Books in the Best Music Books series

In 100 Books Every Folk Music Fan Should Own, performer and historian Dick Weissman offers a reliable route through the growing sea of book-length studies, establishing for future scholars a foundation for their research. Beginning with early twentieth-century collections of folk songs, the author brings readers to the present by exploring modern studies of important events, critical collections of primary sources, the most significant musical instruction guides, and in-depth portraits of traditional and contemporary American folk musicians. For each title selected, Weissman provides his own brief summary of its contents and assessment of its significance for the reader-whether fan or scholar.

In 100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own, blues scholars Edward Komara and Greg Johnson select those histories, biographies, surveys, transcriptions and studies from the many hundreds of works that have been published about this vital American musical genre, providing short descriptions of the contents and evaluations of the achievements of the titles selected for their "Blues 100." Entries include bibliographic data, pricing, and physical descriptions. This first-of-its-kind work also includes suggested blues recordings to accompany each recommended work, as well as a concluding section on key reference titles-or as Komara and Johnson phrase it: "The Books behind the Blues 100."