Legends of the Blues
For decades, fans have unsuccessfully importuned R. Crumb to expand his card-set, Heroes of the Blues. In his stead, mainstream comics artist and blues fan Stout has leaped into the breach. A book proved more feasible than cards, though, and here are the first results of Stout’s labors. The drawings, stylistically modeled on Crumb’s, are unimpeachable, the faces based on photographs while the backdrops refer, when possible, to the subjects legends. So, for instance, Friday 13 looms behind guitarist-singer Albert King, conjuring his hit, Born under a Bad Sign. A biographical sketch faces each portrait and includes Stout’s choices of Recommended Tracks and Interesting Covers, and more often than not a bit of Trivia is appended. Stout reprises only two of Crumb’s subjects (Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson) and features the electric bluesmen Crumb deliberately excluded, such as Howlin Wolf and T-Bone Walker, and musical-genre-straddlers like Chuck Berry and Dinah Washington. Nice stuff. --Ray Olson