From Reverend Keith A. Gordon,
Your Guide to Blues.
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The long and storied history of the blues can be confusing for those listeners who are just beginning to enjoy the genre's enormous wealth of talent and music. The following five books are informative, easy reads that will educate both the blues "newbie" as well as the experienced blues fan.

"Blues For Dummies" by Lonnie Brooks, Cub Koda & Wayne Baker Brooks

The first volume on your blues bookshelf should be Blues For Dummies. Written by musicians for the rest of us, the author's credentials are strong: Lonnie Brooks is a legendary blues guitarist and recording artist, his son Wayne is a musician and songwriter that literally grew up in the blues, and Cub Koda has long had one foot in rock and the other in the blues. A noted record collector, Koda was also a contributing editor for the All Music Guide to the Blues, and a regular columnist for Discoveries magazine.

Blues For Dummies provides the reader with a solid background in the blues, including a brief overview of the genre's history, artist profiles, recommended albums, instruments used to play the blues, and even how to make a blues record. The trio of writers delivers an easy-to-read book that provides the newcomer to the blues with an effective guide to start enjoying the music. Oh yeah, to get you started, the book also includes a CD compiled by the authors that includes a bunch of great tunes from folks like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter and others.

"The Best of the Blues" by Robert Santelli

Sadly, this book is currently out-of-print, but copies of The Best of the Blues can be found online at a decent price. Robert Santelli is a veteran freelance writer and the author of several music-related books, and is the Director of Education at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The Best of the Blues lists the "101 essential albums" of the blues genre, with each entry including a lengthy album review, information on the musicians that played on the album, a picture of the front cover, and each album's tracklist. Enormously entertaining and informative, The Best of the Blues provides any fan of the music with a shopping list of CDs to help create your personal library of the blues. Also worth mentioning: Santelli's The Big Book of the Blues, which offers biographical information on virtually every blues musician of note.

"Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues" by Peter Guralnick, Robert Santelli, Holly George-Warren and Christopher John Farley

A companion book to the acclaimed series produced by Scorsese for PBS, this lush collection of articles, reviews, interviews and observations on the blues is illustrated by dozens of rare and obscure color and B&W photos. Like the Scorsese docu-drama, the book is divided into seven sections (one for each of the films that made up the TV series), and features the writing of some of the best music journalists and biographers in the world. Weighing in at an impressive two pounds and 288 pages, the book is beautifully-crafted, and attractively priced in both hardback and paperback editions. Out-of-print, but the book is easy and inexpensive to find from online retailers.

"Deep Blues" by Robert Palmer

More than a mere scholarly study of the Delta blues, music journalist Robert Palmer (not to be confused with the British musician) traveled to the Mississippi Delta to get a feel for, and stories from, the people that lived and created the blues. Deep Blues is a fascinating read for new and old blues fans alike, Palmer telling the story of the blues through the lives of artists like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, John Lee Hooker and others. The book spawned a documentary film, but the primary importance of Deep Blues is Palmer's ability to put the blues in context of modern society, creating an aura of interest and excitement in the music for the newcomer.

"All Music Guide to the Blues"

Part of the All Music Guide book series, this volume on the blues is indispensible for any music lover that is serious about the blues. This hefty, heavy 700+ page tome features biographical profiles of over 1,000 blues artists along with brief reviews of almost 9,000 blues albums. Throw in historical essays on blues history and the evolution of styles, "top" lists offering the best artists and albums of various blues styles, and writing by some of the biggest names in music journalism, and you have the essential reference book for the entirety of the blues genre.