Urban Blues (Phoenix Books)

This book is a firsthand account of leading blues musicians during their prime in the 1960s. Along with Amiri Baraka's "Blues People," Charlie Keil's "Urban Blues" was a groundbreaking attempt to take black popular music seriously. "Urban Blues" was one of the first music studies based on fieldwork in an American city, and it remains fresh today because it offers a window into the music and lives of BB King, Bobbie "Blue" Bland, Ray Charles, and other musicians who are no longer with us. In my favorite passage, Keil is waiting to interview BB King while Martin Luther King Jr. is giving his "I Have a Dream Speech" on the television set on the tour bus. A timeless classic.

I feel so grateful for this book.Keil is a gifted sociologist, ethnographer, and ethnomusicologist and his depiction of Blues music in this book displays humor, innocence and curiosity. Through the text, I felt the love and honest inquiry that Keil has for Africa and those of the diaspora_through his wanting to understand, document and analyze his findings in a heart filled, easy to understand format. I have recommended this book to all of my friends and family.

If you're looking for a straightforward history of the blues, read some other book first. Francis David, Elijah Wald, Peter Guralnick, Robert Palmer. This has a very idiosyncratic focus. More about culture and society than the music and musicians.

I found Urban Blues to be a thorough, in-depth, and insightful analysis of and commentary upon the Blues idiom: As a musical art form within a social context; as both influencing and being influenced by the social environment; and as a personal expression of each Blues artist. Dr. Keil has immersed himself in the subject by attending numerous musical events, and by talking to and interviewing both Blues artists and laypersons. In short, Dr. Keil has “been there - done that” in order to absorb, first-hand and with direct experience, the ambiance and fine points of the environments about which he writes. He is both an acute observer and an insightful and intelligent assessor of the Blues as a musical experience, and of the social ramifications of this art form. Dr. Keil puts forth many theories and conjectures from his research, but is primarily an observer. He does not impose his conclusions and hypotheses on the reader, but only presents them as possibilities. Having looked at the Blues idiom through Dr. Keil’s eyes and the social context within which the Blues has emerged, I feel that I am much the wiser for the experience.

Charles Keil’s Urban Blues was a first — the first ethnomusicological account of an American popular music. As such, it announced to the academy that our popular music culture — and, in particular, our black popular music culture — should be taken seriously and enjoyed unabashedly. As such, Urban Blues stands as an historical touchstone and remains as relevant, accessible, and inviting today as it was in 1966, when it was first published.

After recently rereading this book, I'm impressed with how well Keil's book holds up today. Not only does he provide a good historical outline of ways that urban blues traditions have developed, but he also provides good descriptions of blues scenes from the 1950s and 60s. The interviews are irreplaceable resources and terrific reading. I especially appreciated Keil's description of blues concerts within overseas' tours, as Keil satirically nails the exoticism, primitivism, and other less-than-flattering ideologies that continue to emerge among blues fans even today. Keil's wit complements his good scholarship. His outline of various blues styles is an excellent resource for those who wish to compare styles and gain a sense of artistic distinctiveness. Although some of the analysis, and Keil's tone of writing, doesn't fully hold up with what we've learned about blues in the last 40 years, this book remains a good entry point for those who want an overview of what's come to be called "Chicago Blues." One major issue since Keil first wrote the book is the need to recognize that the "Chicago Style" really started in Memphis and various and sundry points South. Readers who want the bigger story need to check out what was going on outside of the windy city in more detail than what is provided in urban blues. There also are a number of good books on the history of record companies and numerous biographies and autobiographies of blues players that further complement, develop, and occasionally critique Keil's study.

This is the second most important book that's been written on American popular music. Keil sees blues culture as medicine for the ills of Western Civilization. After introductory chapters on African-American music (in which he makes some remarks on Baraka's Blues People), and blues styles, Keil begins discussing the urban blues, blues played with electric instruments and played in clubs in cities. He has studies of B. B. King and Bobby Blue Bland, plus remarks on many other bluesman. How do they structure a performance? How do they interact with the audience? What are the values upheld in the blues world?