Blue Rhythms: Six Lives in Rhythm and Blues

by Chip Deffaa

”Somebody has to pay the dues,” says LaVern Baker. Here are the remarkable stories of six dazzlingly talented performers who blazed the R & B trail—the story of the performers’ music and also of their struggle against racism and financial exploitation: Ruth Brown and LaVern Baker, two of the most popular female black singers of the 1950s; Little Jimmy Scott, whom Madonna calls the only singer who ever really made her cry; Charles Brown, master of the “club blues” style; Floyd Dixon, a more rambunctious fellow-traveler; and the earthy, urbane Jimmy Witherspoon, who recorded some of the biggest R & B hits ever.

Genres: Music

344 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1996