Samuel Charters

In A Language of Song, Samuel Charters—one of the pioneering collectors of African American music—writes of a trip to West Africa where he found "a gathering of cultures and a continuing history that lay behind the flood of musical expression [he] encountered everywhere . . . from Brazil to Cuba, to Trinidad, to New Orleans, to the Bahamas, to dance halls of west Louisiana and the great churches of Harlem." In this book, Charters...

Documents the famous Chicago blues label, Alligator Records, founded by Iglauer and featuring artists such as Koko Taylor and Sonny Boy Williamson.