Complete Your Chuck Cowdery Collection with My First Book, Blues Legends

Your Chuck Cowdery collection is not complete unless you have my first book, Blues Legends, written and published in 1995. It is long out-of-print but I have a few copies, still in the original shrinkwrap, which I'm offering at the original price of $19.95.

I'm selling them through Amazon, rather than on my website, because it's a little easier for me and I don't have that many. (The ordering is through Amazon, but the books come from me.) This link will take you to the book on Amazon, where it is offered by multiple sellers. To get it from me, just make sure the seller is 'Made and Bottled in Kentucky.'

If you would like it autographed, send me an email. If you want a special inscription, just tell me what you want it to say. Of course, you'll also have to order the book, and make sure you give me enough information to match the autograph request to the order. Naturally, I'll have to remove the shrinkwrap to sign it.

I don't have very many and when they're gone, they're gone (although I suppose Amazon will still have the used ones).

A little bit about Blues Legends.

I call it a coffee table book for small coffee tables, as it is only 7.25" x 7.25". It is a hardcover book with dust jacket, 96 pages. It consists of biographies of 20 blues artists (listed below), with lots of photographs, most of them by my friend and legendary blues photographer Raeburn Flerlage. Until his book was released in 2000, Blues Legends was the largest published collection of his blues photographs.

I was given the opportunity to do the book because of some work I did for the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce, Ohio. It was also through that project that I met Ray and was introduced to his work. We became good friends and I was excited by the chance to introduce his photographs to a wider audience. A few years later I also helped him with his book, Chicago Blues As Seen from the Inside.

Blues Legends also includes a CD with ten songs I chose, by Muddy Waters, B. B. King, John Lee Hooker and others. One peculiarity: the CD was supposed to contain "Wild Cow Blues" by Big Joe Williams. Instead it has "Every Day I Have the Blues," by Joe Williams, the jazz singer. It's a great song and performance, perfectly enjoyable, but it was a mistake.

Because I came to the blues through rock and roll, that's how I wrote the book, choosing the artists who most influenced people like Keith Richards and Eric Clapton. Happily, most of them performed in Chicago and were photographed by Ray.

As I was writing it, it was not unusual for me to write all day and then go see Buddy Guy or Otis Rush perform at a local club that evening. They were both very active in Chicago in those days.

I am grateful to the publisher, Gibbs Smith, for the opportunity and for teaching me enough about book publishing to be able to self-publish all of my bourbon books.

It was a crazy time for me. I was doing my regular freelance writing, and going to law school, and writing this book. As it happened, I was doing a three-week law school summer semester abroad on the Greek island of Rhodes when the book needed to be proofread. They FedExed the proofs to me and I reviewed them on the beach. I thought at the time, "This is how I want the rest of my life to go, proofreading my books on a Greek beach."

The Blues Legends are:

Blind Lemon Jefferson
Memphis Minnie
Big Joe Williams
Son House
Arthur Crudup
Roosevelt Sykes
Little Brother Montgomery
T-Bone Walker
Howlin' Wolf
Robert Johnson
Lightnin' Hopkins
Muddy Waters
Memphis Slim
John Lee Hooker
Jimmy Reed
B. B. King
Little Walter
Freddie King
Otis Rush
Buddy Guy