38 books like King of the Blues

By Daniel de Visé,

Here are 38 books that King of the Blues fans have personally recommended if you like King of the Blues. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of I Ain't Studdin' Ya: My American Blues Story

Phyllis R. Dixon Author Of Intermission

From my list on Books on musicians for those fascinated with musical history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love music and books about the music industry. Fiction or nonfiction–the drama of a musician’s rise and efforts to sustain a career never gets old to me. I can relate to their determination to make a living doing something they love. Also, as a resident of Memphis, Tennessee, I’m fascinated by the musical history here and often meet people that had ties to the music industry and are now “regular people.” My latest novel Intermission is about a singing group. I’ve read numerous books in this genre, from Motown bios to the five listed. What a great way to combine my two favorite things–music and books!

Phyllis' book list on Books on musicians for those fascinated with musical history

Phyllis R. Dixon Why did Phyllis love this book?

This is the biography of blues legend and multiple Grammy winner Bobby Rush. He grew up in Arkansas and was not an overnight success. Blues and R&B fans will appreciate the stories he tells about well-known musicians and life on the road.

His is not a hard luck story, although it is about hard work, including how he supported his family when music wasn’t paying the bills. Great to hear from someone who lived to tell the story. I am glad he is finally getting his just rewards.

By Bobby Rush, Herb Powell,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked I Ain't Studdin' Ya as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This memoir charts the extraordinary rise to fame of living blues legend, Bobby Rush. Born Emmet Ellis, Jr. in Homer, Louisiana, he adopted the stage name Bobby Rush out of respect for his father, a pastor. As a teenager, Rush acquired his first real guitar and started playing in juke joints in Little Rock, Arkansas, donning a fake mustache to trick club owners into thinking he was old enough to gain entry into their establishments. During the mid-1950s, Rush relocated to Chicago to pursue his musical career. It was there that he started to work with Earl Hooker, Luther Allison,…


Book cover of Urban Blues

Alan Harper Author Of Waiting for Buddy Guy: Chicago Blues at the Crossroads

From my list on the blues, Chicago, and the Chicago blues.

Why am I passionate about this?

Call me contrarian, but when most of my school friends were into Bowie, Zeppelin, and Genesis, I was saving up for Muddy Waters’ Greatest Hits and discovering how a single note from Albert King’s guitar could send chills down your spine. The music inspired me to spend a summer in Chicago in 1979, aged 20, and I went back in 1982. It took me 30-odd years to get round to writing it, but this book is the result of those adventures, when a guileless British youth found himself welcomed into the noisy, friendly, creative, chaotic, nurturing, and overwhelmingly black world of the Chicago blues, a long time ago.

Alan's book list on the blues, Chicago, and the Chicago blues

Alan Harper Why did Alan love this book?

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.

By Charles Keil,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Urban Blues as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Keil's classic account of blues and its artists is both a guide to the development of the music and a powerful study of the blues as an expressive form in and for African American life. This updated edition explores the place of the blues in artistic, social, political, and commercial life since the 1960s. "An achievement of the first magnitude...He opens our eyes and introduces a world of amazingly complex musical happening."--Robert Farris Thompson, Ethnomusicology


Book cover of Southern Gods

Glynn Owen Barrass Author Of Arkham Nights: Tales of Mythos Noir

From my list on crossing crime fiction and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been a fan of the Cthulhu Mythos and detective fiction since childhood, cutting my teeth on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler, and Dashiell Hammett at an early age. A voracious reader of both horror and mystery, I read and reread these tales and began crafting my own to the point where many years later, as an award-winning writer with over 200 fiction publications under my belt, I feel these genres go together like they were always destined to cross. I write daily, and have a Bachelor’s Degree in Crime Scene Science. You could say crime and horror are always on my mind!

Glynn's book list on crossing crime fiction and the Cthulhu Mythos

Glynn Owen Barrass Why did Glynn love this book?

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.

By John Hornor Jacobs,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Southern Gods as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel
Recent World War II veteran Bull Ingram is working as muscle when a Memphis DJ hires him to find Ramblin' John Hastur. The mysterious blues man's dark, driving music - broadcast at ever-shifting frequencies by a phantom radio station - is said to make living men insane and dead men rise. Disturbed and enraged by the bootleg recording the DJ plays for him, Ingram follows Hastur's trail into the strange, uncivilized backwoods of Arkansas, where he hears rumors the musician has sold his soul to the Devil.…


Book cover of Bring Judgment Day: Reclaiming Lead Belly's Truths from Jim Crow's Lies

Jason Mellard Author Of Progressive Country: How the 1970s Transformed the Texan in Popular Culture

From my list on new books on Texas music.

Why am I passionate about this?

As the Director of the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University, I’m excited to stay on top of all that’s being done in the field of Texas Music and let me assure you that it is a great way to spend one’s days. Texas music and culture reflect the state’s diverse and contested past, and every month, it seems that there is not only a new artist appearing on the stage to sing her or his truth but a writer helping us to understand how those truths fit into the larger narratives of Texas history. 

Jason's book list on new books on Texas music

Jason Mellard Why did Jason love this book?

Lead Belly is a ghost that haunts all of American music. His voice is at the center of Bob Dylan’s folk revival as much as it is behind the Beatles’ British Invasion. When Nirvana made their final live recording, they closed with a Lead Belly tune, Kurt proclaiming that Lead Belly was his favorite artist. And yet, when most people talk about Lead Belly, they are repeating lore propagated by a small group of white folklorists and gatekeepers rather than seeing Lead Belly—that is, Huddie Ledbetter—as a full historical individual with agency in his own story. 

In this deeply researched account, Curran corrects the record. I was riveted by her ability to re-center Ledbetter and draw a complex portrait of the man while also placing him within the wider context of racial exclusions and white supremacy in the midcentury music industry and academy. Much of the world’s popular and vernacular…

By Sheila Curran Bernard,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Bring Judgment Day as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Known worldwide as Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter (1889-1949) is an American icon whose influence on modern music was tremendous - as was, according to legend, the temper that landed him in two of the South's most brutal prisons, while his immense talent twice won him pardons. But, as this deeply researched book shows, these stories were shaped by the white folklorists who 'discovered' Lead Belly and, along with reporters, recording executives, and radio and film producers, introduced him to audiences beyond the South. Through a revelatory examination of arrest, trial, and prison records; sharecropping reports; oral histories; newspaper articles; and…


Book cover of Rollin' and Tumblin' - The Postwar Blues Guitarists

Keith Wyatt Author Of Blues Rhythm Guitar: Master Class Series [With CD]

From my list on blues and playing the blues guitar.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professional guitarist and music teacher specializing in American roots music. For more than 35 years I taught, wrote curriculum, and oversaw programs at Los Angeles' Musicians Institute (formerly Guitar Institute of Technology) while creating and directing instructional videos, writing method books, and publishing magazine articles and columns. Since 1996 I have been recording and touring as the guitarist for American music icons the Blasters. In 2014, I developed the online School of Electric Blues Guitar at Artistworks, where I interact every day with students from around the world.

Keith's book list on blues and playing the blues guitar

Keith Wyatt Why did Keith love this book?

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.

By Jas Obrecht,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Rollin' and Tumblin' - The Postwar Blues Guitarists as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is the most comprehensive and insightful study ever published on the pioneers of electric blues guitar – including the great Chicago, Mississippi Delta, Louisiana, Texas and West Coast bluesmen. Rollin' and Tumblin' offers extensive interviews with some of the world's most famous blues guitarists, and poignant profiles of historical blues figures. Following a sweeping portrait of blues guitar history, the book features such players as T-Bone Walker, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins and many more.


Book cover of Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-And-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Maureen Mahon Author Of Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll

From my list on African American women who shaped popular music.

Why am I passionate about this?

Over many years of being an African American fan of rock music, I’ve learned that the combination of my gender, race, and musical taste can be disconcerting to people who expect Black women to adhere to a limited set of cultural interests. My frustration with these kinds of assumptions, my awareness that rock has deep roots in African American musical culture, my curiosity about the experiences of African American women who participated in rock and roll, and my desire to make sure that they are part of the stories we tell about the music’s history led me to write Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll

Maureen's book list on African American women who shaped popular music

Maureen Mahon Why did Maureen love this book?

When Wald published her thoroughly researched and sensitively written biography of Tharpe, few people outside the world of gospel were familiar with the guitarist and singer or her significant contribution to twentieth-century music. Wald traces Tharpe’s years as an acoustic guitar-playing traveling teenage gospel evangelist, her role as one of the first stars of the fledgling genre of gospel in the 1930s and 1940s, her controversial decision to play gospel music in nightclubs, and her influence as a flashy virtuoso whose intricate licks on the electric guitar inspired musicians in country, rock and roll, and beyond. A well-told story of a fascinating woman, Shout, Sister, Shout! establishes Tharpe as a key figure in the evolution of twentieth-century popular music.   

By Gayle F. Wald,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Shout, Sister, Shout! as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

New York Times Book Review Editor's Pick: The untold story of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Sister Rosetta Tharpe, America’s first rock guitar diva 

Long before "women in rock" became a media catchphrase, African American guitar virtuoso Rosetta Tharpe proved in spectacular fashion that women could rock. Born in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, in 1915, Tharpe was gospel's first superstar and the preeminent crossover figure of its golden age (1945–1965).

Shout, Sister, Shout! is the first biography of this trailblazing performer who influenced scores of popular musicians—from Elvis Presley and Little Richard to Eric Clapton and Etta James. Tharpe…


Book cover of Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday

Maureen Mahon Author Of Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll

From my list on African American women who shaped popular music.

Why am I passionate about this?

Over many years of being an African American fan of rock music, I’ve learned that the combination of my gender, race, and musical taste can be disconcerting to people who expect Black women to adhere to a limited set of cultural interests. My frustration with these kinds of assumptions, my awareness that rock has deep roots in African American musical culture, my curiosity about the experiences of African American women who participated in rock and roll, and my desire to make sure that they are part of the stories we tell about the music’s history led me to write Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll

Maureen's book list on African American women who shaped popular music

Maureen Mahon Why did Maureen love this book?

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.

By Angela Y. Davis,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Blues Legacies and Black Feminism as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From one of this country's most important intellectuals comes a brilliant analysis of the blues tradition that examines the careers of three crucial black women blues singers through a feminist lens. Angela Davis provides the historical, social, and political contexts with which to reinterpret the performances and lyrics of Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday as powerful articulations of an alternative consciousness profoundly at odds with mainstream American culture.

The works of Rainey, Smith, and Holiday have been largely misunderstood by critics. Overlooked, Davis shows, has been the way their candor and bravado laid the groundwork for an…


Book cover of Jook Right On: Blues Stories and Blues Storytellers

Adam Gussow Author Of Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil and the Blues Tradition

From my list on the Blues set in Mississippi, Chicago, Florida.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been a working blues musician for almost half a century, a blues harmonica teacher for much of that time. Twenty-five years ago I first began offering university-level courses on the blues literary tradition. My experience as a Harlem busker back in the 1980s and a touring performer in the 1990s as part of the duo Satan & Adam critically shaped my approach, anchoring me in the wisdom, humor, and deep-groove aesthetics of partner, Mississippi native Sterling “Mr. Satan” Magee. The blues is or the blues are? It’s complicated! I try to honor that multiplicity and the people who put it there.

Adam's book list on the Blues set in Mississippi, Chicago, Florida

Adam Gussow Why did Adam love this book?

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.  

By Barry Pearson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Jook Right On as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“Pearson has collected a gold mine of compelling tales, organized them with convincing logic, and introduced them with the kind of penetrating insight and professional modesty that any blues scholar might do well to emulate. This is a terrific book—one I know I’ll use in my own teaching.” —Adam Gussow, author of Seems Like Murder Here: Southern Violence and the Blues TraditionJook Right On: Blues Stories and Blues Storytellers is what author and compiler Barry Lee Pearson calls a “blues quilt.” These blues stories, collected by Pearson for thirty years, are told in the blues musicians’ own words. The author…


Book cover of Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues

Adam Gussow Author Of Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil and the Blues Tradition

From my list on the Blues set in Mississippi, Chicago, Florida.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been a working blues musician for almost half a century, a blues harmonica teacher for much of that time. Twenty-five years ago I first began offering university-level courses on the blues literary tradition. My experience as a Harlem busker back in the 1980s and a touring performer in the 1990s as part of the duo Satan & Adam critically shaped my approach, anchoring me in the wisdom, humor, and deep-groove aesthetics of partner, Mississippi native Sterling “Mr. Satan” Magee. The blues is or the blues are? It’s complicated! I try to honor that multiplicity and the people who put it there.

Adam's book list on the Blues set in Mississippi, Chicago, Florida

Adam Gussow Why did Adam love this book?

Wald is a contrarian’s contrarian; this revisionist study--lucid, sensible, self-assured--demolishes not just the soul-selling-at-the-crossroads mythology embraced by fans of Robert Johnson, but a series of romantic misconceptions about blues music in general and Mississippi blues in particular.

He reminds us, for example, that classic blueswomen like Ma Raney and Bessie Smith were the first stars of the blues; that Johnson was, by contrast, virtually unknown on a national level during his own lifetime; and that Johnson, celebrated by his mythologizers as a devil-haunted innovator, was actually a savvy, record-copying consolidator of a broad range of contemporary blues styles.

He was also a “polka hound” and human jukebox, according to Wald, a jack-of-all-trades who played Gene Autry songs and other pop tunes for the pleasure of his audiences, black and white.

By Elijah Wald,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Escaping the Delta as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The life of blues legend Robert Johnson becomes the centerpiece for this innovative look at what many consider to be America's deepest and most influential music genre. Pivotal are the questions surrounding why Johnson was ignored by the core black audience of his time yet now celebrated as the greatest figure in blues history. Trying to separate myth from reality, biographer Elijah Wald studies the blues from the inside -- not only examining recordings but also the recollections of the musicians themselves, the African-American press, as well as examining original research. What emerges is a new appreciation for the blues…


Book cover of Feel Like Going Home

Alan Harper Author Of Waiting for Buddy Guy: Chicago Blues at the Crossroads

From my list on the blues, Chicago, and the Chicago blues.

Why am I passionate about this?

Call me contrarian, but when most of my school friends were into Bowie, Zeppelin, and Genesis, I was saving up for Muddy Waters’ Greatest Hits and discovering how a single note from Albert King’s guitar could send chills down your spine. The music inspired me to spend a summer in Chicago in 1979, aged 20, and I went back in 1982. It took me 30-odd years to get round to writing it, but this book is the result of those adventures, when a guileless British youth found himself welcomed into the noisy, friendly, creative, chaotic, nurturing, and overwhelmingly black world of the Chicago blues, a long time ago.

Alan's book list on the blues, Chicago, and the Chicago blues

Alan Harper Why did Alan love this book?

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.

By Peter Guralnick,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Feel Like Going Home as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Examines the cultural factors which have influenced the musical careers and styles of such individuals as Jerry Lee Lewis, Muddy Waters, and Johnny Shines.


Book cover of I Ain't Studdin' Ya: My American Blues Story
Book cover of Urban Blues
Book cover of Southern Gods

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