Urban Blues

Rating:
Summary: superb study of urban blues
Review: This is the second most important book that's been written on American popular music. Keil sees blues culture as medicine for the ills of Western Civilization. After introductory chapters on African-American music (in which he makes some remarks on Baraka's Blues People), and blues styles, Keil begins discussing the urban blues, blues played with electric instruments and played in clubs in cities. He has studies of B. B. King and Bobby Blue Bland, plus remarks on many other bluesman. How do they structure a performance? How do they interact with the audience? What are the values upheld in the blues world?

Rating:
Summary: The Book You Start With To Understand Rock 'n Roll
Review: Unfortunately, most people who actually know something about RnR and RnB are too old to look like they do to younger readers who think Buddy Guy is first generation. Most thirtysomethings (or fortysomethings) think rock is rock 'n roll and rock 'n roll is rhythm and blues and rhythm and blues is blues.

Today, the actual people who created modern urban blues forms are unknown to young rock revisionists. But they weren't unknown to Charles Keil. He traces and authoritatively compares the various styles of blues, showing that the electric forms that led to rock were as important and significant as the blues music put out in the twenties and thirties.

Duh, you say. Well when this book was written, there were no books on the subject of modern (1950s-1960s) blues around. Especially none written for a black or knowledgable white audience. This is the book that started the black-oriented musical criticism necessary to understand the main tap root to rock 'n roll.

Although the first of its kind, it still remains fresh with very little material the would need updating today. When I got my copy in the mid sixties, I stopped everything and read it cover to cover underlining all the important parts. As I say, Urban Blues was the first and still one of the few to get it right. Bedrock.