Legends of the Blues - Hardcover

Stout, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1419706861 ISBN 13: 9781419706868

Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, 2013

Synopsis

Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey, Billie Holiday, Howlin’ Wolf, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters―say their names out loud and you can just hear the blues. Now, acclaimed artist William Stout visualizes these artists and their music with 100 stunning portraits. This graphically powerful collection includes profiles of classic musicians drawn by a master illustrator. Stout beautifully captures the signature style of each blues legend and then adds authoritative biographical text with personal and humorous writing that brings it on home. Includes recommended playlists and an exclusive bonus music CD.

Praise for Legends of the Blues:

“So good, you’d think illustrator William Stout made a deal with the devil.” ―Mother Jones.com

“I could go on and on about how much I love Stout's detailed pen-and-ink work and pleasing watercolors” – Boing Boing
 

About this title

About the Author:

William Stout is an award-winning artist and writer who has worked for over 45 years in various media, including comics (Tarzan and Little Annie Fanny, with Harvey Kurtzman); film (with Monty Python, Jim Henson, Steven Spielberg, Guillermo del Toro, and Disney); the record industry; magazine illustration; and public murals at museums across the country, including the San Diego Natural History Museum and the Houston Museum of Natural Science. He lives in Pasadena, California.

From Booklist:

For decades, fans have unsuccessfully importuned R. Crumb to expand his card-set, Heroes of the Blues. In his stead, mainstream comics artist and blues fan Stout has leaped into the breach. A book proved more feasible than cards, though, and here are the first results of Stout’s labors. The drawings, stylistically modeled on Crumb’s, are unimpeachable, the faces based on photographs while the backdrops refer, when possible, to the subjects legends. So, for instance, Friday 13 looms behind guitarist-singer Albert King, conjuring his hit, Born under a Bad Sign. A biographical sketch faces each portrait and includes Stout’s choices of Recommended Tracks and Interesting Covers, and more often than not a bit of Trivia is appended. Stout reprises only two of Crumb’s subjects (Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson) and features the electric bluesmen Crumb deliberately excluded, such as Howlin Wolf and T-Bone Walker, and musical-genre-straddlers like Chuck Berry and Dinah Washington. Nice stuff. --Ray Olson

About this edition

• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1419706861
• ISBN 13: 9781419706868
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224