Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music

This book is an "expertly researched, elegantly written, dispassionate yet thoughtful history," according to Gary Giddins. Award-winning author Ted Gioia delivers "the rare combination of a tome that is both deeply informative and enjoyable to read," as noted by Publishers Weekly in a starred review.

From the field hollers of nineteenth-century plantations to the sounds of Muddy Waters and B.B. King, Delta Blues delves into the uneasy mix of race and money at the point where traditional music became commercial and bluesmen found new audiences of thousands. Combining extensive fieldwork, archival research, interviews with living musicians, and first-person accounts, the book uses "his own calm, argument-closing incantations to draw a line through a century of Delta blues," according to the New York Times. This engrossing narrative is flavoured with insightful and vivid musical descriptions that ensure "an understanding of not only the musicians, but the music itself," as highlighted by the Boston Sunday Globe. Rooted in the thick-as-tar Delta soil, Delta Blues is already considered "a contemporary classic in its field" by Jazz Review.