Product Description

This book offers first-person recollections from a new generation of artists who applied the musical and life lessons of the fathers of the blues, stoking the 1960s blues revival that continues today. It focuses on 49 current musicians who preserve traditional blues forms while infusing them with fresh voices and lessons. Artists covered include: Rory Block ¥ Taj Mahal ¥ Robert Cray ¥ Junior Watson ¥ Charlie Musselwhite ¥ Stevie Ray Vaughan ¥ Marcia Ball ¥ Duke Robillard ¥ Bob Margolin ¥ Tommy Shannon ¥ KebÕ MoÕ ¥ and many more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1132144 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Customer Reviews

A Guide To The Musicians Making the Music
I caught an interview with Art Tipaldi and Dan Ackroyd on Elwood's Blues radio program about this book and put it on my "must buy" list. One month later I was able to get it(and have it signed by the author) at the North Atlantic Blues Festival at the Blues Revue Booth where Art works as one of the best blues columnists and writers in the country. If you love blues music you need to buy this book. Fourty nine of todays best blues musicians are profiled in four sections - Real fathers,Real Children,Chicago and the South, Texas,East Coast and West Coast. The book starts with this sentence: You dont choose the blues - it chooses you.Amen! As someone who was raised on rock and roll I discovered the blues when Robert Cray came on the scene with Strong Persuader - so taken with the music I had to find more - the same way Art writes that he discovered this music.I must confess - I travel to several blues festivals a year, have over 1000 CDs -80-85% are blues, catch live blues bands whenever I can- so I am a big blues fan. This book introduces you to the men and women playing the music today - people like Lucky Peterson who stole this years North Atlantic Blues Festival, Carl Weathersbee who killed this years Poconno Blues Festival, Shemika Copeland who continues to get better and better with performances like the Chesepeak Blues festival this past year and her dad Johnnie "Clyde" Copeland,Keb Mo, Robert Cray,Jimmy Vaughan,Coco Montoya,Kelly Joe Phelps and many others.Included bonus is a Discology in the back with all the music these musicians have recorded. Music is best when listened to but this book tells you the story about the people making the music. I know Art couldnt include everyone making Blues Music today but I hope Art's next book includes Little Charlie Baty and Rick Estrin,Tab Benoit, Magic Slim and many others. I see this book and others like it is an important part in the effort to keep the blues alive. Buy it- you will not be disappointed if you love Blues Music!

Bridging the generation gap
At last, a book on the blues that features contemporary artists, let's them tell their story (and doesn't simply repeat the same old biographical details), and bridges the gap to the blues artists of the past. There's something here for all blues fans, whether they prefer the bluesmen and women of previous generations (like Muddy Waters and Walter Horton) or those of today.

If you want to learn every single detail about the life of the featured artists (the 49 contemporary artists chosen or those that they talk about) then this probably isn't the book for you. If however you want to find out more about their personalities then this is a must buy. Blues is about feeling and is based on experience and this book gives a great insight into the events that have shaped the music of some of today's foremost artists.

Additional Information
I'm giving Art Tipaldi five stars. He has successfully done what he set out to do: elegantly and eloquently conveyed the uniqueness and individuality of each of the players he profiles.It's tough to condense a whole person into a space of five to ten pages. It's tough to resist the impulse to correct an interviewee's grammar or syntax, before or after the fact. It's tough, as an interviewer, to ignore the information you think is important, in favor of what the interviewee thinks is important. Say you have only five pages and you are fascinated by your subject's proficency on the oboe and the orchestras he's played with, but your subject feels his life is defined by the work he does with the Suburban Housewive's Relief Fund. What do you do? Many writers would, intentionally or not, focus on the oboe. This author has chosen to focus on the Relief Fund. By doing so, he has, as much as is possible, removed both his preferences and prejudices from the body of this book and allowed the musicians, in their own varied voices, to shine through. Those voices are so much more fascinating than bare facts. For example:
Charlie Musselwhite(p62): "I call it following the will of the music"

Coco Montoya(p278): "I've apologized to Mayall a million times for what I put him through-drunk on my [bum], screamin' at him"

Gordon Beadle(p210): "You could almost draw a line in the shape of the notes"

Delbert McClinton(p134):"The thing that's most important about how things have gotten better is that I wouldn't quit, I wouldn't stay out of the way of it, everytime you turned around, there I was, pushin'".

These quotes, in both style as well as content, say so much more about the artists than an endless string of facts ever could.