CONTENTS

Bar 1 Introduction

Bar 2 Starting the Conversation

Bar 3 Blues Conditions

Bar 4 Blues Feelings and “Real Bluesmen”

Bar 5 Blues Expressiveness and the Blues Ethos

Bar 6 W. C. Handy and the “Birth” of the Blues

Bar 7 Langston Hughes and the Scandal of Early Blues Poetry

Bar 8 Zora Neale Hurston in the Florida Jooks

Bar 9 Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and the Southern Blues Violences

Bar 10 The Blues Revival and the Black Arts Movement

Bar 11 Giving It All Away: Blues Harmonica Education in the Digital Age

Bar 12 Turnaround

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Selected Discography

Index