Blues Fell This Morning: Meaning in the Blues

Blues Fell this Morning has become a classic account of the blues, one of the most evocative strands of American popular culture. Richard Wright's foreword pays tribute to Paul Oliver's understanding of those starkly brutal haunting folk songs created by millions of nameless and illiterate American Negroes in their wanderings over the American southland and in their intrusion into the northern American industrial cities. Material from recordings and recollections of singers, going back to the 1920s, are woven into an interpretative account of meaning in the blues. First published in 1960, at the dawn of the political stirrings which would lead to civil rights legislation in America, Blues Fell this Morning now speaks to a new generation of readers about this unique African-American cultural tradition.