- Series: Music in American Life
- Paperback: 280 pages
- Publisher: University of Illinois Press; 1st Edition edition (December 9, 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0252076761
- ISBN-13: 978-0252076763
Mamie Smith's
1920 recording of "Crazy Blues" is commonly thought to signify the
beginning of commercial attention to blues music and culture, but by
that year more than 450 other blues titles had already appeared in sheet
music and on recordings. In this examination of early popular blues,
Peter C. Muir traces the genre's early history and the highly creative
interplay between folk and popular forms, focusing especially on the
roles W. C. Handy played in both blues music and the music business.
Long Lost Blues
exposes for the first time the full scope and importance of early
popular blues to mainstream American culture in the early twentieth
century. Closely analyzing sheet music and other print sources that have
previously gone unexamined, Muir revises our understanding of the
evolution and sociology of blues at its inception.
An
internationally recognized pianist, composer, scholar, and conductor,
Peter C. Muir is the cofounder and codirector of the Institute for Music
and Health in Verbank, New York.
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