The Blues-a title said to have originated as Blue Devils A", spirits of melancholy, and sadness-was born in the fields of the southern United States with its roots in spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. This form of music grew in the 1920s and 1930s into a commercial sound that would explode onto the white western world in the 1950s and 1960s as artists such as Elvis, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin gave it a lucrative mass market. This book and CD examines the artists and songs that preceded this explosion.