"A REMARKABLE WORK… BROUGHT ATTENTION TO HUNDREDS OF BLUES SONGS AND SINGERS THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN LOST TO THE SILENCE OF MEMORY": FIRST EDITION OF PAUL OLIVER'S BLUES FELL THIS MORNING, 1960, WITH FOREWORD BY RICHARD WRIGHT

(WRIGHT, Richard) OLIVER, Paul. Blues Fell This Morning. The Meaning of the Blues. With a Foreword by Richard Wright. London: Cassell & Company, (1960). Octavo, original blue paper boards, original dust jacket. $300.

First edition of Oliver's elemental work on the history, culture and powerful musical legacy of the blues—"Oliver not only fills in the picture but sets the record straight" (New York Times)—featuring foreword by Richard Wright written the year before his death, with 16 full-page illustrations.

Paul Oliver "was one of the founders of blues scholarship" (Brett Bonner). With Blues Fell This Morning, "Oliver opened the eyes of readers in Britain and the United States to a musical form that had been overlooked and often belittled." On publication, it won quick praise: "Oliver not only fills in the picture but sets the record straight… As an Englishman remote from the milieu of the blues but passionately interested in them, he brings to his work the point of view of the outsider" (New York Times). Oliver later recalled that on completing the work, Richard Wright "showed it to a rather surprised Martin Luther King, [and] offered to write an introduction which I valued immensely" (Sounds of the South). In Wright's foreword, written in 1959, he notes: "I believe that this is the first time that so many blues, differing in mood, range, theme and approach, have been gathered together. We thus have here a chance to cast a bird's-eye view upon the meaning and implication of the blues." Blues Fell This Morning "remains a remarkable work that brought to light not only some of the grim truths of African American life in the United States, but also brought attention to hundreds of blues songs and singers that would have been lost to the silence of memory" (O'Connell, Blues, 90). With 16 full-page illustrations; extensive discography, index and bibliography at rear. "First published 1960" on copyright page. Later issued as The Meaning of the Blues in the U.S. in 1963. Ford, Blues A1572. New Grove II:819.

Book about-fine, price-clipped dust jacket with shallow chip and short closed tear to front panel, very good.