"There are an awful lot of personal experiences with this book and especially its original, The History of the Blues. It's been three decades since the English edition came into my hands courtesy of one of my dissident acquaintances. My passion for the genre only increased as I studied the book, although it proved to be a very difficult nut because it put my poor language skills to the test.I confess: this book and the volume The People of the Blues, published in Hungarian at the time, provided and serve the basis of my knowledge of blues.
Born in 1927, author Paul Oliver is white - what’s more, English - as are most fanatical blues researchers. Over the years, my knowledge of several books on blues has strengthened my consciousness: it is the best book ever born on the history of the genre. Anyone looking for detailed biographical data, discographies broken down by artist in this work will be disappointed. It's not like that in it, it's about something else. The book traces the history of black blues through the eyes of the researcher from its formation to the early 1960s, when, as folk music, its substantive part was closed. I would just quote the author’s last paragraph: “This rewritten, updated The Story of the Blues doesn’t want to apologize: in its own socio-historical context, it tries to find its place in this remarkable African American music and song culture. Since its first publication in 1969, much has happened, blues has become an integral part of the international music dictionary. But that is quite simply another story. ” This is the key to this reading.
Many special words or phrases that are not very common in dictionaries made the work of the translator, Béla Szilárd Jávorszky difficult, to whom I (also) congratulate him on his work. He was helped a lot by Zoltán Vas, a full-time translator and not by the way blues musician, as well as one of the professional reviewers, Péter Podlovics, blues manager and record importer. And the publisher is also an old acquaintance of mine who started collecting blues vinyls with me when getting them wasn’t an easy thing to do. Thanks to István Dénes for making this book available for the first time in Hungarian! For my part, I would make it a must-read for all blues musicians or listeners. "Péter Nemes Nagy

Translated by: Béla Szilárd Jávorszky