This collection assembles the best interviews from Steve Cushing's
long-running radio program Blues Before Sunrise, the nationally
syndicated, award-winning program focusing on vintage blues and R&B. As
both an observer and performer, Cushing has been involved with the blues
scene in Chicago for decades. His candid, colorful interviews with
prominent blues players, producers, and deejays reveal the
behind-the-scenes world of the formative years of recorded blues. Many
of these oral histories detail the careers of lesser-known but greatly
influential blues performers and promoters.
The book focuses in particular on pre-World War II blues singers,
performers active in 1950s Chicago, and nonperformers who contributed to
the early blues world. Interviewees include Alberta Hunter, one of the
earliest African American singers to transition from Chicago's
Bronzeville nightlife to the international spotlight, and Ralph Bass,
one of the greatest R&B producers of his era. Blues expert, writer,
record producer, and cofounder of Living Blues Magazine Jim O'Neal
provides the book's foreword.