The Legacy of the Blues

Samuel Charters, novelist, poet and eminent historian of jazz and the blues, has chosen twelve major bluesmen, each of whom represents a major facet of the blues in order to explore the how this musical legacy and oral heritage survived African diaspora to become an iconic expression of black America. This exploration reveals the stories of makeshift instruments, runaway slaves, railroads, prisons, empty rooms, work gangs, blindness, and pain all of which been involved in the transmission of this legacy.

Artists covered include Robert Pete Williams and Lightnin’ Hopkins Champion Jack Depree, Memphis Slim, and Mighty Joe Young, among others and they are skillfully portrayed through their own words, using interviews, photographs, lyrics and separate chapters on the black experience in America, and the evolution of the blues language from its African origins.