The Rough Guide To The Blues

The Rough Guide to The Blues is the essential blues companion, telling its fascinating story and giving the lowdown on all the grittiest singers, bottleneck guitarists, belt-it-out divas and wailing harmonica players.

It covers the whole journey from its roots in Africa, to how the blues crawled from the Mississippi Delta, went electric in the cities, and spread across the world.

Detailing hundreds of artists from folk heroes like Son House, Leadbelly and Robert Johnson, through the legends of B.B. King, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, to the great blues rockers of the 60’s and 70’s, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and Cream, The Rough Guide to The Blues offers the most thorough and meticulous consolidation of blues biography yet assembled. Accepting the blues as a broad church, author Nigel Williamson profiles artists and bands that have played their own significant role in blues history.

Those new to the blues, or fans in a particular frame of mind, will appreciate the inclusion of ‘Playlists’ to download to your iPod or MP3. Choose between individual artist ‘best ofs’ or check out the ten greatest slide guitar tracks or harmonica solos. And for those in the mood for sex, drugs and alcohol – the blues, and the playlists, have these covered too.

“Where did the blues begin?... the truth is surely that the blues began several million times over. It was born again and again, every time another African gazed for the last time at the land of his or her birth.”

Nigel Williamson grew up a long way from the Mississippi Delta in the leafy environs of Kent. He discovered the blues as a teenager in the 1960s via the records of John Mayall, Cream, The Doors and others and swiftly realised that he preferred the originals to the imitators. His natural inclination to support the underdog not only gave him a natural affinity with the music but led him into the world of radical left-wing politics.

He worked for the British politicians Tony Benn and Neil Kinnock and went on to edit a number of Labour Party publications before becoming a senior executive on The Times. Tiring of the office routine he recklessly gave up the security of a staff salary for the precarious existence of a freelance music critic in the mid-1990s. He is the author of The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan.