“BLUES GUITAR: THE MEN WHO MADE THE MUSIC” Edited by Jas Obrecht, <i> GPI Books ($19.95)</i> ***

Blues music is much more than notes and technique. It’s also people and lives. That’s the approach of this collection of essays, articles and interviews from Guitar Player magazine, the premiere fretophile journal. Asking “why” more than “how,” these pieces get straight to the blues through the eyes of the men--no women here--who lived it, from “country roots” (starting with Robert Johnson) to the “prime movers” (including Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and B. B. King). No hotshot blues-rockers, no scholarly analyses of famous solos, just the essence of the blues and the world from which it sprang and flourished.

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