How African American Christian music influenced Western cultural history and forever changed the world of song. What do blues, jazz, soul, R&B, rock'n'roll, folk, country, rock, pop and hip hop have in common? Their origin, their fire! Holy Blues (Gospel Blues) is the source of all the roots music we love. The history of gospel music is 400 years old; its spirit even much older, and without it we simply would not be able to be enchanted by soulful music today. Reason enough to trace this good spirit, Holy Spirit. The award-winning Swiss musician and book author Richard Koechli embarks on an adventurous journey through American cultural history and shows with countless concrete examples how high the influence of faith on the music and its producers has been throughout the centuries, how decisive and mysterious the divine dimension shapes the music at every moment. Koechli does this in a double package: as a book author with a soul stirring history trip, and as a blues artist with very personal interpretations of timeless Holy Blues songs (free download).

At a crossroads in the Mississippi Delta, Robert Johnson is said to have sold his soul to the Devil so that he could become a guitar virtuoso and King of the Delta Blues. Blues Traveling: The Holy Sites of Delta Blues will tell you where that legendary deal was supposed to have been made and guide you to all the other hallowed grounds that nourished Mississippi's signature music. Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, Memphis Minnie, Jimmie Rodgers, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Howlin' Wolf, B. B. King, Little Milton, Elvis Presley, Bobby Rush, Junior Kimbrough, R. L. Burnside-the list of great artists with Mississippi connections goes on and on. A trip through Mississippi blues sites is a pilgrimage every music lover ought to make at least once in a lifetime, to see the juke joints and churches, to visit the birthplaces and graves of blues greats, to walk down the dusty roads and over the levee, to eat some barbecue and greens, to sit on the bank of the Mississippi River, and to hear some down-home blues music. Blues Traveling is the first and only guidebook to Mississippi's musical places and blues history. With photographs, maps, easy-to-follow directions, and an informative, entertaining text, this book will lead you in and out of Clarksdale, Greenwood, Helena (Arkansas), Rolling Fork, Jackson, Natchez, Bentonia, Rosedale, Itta Bena, and dozens of other locales that generations of blues musicians have lived in, traveled through, and sung about. Stories, legends, and lyrics are woven into the text so that each backroad and barroom comes alive. Touring Mississippi with Blues Traveling is like having a knowledgeable and entertaining guide at your side. Even people with no immediate plans to visit Mississippi will enjoy reading the book for its photos, descriptions, and lore that will broaden their understanding and enhance their appreciation of the blues. Steve Cheseborough is an independent scholar and blues musician. His work has been published in Living Blues, Blues Access, Mississippi, and the Southern Register .

Presents brief entries covering the history, significant artists, styles and influence of blues music.

Hardly any book tells more about the history of Chicago Blues. Hardly any biography reveals more anecdotes and secrets of the Blues. Tampa Red (ca. 1903 - 1981) should be mentioned in the same breath with legends like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters or B.B. King. For more than 20 years Tampa Red set the tone in Chicago; the first with a brass guitar, one of the first with an electric guitar, pioneering slide virtuoso, author of more than 300 song pearls, mentor of many later stars. But Hudson Whittaker, as his real name was, lost glory and health towards the end of his life, died lonely as a forgotten man. To this day, no comprehensive book has been published, no film, nothing. Unbelievable! Now, finally, this great gap in blues literature is filled. The award-winning Swiss book author and blues musician Richard Koechli traces Tampa Red's life sensitively and historically precisely and prepares a worthy end for him with the help of a literary trick. Embedded in a fictional conversation with the young nursing assistant Anna and her music-obsessed friend Eric, Koechli lets Hudson Whittaker tell his own story right before his death: About life in Chicago, about love, about his music and his songs, about famous and less famous colleagues, about grief, despair, about the fear of dying - and finally about the happiness of reconciliation with his own history. "Thrilling like a thriller, touching like a drama, clarifying like a history book," raves the online magazine bluesnews.ch. "With this book, Koechli makes public an important and hitherto hardly noticed chapter in music history; for Blues fans a bubbling source of knowledge with plenty of aha moments." Finally, an English translation of the original German edition published in 2017 is now available; optionally as hardcover, softcover, e-book and large print book.

Robert Johnson did not sell his soul to the devil. But how did he crack the Blues code...? While modern music historians have now almost completely stripped the Blues of its myths, award-winning Swiss singer-songwriter, slide guitarist and book author Richard Koechli gives him back the soul in a philosophical way. With a mystical story that deeply explores the question of what exactly might be behind the legendary "mojo" of the great Blues masters. Koechli embarks on a trip to the temples of the African-American musical soul, gets involved in strange thought adventures, meets all kinds of stars of Blues and Rock history – and in the end is haunted in a dream by the most famous of all Blues figures, by Robert Johnson (1911-1938). Johnson 'tells' him what really happened in Mississippi back then, how he got the Blues secret – and whether the devil really played a role ... A stirring story for all Blues lovers; full of light-footed poetry, spiritual depth and music-historical precision. You can feel in every line that the author is not a theorist, but a Blues artist down to the core.

China Bayles isn't happy when a Texas wind blows her husband's ex-wife, and the mother of China's stepson, into her herb shop. Sally is known to have a split personality and fall into constant trouble with the law, but she claims she has nowhere else to turn. Now its up to China to weed out whatever it is Sally's running from before the truth catches up to them all.