The Blues

Featuring blues artists of every era, from pioneers like Ma Rainey, through legends such as Muddy Waters and B. B. King, to new stars like Keb' Mo' and Shemekia Copeland.





Charting the history of the blues from its rural roots in the American South and focusing on the key musicians and singers who brought it recognition worldwide, The Blues: A Visual History is a unique and fully illustrated account of the development of the blues. This deceptively simple, 12-bar musical form has become the common denominator that has driven the popular music of the last hundred years. As John Lee Hooker put it: “The music we play . . . that music is the roots. Rock music, everything else, is like a branch on the same tree. It all comes from the blues.”




350 stunning photographs and illustrations
A wealth of archive photography
Rare graphic memorabilia
Foreword by Marshall Chess, veteran record producer with his family’s legendary Chicago rhythm-and-blues label, Chess Records


Author Mike Evans is a musician, editor, and author whose books include the best-selling Elvis: A Celebration, and Ray Charles: The Birth of Soul. Consultant editor Robert Gordon is a Grammy Award–winning writer and filmmaker specializing in the music of the American south, and Scott Barretta is a blues specialist writer, broadcaster, and lecturer.