Charles Shaar Murray

The actual album reviews it contains will have dated, of course, but I think I learned more about the blues from this book than from any other single source.

Murray doesn't just give you a guide to blues albums available on CD, he traces the history of the blues and all its variations in style, discussing the styles and artists and then giving you some choices of listening.

I'm sure that Murray's style isn't everyone's favourite, but I find him hugely readable ('Crosstown Traffic' is, for me, show more indispensable) and he enjoys himself thoroughly here. I think that one of the defining qualities of a music writer is that they make you want to hear the music, and Charles Shaar Murray does that superbly in this book. I reckon that I've bought at least a dozen albums on the strength of recommendations in this book, and several of those were by artists I hadn't previously heard of at all.

Even if you're already a blues aficionado, I think you would enjoy this book - if you can find a copy! If you have a passing interest in the blues and want to dig a little deeper, you really should make an effort to track down a copy. (But I won't be selling mine!) show less

An intelligent and insightful cultural history of 1960s music via Jimi Hendrix by a music journalist. It's an unusual book, consisting of a series of essay chapters that explore wider contexts in relation to Hendrix (race, blues, soul, jazz, etc), a meticulous discography, thorough bibliography and even a chapter plausibly imagining an interview with Hendrix had he survived the century. Highly recommended.

A very good and detailed biography, although the Foreword is disordered, there are asides that need better motivation/justification and in places the writing style is self-indulgent and off-putting. The result is a rich account that, for me, had a synthetic after-taste.

Excellent analysis and atmospheric description of the artistic and social importance of the best guitarplayer of all times.