CHRIS THOMAS KING SIGNS MAJOR BOOK DEAL

The Blues is published by Chicago Review Press

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: I’m happy to announce I’ve signed a book publishing deal with Chicago Review Press, one of the largest book publishers in the world. My book, The Blues: The Authentic Narrative of My Music and Culture Therewith, is an untold authentic counter-narrative history of the blues, and the first written by an African American.

There aren’t any truly comparable books. Indeed, I didn’t realize I was writing the first blues history from an African American perspective until I couldn’t find books on blues history by black writers, only oral as told to stories. Albert Murray and Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka) come to mind, but their books were similar to collections of essays, not traditional histories with footnotes and citations like my manuscript.

My first book for Chicago Review Press “The Blues” will be released as a 400-page hardcover, including notes, citations and index, around the first quarter of 2021. During 10-years of research, including a sojourn to West Africa, I uncovered many obfuscations. All prior histories of the blues have alleged it began on plantations in the Mississippi Delta. My book is the first to argue the blues began as a cosmopolitan art form, not a rural one. The Blues will restore an important untold part of American history.