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Most blues histories, outstanding as they are, take us to the late 1890s, but rarely back further. As South Carolina's Cradle of Jazz Project wrote: "From the end of the dances at Congo Square (c. 1820) to the beginning of jazz, there is a black hole (in the history of American music)... when the old West African music slowly turned into the new music of America."

America's Gift: the Untold History of How Blues Evolved shines a light into this lost 'black hole', revealing the path of African-American slave music, from 1820 to the emergence of 20th century blues, while illuminating the blues' earlier evolution. Find out how musical rhythms of old Africa absorbed melodies from white America in the 17th and 18th centuries. See how different musical strands intertwined over those centuries, finally creating the music only named blues in 1912.

This wealth of historical information, usually found only in isolation, finally comes together in just one book, America's Gift, which pieces together America's different musical stories, like a jigsaw puzzle. Yet it avoids the minutia and academic dryness you may find in other blues histories, many of which start in the 20th century. Not avoided are the 19th century's distasteful minstrel and coon song periods, erased from so many blues histories, but so essential to blues' evolution.

Find out how, when and where the term 'the blues' evolved; how it reached America; and why only white singers originally recorded blues songs. Discover the unsung pioneers of the years leading up to the blues era, and the forgotten musical genres they worked in.

A book of firsts

America's Gift: the Untold History of How Blues Evolved is the first book to link the evolution of the blues to early U.S. sea shanties and the American Civil War

America's Gift discovers how blues with vocals was recorded in London by a black American/Jamaican band four years BEFORE 1920, the generally-accepted date for the first black blues vocal. This 390-page book also tracks down the earliest known African-Americans who performed the American folk music, later called the blues, and the lyrics they sang.

America's Gift discloses who published and recorded which blues songs first. You'll discover who recorded the first blues guitar, first blues guitar solos and first slide guitar; the first country blues, first electric guitar blues and first blues harmonica record.

Read about the great blues dispute of 1938, where two blues giants argued bitterly over the blues' history. America's Gift gives you the full blues story up to the 1950s. On the way, it selects 20 rocking blues tracks that pre-empted rock 'n' roll, dating from 1936 to 1949, years before the oft-cited Rocket 88 in 1952.

America's Gift is fully illustrated, nearly a foot tall and an inch thick, with 367 pages of easy-to-read type and a 21-page index. It's been described as a "lightening read", in case you're thinking it might be a bit stodgy.

"Here we have a writer with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject. This book runs to nearly 400 pages, yet the narrative never once stalls, because its creator has a solid background in music journalism and copywriting, in both Britain and Australia, his adopted country. He certainly knows how to turn a phrase. And there are indeed a lot of fascinating phrases being turned here. Every page is packed with one revelation after another, a plethora of facts and dates that will keep all blues lovers happy."
World Music Centr