Overview
Compiled from transcriptions of interviews with blues artists made by Paul Oliver in 1960, Conversation with the Blues tells—in the artists' own words—of the significance of their music and the turbulent times and lives it reflects. Included are guitarists, pianists and other instrumentalists from the rural South and the urban North, from famous blues singers who recorded extensively to singers known only to their local communities. Copiously illustrated with Paul Oliver's photographs the book provides a rare glimpse—from cotton fields to the big-city—of African American music at a time when the South was still segregated. In a larger format to better display the pictures and with a new introduction by the author, this edition also contains a CD that captures the stark, ironic, but moving music and narratives of the singers themselves.