This House on Fire: The Story of the Blues (The African-American Experience)

Awmiller, Craig

4.22

9 ratings by Goodreads

9780531112533: This House on Fire: The Story of the Blues (The African-American Experience)

ISBN 10: 0531112535 ISBN 13: 9780531112533

Publisher: Franklin Watts, 1996

Chronicles the evolution of blues music, from its origins in the poverty-stricken rural South, through its growth in the urban North, to its rise to popularity and enduring influence on modern music, profiling the lives of such blues greats as Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, B. B. King, and others.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From Booklist:

Gr. 8^-12. "The blues were in the air" in the early 1900s South. This wailing, often mournful, sometimes spirited, but always personal and heartfelt brand of music emerged in African work songs and then in slave songs and spirituals. When African American guitar players started sliding a pocketknife or similar object along the guitar strings instead of plucking the strings individually, the distinctive blues twang arose and would in time develop into a major American music style. Awmiller writes in a vibrant, anecdotal style, portraying such early blues greats as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Ma Rainey, and Robert Johnson. He follows the blues from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago, where the urban blues style was perfected, and goes on to today, giving strong emphasis to the blues influence on 1960s pop music along the way. If readers can forgive a didactic chapter on "meaning in the blues," they will find this lively read to be fascinating and informative as well as shorter and more accessible than Francis Davis' excellent adult book The History of the Blues (1995). Period black-and-white photos, a bibliography, source notes, and a discography complement the text. Anne O'Malley

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.