Blues Discovery

Reaching Across the Divide

By: Matthew Ismail

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

"We were basically chasing sounds, you know? We were going after what we dug. We weren't thinking of trends or movements, revivals . . . We couldn't get enough of the records, which were hard to come by in those days, and when we found out that you can hear it in the flesh, we couldn't get enough of that." Blues Discovery: Reaching Across the Divide (2nd Revised Edition) tells the stories of half a dozen Americans who defied the dictates of segregation in the 1940s to the 1960s and followed their passion for the blues across the color lines. Roger Brown, George Mitchell, Ray Flerlage, Bob Koester and Samuel B. Charters all set out on odysseys of musical discovery when they sought out bluesmen such as Robert Johnson, Will Shade, Furry Lewis, Gus Cannon, Buddy Moss, Big Joe Williams, and Sleepy John Estes whose recordings from the 1920s and 1930s had been such a deep source inspiration to them all. This is a story of humane values and musical genius in a rapidly changing society.