100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own by Edward Komara and Greg Johnson (review)

The blues permeates a large portion of the popular music of African Americans in the United States. This bibliography is the work of the current and former blues archivists at the University of Mississippi. They begin with a typical day in the life of a blues librarian, which is very similar to that of most other music librarians. The authors begin with a basic premise: “which books should every blues fan own?” (p. 1). The international market for blues music is reflected by the numerous works the authors cite that have been translated into several languages, such as Italian, German, or French—for example, The Devil’s Music (no. 4) and Savannah Syncopators (no. 6).

Book publishing about the blues, which began in the late 1950s, is less extensive than the periodical literature. Before then, much of the history was conveyed via oral traditions. The scope of this bibliography is nonfiction, and selection is based upon substance, style, discipline, influence, coverage, and availability. All entries, even those citing foreign works, are in English. The authors excluded books primarily on ancillary subjects, such as blues-rock. Reference books, though not part of the main body of the Blues 100, are in an appendix, “The Books Behind the Blues 100.”

Each entry has three elements: a short headline (or the purpose of the book); a bibliographic citation, including various editions and prices; the body of the entry, which summarizes its contents and compares it to other blues books; and for certain books, a blues recording pertaining to the book. A more complete list is in the appendix. The compilers lead off with books that convey a broad overview, then work roughly chronologically, in the hope that this book “may be read from beginning to end as a history of the blues” (p. 3). Numbers in parentheses in the text are page numbers, so they omit the abbreviations p. and pp.

Komara and Johnson start with Nothing but the Blues (no. 1, p. 11), edited by Lawrence Cohn. They describe the content and physical characteristics of the volume, with phrases like “visually attractive,” “weighty,” “heavy paper stock.” They also clarify that this is not Mike Leadbitter’s book of the same title, which they put in the appendix, “The Books Behind the Blues 100.”

Even when analyzing books in the top ten, Komara and Johnson identify discrepancies and weaknesses. In The Story of the Blues, Paul Oliver uses the term diatonic, which (they point out) should be replaced by the term chromatic scale (p. 15). In Savannah Syncopators (no. 6, p. 26), Paul Oliver inferred several answers that Komara calls theses; they should be viewed as assertions which need “to be accepted or disproven.” The authors note in the entry for Father of the Blues (no. 12) that W. C. Handy, though very influential, was “not the father of the blues,” despite the title of his autobiography (p. 40). Handy was a singer, trumpeter, composer, and publisher. Komara and Johnson then clarify past myths and rumors in the Bessie entry (no. 16, pp. 51–53), putting to rest a much-perpetuated error that Bessie Smith allegedly died due to denial of treatment at a whites-only hospital.

Komara and Johnson illustrate each book’s unique qualities: readers should seek the early editions of The Devil’s Music by Giles Oakley (no. 4), for their “crisp reproductions of photographs; some of its cultural and contextual images are not in any other blues book” (p. 21). They note that readers should seek the out-of-print hardcover edition for crisp pictures in Africa and the Blues, by Gerhard Kubik (no. 7, p. 30). But the compilers also note the quick topical shifts, sensationalist writing, unintroduced quotes, and poor photographic quality in Memphis Blues and Jug Bands (no. 18, p. 57).

The authors’ annotations convey much history: not...