Blues: An Anthology [Paperback] Review

I have to admit that when I received this book it wasn't everything I expected, but I take the full blame. I made assumptions and put it on my wishlist without really reading the description fully. I felt I didn't need to know anything more than that it had illustrations by Miguel Covarrubias and that it was by Handy.

I expected more history and stories rather than actual songs with music, and I expected illustrations throughout.

After receiving it I know now that it is mainly an anthology of songs, and the illustrations are limited to the introduction.

This does nothing to diminish this book as a treasure in my eyes.

Though the Covarubbias illustrations are much fewer than I'd imagined, they still make me breathless to look at them. Truly gorgeous. The music provided by W C Handy is itself history to me. It's just a beautiful book to own.

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Product Description:
Originally published in 1926, a classic collection of great blues songs arranged for piano and voice--the most famous blues collection in history.Among the first black men to write and publish blues music, Handy did more than anyone else to make blues popular and accepted. Includes historical notes, tunes and arrangements, notes for each song, a bibliography, and a chart of guitar chords.Illustrated by reknowned Mexican illustrator Miguel Covarrubias.

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Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and "Inventor of Jazz" [Paperback] Review

This is one of the rare books for it can be enjoyed by just about anyone who picks it up.Its the amazing account of the life of Jelly Roll Morton, one of the best jazz pianists of all time.Though a braggart and troubled man, he created some of the very best pieces of jazz.The book goes into his life from his childhood and his time working at Storyville to the very troubled end in the early forties.You learn about his family, his troubled relationships with Anita and Mabel and how he went from being wildly successful to dying virtually forgotten.Voodoo, New Orleans, jazz and Creole culture, its all here.
Written with flair and never boring, Mr. Jelly Roll is a book that you will read more than once.Its a look at a legend and a glimpse into a world we can only know of through books and music.Get this if you want a good read and a look at Mr. Morton's life.A true classic.

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Product Description:
When it appeared in 1950, this biography of Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton became an instant classic of jazz literature. Now back in print and updated with a new afterword by Lawrence Gushee, Mister Jelly Roll will enchant a new generation of readers with the fascinating story of one of the world's most influential composers of jazz. Jelly Roll's voice spins out his life in something close to song, each sentence rich with the sound and atmosphere of the period in which Morton, and jazz, exploded on the American and international scene. This edition includes scores of Jelly Roll's own arrangements, a discography and an updated bibliography, a chronology of his compositions, a new genealogical tree of Jelly Roll's forebears, and Alan Lomax's preface from the hard-to-find 1993 edition of this classic work. Lawrence Gushee's afterword provides new factual information and reasserts the importance of this work of African American biography to the study of jazz and American culture.

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