The blues...a journey that takes you from sad to glad with stops along the way at despair, loss, heartache, and uncertainty, and then ultimately hope and joy.
The seeds of what would become the blues, and later rock 'n' roll, were first heard in Sunday morning church services in small towns like Panther Burn and Sunflower, Mississippi. The gospel choirs soaked up the burble of the organ and the boom of the piana, and those tunes were taken home to clapboard porches. Add a pluck on a National steel guitar here, a suck on a Chinaboy wood reed harmonica there, throw in a goat string attached to a wash bucket, and the Delta blues sound was born.
When the blues went electric, legends such as Son House, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, James Cotton, Little Walter, and Big Walter embraced the tube amps alongside Roosevelt Sykes and Otis Spann at the keyboards, taking blues to a higher and more powerful level.
The blues can claim some of the absolute great artists in music--Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, T-Bone Walker, the Kings B.B., Albert, and Freddie, Muddy Waters, Albert Collins, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Etta James, Koko Taylor, and even some of the rock crossover stars such as Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin. Rock legends include the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Animals, and even the Beatles all have the blues to thank for their rhythm, soul, and spirit.
A rare few artists qualify as 24-hour blues devotees, a select membership that includes Lonnie Brooks, who interprets blues with his precision guitar and honey vocals; Cub Koda, who's played, recorded, and written about the blues for more than 30 years; and Lonnie's son Wayne, with his inspired musical talents and love of the blues. These gentlemen are full-time players and lovers of the blues and have prepared a book to help all blues fans to better appreciate the subject. Blues For Dummies lays it all out, all the basics for us simple folk who can never know enough about this shining and awe-inspiring part of American culture.