R. Crumb's Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country

Wow! Every so often you run across something that knocks your socks off. R. Crumb's Heroes of Blues, Jazz, & Country left me barefooted.In the 1980s, Robert Crumb, whom Robert Hughes appropriately once called the "Breughel of the 20th century," created sets of trading cards featuring some of his favorite blues, jazz, and country musicians. (The plan was to include one card per LP sold by innovative record firm Yazoo.) This collection, edited by Terry Zwigoff, the same guy who directed the documentary "Crumb," pulls together the illustrations from all three sets. They're wonderful. The blues and country illustrations are drawn, and are vintage Crumb: crosshatched, brooding characters. The jazz illustrations are water-colored. They're identifiably Crumb, but have a definitely different feel to them.Crumb is a fascinating genius. Although his art and comics tend to be avant-garde (a term he might well disdain) and iconoclastic, Crumb also has a real affinity for late 19th and early 20th century American culture. Part of this love for an earlier time, no doubt, stems from his intense dislike of the fast-paced, loud, and garish American culture he eventually fled in the 1990s (Crumb now lives in France). But part of it is that he thinks the music produced in the early 20th century represents folk art at its finest and purest, before music became an industry. Crumb began collecting old 78s when he was still a teenager, and his love for the older music has never waned.And so to the piece de resistance of this book: the accompanying 21 cut CD. Crumb personally chose the pieces, and they're absolutely fantastic. Except for a couple of the blues and jazz musicians, all of the artists are virtually unknown except to the afficionado. But man oh man, are they wonderful. Skip James' rendering of "Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues" is a heart-breaker. Dock Boggs' "Sugar Baby" and Burnett & Rutherford's "All Night Long Blues" are haunting in their strange but beautiful ways. And no matter how bad things get, Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra's "Kater Street Rag" will pick you up. My son and I have listened to the CD over and over and over, and we never get tired of it. He prefers the blues and jazz, I'm in love with the hillbilly blue grass cuts. But the whole CD--well, it just knocks your socks off.Wow._____* From R. Crumb's essay "To Be Interested in Old Music is To Be a Social Outcast!", The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book, p. 191. "You play old records for most people, and, if they listen at all, after the record's over they turn to you and say, 'So what is it you like ab out that old music?' You just want to throw up your hands."

Amazing illustrations everything I was expecting and more!

First designed and issued as a set of trading cards, ‘Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country’ is an offbeat blend of artistry, nostalgia and anecdotal biographies. Crumb’s trademark caricature style is barely discernible in this respectfully rendered homage to the pioneers of these three uniquely American musical art forms.*NOTE: Of the three genres (blues, jazz & country), blues musicians definitely had the best nicknames. Country music had the likes of “Dad” Crockett, “Red” Patterson, “Dock” Boggs, and “Fiddlin” Bob Larkin. Jazz pioneers included “Punch” Miller, “Muggsy” Spanier, “Fats” Waller, “Pops” Foster, “Wingy” Mannone, and “Jelly Roll” Morton. But dude... if you wanted to be cool, you had be a blues man: “Peg Leg” Howell, “Jaybird” Coleman, “Blind” Lemon Jefferson, “Bo-Weavil” Jackson, “Sleepy” John Estes, “Papa” Charlie Jackson, and (my personal favorite) “Barbecue” Bob Hicks.

As one who loves roots music, including blues and jazz, this book has great characatures of famous artists of the past, in a style that captures a certain grittiness and charm of the era. There are very brief descriptions of each artist as well, but just enough to tell you about the artist as you read through. If you like R Crumb's art style, and love music, this a fun book to have.His drawings are full color and large, and, the book has all of the artists from the R. Crumb collectable card series for Jazz, Country, and Blues. The CD, btw, is superb, with a wonderful sampler of great artists, and is alone worth the price. Highlights of those included are the Memphis jug band, Gus cannon, skip James, jaybird Coleman charley Patton, Willie McTell, Shelor family, Crockets Kentucky mountaineers, Burnett and Rutherford, Weems string band, king Oliver, jelly roll Morton, jimmy no one, and many others 21 tracks in all).These are early artists from blues, old time /country and early jazz.This simply is fun, and , likely to expose you to some if not many artists, even if you know some of the genres well.

I am a huge fan of early blues and jazz music and wanted to add this book/CD to my collection after reading about the trading cards Crumb created of the pioneers that make up this collection. This is NOT a thorough, scholarly history book about blues, jazz and country music; if one is looking for books of that nature there are plenty out there. The biographical sketches that accompany the illustrations of these musicians are just enough to peak one's interest for further study if one chooses. As far as the blues musicians are concerned, I'm curious as to why Crumb didn't create an illustration of Huddie William Ledbetter (AKA Lead Belly), one of my personal "heroes" and a giant among early blues musicians.

It is worth it for the CD alone, but you get this glorious book as well, packed with wonderful color illustrations that Robert Crumb first put forward as trading cards of classic Blues, Jazz and Country musicians with the hope of stimulating interest in these musical legends. The cards were eventually packaged in sets, and sold through Shanachie Records. The number of cards increased over the years, to the point that a compilation like this had to come along at one point. The book has been lovingly packaged with an introduction by Terry Zwigoff, that is destined to become a collector's item, like so much of Crumb's work. The CD was selected and compiled by R. Crumb himself, drawn from his extensive collection of music. Unfortunately it is loosely attached to the inside of the backcover, with the contents listed on the end page. A more permanent slipcase would have been nice, but then one can hardly complain to finally have Crumb's glorious tribute contained in a handsome little volume.

I say "honest" because it is as it seems. For a pocket-sized book to be an anthology of the pioneers of THREE genres of American music it needs to spread its butter pretty thin or else to be quite selective. In fact it does both and still manage to get away with it. The pen-pictures of the artists and brief and useful and the illustrations are a joy.To put the cherry on top, there's a very worthwhile CD sampler included.

Robert Crumb, an American artist best known for his uncompromising comics of the 1960s & '70s is also an avid collector of pre-Second World War music.This wonderful book combines his two passions with over 100 brilliant illustrations of early blues, jazz & country artists along with brief biographies.An accompanying 21-track CD of some of the featured artists makes this bargain book/CD an absolute must for Crumb admirers and lovers of blues, jazz or country music.

Big Crumb fan here and this is a lovely book and CD - earthy music and worth the buy IMO

Old style hard case bookDisturbing artworkCrumb is insane

Superb quality book, beautifully illustrated with very interesting CD.