It is our most passionate music rooted in ancient Africa but brought to blossom in America at the doorstep of the twentieth century. It is a living heritage of song born in poverty persecution and hard labor born of love and love betrayed of holiness and sin the pleasures and the pains of the flesh the experience of tragedy comedy drunkenness despair desolation and pure joy. It is the blues. At root the blues is rich in its simplicity but it has flowered across the years in a variety of rare complexity. Perhaps no form of popular art is more immediately appealing than the blues yet so rewards a thorough knowledge of its finer points. In eleven authoritative essays commissioned especially for the book Nothing But the Blues traces the African-American origins of the music its early development as popular entertainment its early recorded manifestations its regional differentiation (Mid-South Tidewater-Piedmont Chicago Detroit New York Los Angeles) its many stylistic dimensions and its contemporary manifestations. Country blues urban blues the evolution of rhythm and blues rock n roll and the blues revival are all fully covered. But the written history is only part of the story. Blues fans have always treasured rare photographs of their heroes and Nothing But the Blues is gloriously illustrated with posed and candid shots of the musicians as well as photographs of such one-of-a-kind artifacts and documents as Leadbelly s NYPD rap sheet and classic recording contracts. Nothing But the Blues features an introduction by one of the genre s living legends B. B. King and a comprehensive best of the best discography including current and rereleased recordings as well as the collectors treasures to go after. Blues is more popular than ever before. Not only are reissues of historical blues classics selling in unprecedented numbers but a whole new crop of vital young blues artists is active in clubs and on record today. Nothing But the Blues is a lavishly illustrated comprehensive history of the music and the musicians as well as the promoters producers and others who have shaped--and continue to shape--this powerful and enduringly popular American musical art form.