Chicago blues musicians parlayed a genius for innovation and emotional honesty into a music revered around the world. As the blues evolves, it continues to provide a soundtrack to, and a dynamic commentary on, the African American experience: the legacy of slavery; historic promises and betrayals; opportunity and disenfranchisement; the ongoing struggle for freedom. Through it all, the blues remains steeped in survivorship and triumph, a music that dares to stare down life in all its injustice and iniquity and still laugh—and dance—in its face.

David Whiteis delves into how the current and upcoming Chicago blues generations carry on this legacy. Drawing on in-person interviews, Whiteis places the artists within the ongoing social and cultural reality their work reflects and helps create. Beginning with James Cotton, Eddie Shaw, and other bequeathers, he moves through an all-star council of elders like Otis Rush and Buddy Guy and on to inheritors and today's heirs apparent like Ronnie Baker Brooks, Shemekia Copeland, and Nellie "Tiger" Travis.

Insightful and wide-ranging, Blues Legacy reveals a constantly adapting art form that, whatever the challenges, maintains its links to a rich musical past.

| Cover Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction PART I: Bequeathers James Cotton Eddie Shaw Jimmy Johnson Eddy Clearwater Jimmy Burns PART II: Council of Elders Billy Boy Arnold Buddy Guy Syl Johnson Mary Lane Sam Lay Holle Thee Maxwell Otis Rush Byther Smith PART III: Inheritors Lil' Ed Big Bill Morganfield Kenny Smith The Taylor Family John Primer Shemekia Copeland Sugar Blue Nellie "Tiger" Travis Floyd Taylor Deitra Farr Ronnie Baker Brooks PART IV: Heirs Apparent Wayne Baker Brooks Omar Coleman Tomiko Dixon Honeydew Vance Kelly Melody Angel Mud Morganfield Jo Jo Murray The Kinsey Report Mzz Reese Original Chicago Blues All Stars Chick Rodgers Jamiah Rogers Tre' Willie White Postscript Notes Works Cited Index Series page Back cover |"[Whiteis's] spot-on assessments of the social and economic forces . . . are as essential as his encyclopedic knowledge of the artists' backgrounds and discographies."—DownBeat
"Whiteis's book offers a lively tour of the music that grew out of the streets and churches and clubs of Chicago and that continues to evolve and shape roots music around the world." —No Depression
"Whiteis' knowledge of and love for his subject is strong and unquestionable and the reader is sure to feel and share the author's hope that the legacy continues." —Living Blues
|David Whiteis is a journalist, writer, and educator living in Chicago. He is a past winner of the Blues Foundation's Keeping the Blues Alive Award for Achievement in Journalism. He is the author of Southern Soul-Blues and Chicago Blues: Portraits and Stories. Peter M. Hurley is a photographer, muralist, graphic designer, and songwriter, and an active contributing photographer to Living Blues magazine.