Beale Black & Blue: Life and Music on Black America's Main Street

Anyone interested in the history of the Blues will find this book a treasure. The richest part of the book is the series of interviews they did with bluesmen like Big Joe Williams, BB King, Bobby Blue Bland, Sam Chatmon, John Estes, and Furry Lewis. They give a good picture of how these men came to the Blues, how they struggled to survive, and how they saw both the days when the blues was current and their rediscovery by folk-music developed blues audiences in the 1960s and 1970s. There is much here about the political relationships between Memphis politicians and the Black community during the Jim Crow era as well as much about the play of different social forces in the Black community. This is a useful book.