Books like Honkers and shouters by Arnold Shaw

Alan Lomax chronicles the rise of the blues from the cotton‑rich Mississippi Delta, revealing the hardships of African‑American life, and its influence on legends like Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and modern guitarists.

While much has been written about the sociological significance of the blues, this is a unique inquiry into the blues and the mind, a study of the blues as thought. Here, the subconscious power of the blues is examined from a poetic and psychological perspective, illuminating the blues’ deepest creative sources and exploring its far-reaching influence and appeal. Like Surrealist poetry in particular, blues communicate through highly charged symbols of aggression and desire—eros, crime, magic, night, and drugs, among others. A close analysis of classic blues lyrics, along with a wealth of source material from Freud and James Frazer, to Breton and Marcuse, conveys the blues’ major poetic function of spiritual revolt against repression. First published in 1975, *Blues and the Poetic Spirit* is a blues literature classic. This long-awaited new edition assesses developments in the blues since that time and outlines the social and political forces that continue to shape its evolution.