As readers of this blog may recall, I’ve been a fan of blues music since my teens in Cleveland, when I began listening to the local legend Mr Stress, whose eponymous band played at area venues for many years. I contributed an essay about him to the Cleveland Anthology from Belt Publishing in 2011, “Remembering Mr Stress, Live at the Euclid Tavern.”  I was excited recently to hear about the new book, Deep Inside the Blues: Photographs and Interviews by Margo Cooper, a historian and photographer who’s contributed to the NY Times Lens blog, and to receive a copy of her new book from the University Press of Mississippi.  

In a lengthy Foreword, William Ferris, former chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, writes “These interviews deftly unlock and reveal the soul of a people and their music. These voices have hypnotic powers as they speak. Cooper focused on their rich language in her interviews and tried to capture “not only the exact content of what the musicians had to say, but the way they said it, their emotions, the rhythm of their speech, which was its own music. I began to see the possibilities of a deeper kind of blues story.”

I’ve only just begun to dig into this exceptional book, and know I’ll get a lot of enjoyment it in the weeks and months to come. Below is a gallery of some more shots of the book, the back cover, and interior shots of Earnest Roy, Jr. and Anthony Sherrod; Billy Boy Arnold; Bo Diddley, Arnold’s mentor; and Pinetop Perkins, who played with Muddy Waters; and the author/photographer, Margo Cooper.