53 books like I Ain't Studdin' Ya

Taylor Jenkins Reid is not the first or only person to adapt the nonfiction oral history format into a work of fiction, but she does it with the most panache.

Loosely based on the mid-seventies romance between Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham, Daisy Jones & the Six offers a nonstop procession of drama and conflict, but there’s a tender heart beating at its center and a heartbreaking reveal at the end.

This is a mystery set in the gritty side of New Orleans, back alleys of the French Quarter and neighborhoods that tourists don’t see.

The murder setup is well-written and the author keeps the reader guessing about the outcome. Music lovers will appreciate the references to real singers and musicians that are woven into the story.

This is the 7th book in the Sleepy Carter detective series. There are a few references to previous books, but if you have not previously read any in this series, you won’t be lost. Fans of Walter Mosely will enjoy. I love New Orleans, (there are many mouth-watering food references in the story) and this book takes me there.

This book piqued my interest because it was on former President Obama’s reading list. On the surface, this is a story about an interracial rock duo’s rise to fame and their breakup. But it is really about how race impacts black women and the choices we have to make that others don’t.

The story is primarily set in the 1970s, and as a baby boomer, I enjoy reading about this time period. In 2016, they considered a reunion, but of course, secrets and unresolved issues got in the way.

This story about a female country singer spans her coming-of-age during the Depression and her struggle to make it as a country musician. Hearing this story from a female point of view is different and interesting. Much of the story is also about her life as a “regular person” after her heyday.

As she embarks on her “farewell tour” she must face the choices she’s made. The story is a good reminder that fame and glamour often come at a great cost.

Who’s your daddy? If you play electric guitar, the answer is “T-Bone Walker.” If your response to that name is “Who?” then it’s time to meet your musical ancestor. Over a period of just two decades, T-Bone, along with the “Three Kings” (BB, Albert, and Freddie), Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and others created and developed the fundamental techniques and styles of electric guitar that underpin blues and rock to this day.

Obrecht is one of the best writers on the subject, compiling biographies, historical research, interviews, and conversations into a fascinating and very readable history of the musicians, the music, and the instrument.

Iconic feminist, philosopher, and activist Angela Y. Davis put African American women at the center of the story of the blues, expanding our understanding of a genre usually presented as the purview of male artists. Discussing the music and careers of 1920s blues superstars Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith and 1930s jazz vocalist Billie Holiday, who was deeply influenced by the blues, Davis approaches the blues as music innovated, popularized, and consumed by African American women. She pays close attention to the impact of gender, race, and class on artists and audiences, and shows how these artists and their fans used blues music as entertainment, self-expression, social commentary, political critique, resistance, and survival.

A precise, thoughtful, and unromantic blues scholar, Barry Lee Pearson was also a friend of, and occasional booking agent for, DC-area acoustic blues legends like John Jackson and Cephas & Wiggins.

Jook Right On, which I was delighted to blurb and use in my own teaching, offers a series of compact autobiographical testimonies—“blues stories”—on a wide range of topics from a wide range of blues people. 

“Wordsmiths by trade,” Pearson writes in his brilliantly incisive introduction, “these storytellers bring to their tales qualities also found in blues musical performance and philosophical perspectives characteristic of the blues tradition such as improvisation, ironic humor, ambivalence, and a life-affirming sense of hope in the face of adversity.”

Constitutionally immune to cliches, Pearson brings you closer to the blues musician’s perspective than any writer I know.  

This debut novel is a delight to read for it not only blends detective fiction with Lovecraftian horror, it also weaves a spell filled with the Blues scene and the Southern gothic genre. An intriguing tale from start to finish, it features a war veteran turned detective hired to find missing a blues man. It takes place in the Jim Crow south of 1951, these times being a horror unto themselves. Rich with atmosphere and mystery, the scenes the author depicts are something else entirely.

It began as a master’s thesis in the early Sixties, when the blues was still (just) alive and evolving, and still celebrated by its traditional black audiences. By the time the book was published in 1966, however, white fans had ‘discovered’ the music, and everything was changing. Pounding, repetitive tunes of the kind written by Willie Dixon at Chess and popularised by English R&B bands, became the canon. The blues, with a new rock audience unaware of its rich variety and deep hinterland, was reduced to a single rather tedious idea. It didn’t have to be like this. It’s not the fault of those white R&B bands, but if they had been less fixated on Chicago and opened themselves up to influences from Detroit, say, and Memphis, we might now be living in a different musical world. Keil provides a glimpse of it.

A series of profiles of the author’s musical heroes, along with erudite essays on blues, rock’n’roll, and Chess Records, this is an essential primer. You cannot understand the place of the blues in modern culture without also understanding Little Richard, Elvis Presley, the relationships between white label bosses and their black artists, and the ever-present, inescapable fact of musical cross-pollenation. Chess had Muddy Waters on its roster, and Howlin Wolf, but also Chuck Berry, Ramsey Lewis, and The Moonglows. Guralnick’s writing is elegant, informed, and self-aware, and from Skip James to Jerry Lee Lewis, in the 50 years since its publication, the reputations of his book’s iconic subjects have rocketed in value.