{"product_id":"9780789206077","title":"Nothing but the Blues (P): The Music and the Musicians","description":"\u003cp\u003eIt 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt 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, \u003ci\u003eNothing But the Blues\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003eBut the written history is only part of the story. Blues fans have always treasured rare photographs of their heroes, and\u003ci\u003e Nothing But the Blues\u003c\/i\u003e 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. \u003ci\u003eNothing But the Blues\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBlues 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.\u003ci\u003e Nothing But the Blues\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Abbeville Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47015250624752,"sku":"9780789206077","price":39.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780789206077_p0.jpg?v=1763667880","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780789206077","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}