Heroes of the Blues

In the '80s, underground cartoonist Robert Crumb published his Heroes of the Blues, Early Jazz Greats and Pioneers of Country Music trading card sets, featuring his highly stylized drawing of the artists on the front and biographical and discographical information on the back. In 2006, they were collected in book form, along with a 21-track CD compiled by Crumb.

Muddy Waters

On Monday, cartoonist William Stout released a new book, Legends of the Blues, which includes 100 additional portraits of blues artists done in the Crumb style, along with a CD of his own. He does not repeat any of the 36 blues people in Crumb's original set. I haven't seen the Stout book yet, but if you go to this article on the Mother Jones website, you can sample Robert Johnson, Huddie Ledbetter, Muddy Waters, and ten other Stout portraits.

I'm sure blues fans will enjoy them.

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