A blues reader written by Samuel Charters to illustrate his recordings of famous and not so well known blues artistes. From Muddy Waters and Otis Spam in the 1960s to Zydeco and Good Rockin’ Dopsie in the 1970s, Charters walks us from Houston Texas, alongside "Lightnin’" Hopkins and "Thunder" Smith, to Memphis, and Willie B, and on to Saint Louis. The book includes chapters from his writing on the poetry of the Blues and on Country music, which many fans of Charters’s writing will be glad to see back in print.

Charters belongs to a small group of writers about music whose work has transformed their subject – without his discoveries, insights and interventions, the history of the blues over the past fifty years would have been very different.

His book, The Country Blues, opened up the previously unknown world of pre-war blues. At the time of its first publication in 1959, few black singers were known of except for Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong. In his new book, illustrated with his own photographs, rewritten sleeve notes are printed alongside new pieces on his recordings of rarely heard jazz artistes.

Price: £9.95/$17.95
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0-7145-3107-3
Fiction

Publication date: December 2004

Praise for Walking a Blues Road:

'[Sam Charters's] reminiscences, musings and anecdotes are fascinating; his depth of knwledge impressive... The spirit of openness permeates his work, making it a strong contender as one of the best books recently published on the blues.' Library Journal - starred review