The Bottom Line
If you're new to the blues and looking for an album guide, Robert Santelli's The Best of the Blues will give you all the information you need to start your collection.
- Book provides a shopping list of CDs to expand your blues collection.
- Invaluable guide book is sadly out-of-print.
Description
- Features comprehensive reviews of 101 blues albums.
- Author Robert Santelli is a passionate writer on the blues.
- Entries include song listings and personnel.
Guide Review - Book Review: "The Best Of The Blues"
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 current Director of Education at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. A knowledgeable and passionate advocate for the blues, Santelli is also an engaging writer with an easy style.
The Best of the Blues lists the "101 essential albums" of the 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. Santelli has done a lot of research and often includes historical information on an album's creation, quotes from the musicians, and an overall impressive attention to an album's details.
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. It's hard to argue with Santelli's choices for his top 101, and his list includes such blues greats as Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf as well as more obscure, but ultimately worthy artists as CeDell Davis, Memphis Minnie and J.B. Lenoir.
Also worth mentioning: Santelli's The Big Book of the Blues, which offers biographical information on virtually every blues musician of note. Also out-of-print, copies can be found online if one digs deep enough.
