous as the solo. Ingrid Monson juxtaposes musicians' talk and musical examples to ask how musicians go about "saying something" through music in a way that articulates identity, politics, and race. Through interviews with Jaki Byard, Richard Davis, Sir Roland Hanna, Billy Higgins, Cecil McBee, and others, she develops a perspective on jazz improvisation that has "interactiveness" at its core, in the creation of music through improvisational interaction, in the shaping of social communities and networks through music, and in the development of cultural meanings and ideologies that inform the interpretation of jazz in twentieth-century American cultural life.
Replete with original musical transcriptions, this broad view of jazz improvisation and its emotional and cultural power will have a wide audience among jazz fans, ethnomusicologists, and anthropologists.

A major figure in American blues and folk music, Big Bill Broonzy (1903-1958) left his Arkansas Delta home after World War I, headed north, and became the leading Chicago bluesman of the 1930s. His success came as he fused traditional rural blues with the electrified sound that was beginning to emerge in Chicago. This, however, was just one step in his remarkable journey: Big Bill was constantly reinventing himself, both in reality and in his retellings of it. Bob Riesman's groundbreaking biography tells the compelling life story of a lost figure from the annals of music history.
"I Feel So Good" traces Big Bill's career from his rise as a nationally prominent blues star, including his historic 1938 appearance at Carnegie Hall, to his influential role in the post-World War II folk revival, when he sang about racial injustice alongside Pete Seeger and Studs Terkel. Riesman's account brings the reader into the jazz clubs and concert halls of Europe, as Big Bill's overseas tours in the 1950s ignited the British blues-rock explosion of the 1960s. Interviews with Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, and Ray Davies reveal Broonzy's profound impact on the British rockers who would follow him and change the course of popular music.
Along the way, Riesman details Big Bill's complicated and poignant personal saga: he was married three times and became a father at the very end of his life to a child half a world away. He also brings to light Big Bill's final years, when he first lost his voice, then his life, to cancer, just as his international reputation was reaching its peak. Featuring many rarely seen photos, "I Feel So Good" will be the definitive account of Big Bill Broonzy's life and music.