This Christmas, thrill your blues loving friends (or yourself) with a fascinating new book about blues and blues women.
The first classic blues record was recorded by a woman, Clara Smith, in the 1920's.
Yet, many books about the blues barely mention the blues women.
Rhetta Akamatsu of Marietta, Georgia, set out to rectify the situation in T'Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do: Women Blues Singers Old and New.
T'ain't Nobody's Business If I Do chronicles the lives of classic blues women such as Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Sippie Wallace, as well as contemporary blues singers such as Bonnie Raitt and Lucinda Williams, among others.
Gretchen Bourquin, author of No Sensible People, says:
"I had never considered that "women’s blues” was something different and distinct from “men’s blues.” Akamatsu illustrates that it definitely has it’s own place. Women’s blues is sassier, tougher and more rebellious than the men’s blues – not that Muddy Waters and B.B. King are anything to sneeze at. But when women got the blues they didn’t shrivel in the corner. They stood up and fought back with a strong voice and sometimes with both fists."
A.F. Stewart, author of Inside Realms, has this to say:
"It is quite obvious from the first sentence that the author knows her subject, and has an affection for the blues. Ms. Akamatsu has done her research, infusing the book with absorbing facts, while maintaining a lively, entertaining pace and feel to the book."
T'ain't Nobody's Business If I Do is currently available at Amazon.com. Order it online now for any fan of the blues, women's history, or musical history in general!
