Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0810914328, Hardcover)

The companion volume to the four-part, prime-time PBS series, American Roots Music digs down deep, past today's pop and rock, to uncover the blues, gospel, folk, country & western, and other traditional genres at the heart of the nation's vernacular music. Telling the compelling tales of the pioneers, entrepreneurs, and artists who brought it to the world stage, it profiles the Singing Brakeman Jimmie Rodgers, Empress of the Blues Bessie Smith, pardoned convict Lead Belly, Dust Bowl poet laureate Woody Guthrie, honky-tonker Hank Williams, leftie protester Pete Seeger, and blues-guitar legend B. B. King, among hundreds of colorful personalities.

Including incisive essays, informative sidebars, and first-person narratives from key artists, this book presents both personal and historical perspectives. Portraits, performance shots, and ephemera such as sheet music and record sleeves illustrate the authoritative text.

American Roots Music is sponsored in part by the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Country Music Hall of Fame, Seattle's Experience Music Project, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Public Broadcasting Service, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Ginger Group Productions, among others.

200 illustrations, 100 in full color, 240 pages, 9 3/4 x 12"