Blues All Day Long is the Jimmy Rogers Story written by Wayne Everett Goins with a Foreward by Kim Wilson. The book is split into 3 parts which take a timeline from 1924-1960, 1970-1989 and 1989-1997. The end of the book also has a selected discography of some of Jimmy Rogers work. Each chapter begins with a quote from Jimmy and the story starts when his teenage parents find out that they are pregnant. The book is just over 400 pages, but a lot of it at the end is reference materials.
The book is very thorough and very well written and I learned a lot about Jimmy Rogers – someone I knew nothing about before picking up this book.
I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.
About the Book
A member of Muddy Waters’ legendary late 1940s-1950s band, Jimmy Rogers pioneered a blues guitar style that made him one of the most revered sidemen of all time. Rogers also had a significant if star-crossed career as a singer and solo artist for Chess Records, releasing the classic singles “That’s All Right” and “Walking By Myself.”
In Blues All Day Long, Wayne Everett Goins mines seventy-five hours of interviews with Rogers’ family, collaborators, and peers to follow a life spent in the blues. Goins’ account takes Rogers from recording Chess classics and barnstorming across the South to a late-in-life renaissance that included new music, entry into the Blues Hall of Fame, and high profile tours with Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones. Informed and definitive, Blues All Day Long fills a gap in twentieth century music history with the story of one of the blues’ eminent figures and one of the genre’s seminal bands.
Wayne Everett Goins is a professor of music and director of jazz at Kansas State University. He is the author of Pat Metheny’s Secret Story and co-author ofCharlie Christian: Jazz Guitar’s King of Swing.