Black American blues music has become the greatest single influence on contemporary popular music. In this series of eight programmes, which won a Sony Award in 1988, Paul Oliver looks at its origins and at the kinds of music which preceded it.
1: Blues in Retrospect
To set the scene, a look at the Mississippi tradition and at other aspects of the blues form, with records by Bessie Smith , Leadbelly, Muddy Waters,
Elmore James and Charley Patton.