The Country Blues is a seminal book by Samuel Charters

Samuel Charters

Samuel Charters, born Samuel Barclay Charters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, August 1, 1929 , is an American music historian, writer, record producer, musician, and poet...

, published in 1959 and generally acknowledged as the first scholarly book-length study of country blues

Country blues

Country blues is a general term that refers to all the acoustic, mainly guitar-driven forms of the blues. It often incorporated elements of rural gospel, ragtime, hillbilly, and dixieland jazz...

 music. An album of the same name

The Country Blues

-Side two:...

 was issued on Folkways Records

Folkways Records

Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987, and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways.-History:...

 as an accompaniment to provide examples of the artists and styles discussed. It was reprinted by Da Capo Press

Da Capo Press

Da Capo Press, is an American publishing company with headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1964 as a publisher of music books, as a division of Plenum Publishers. it had additional offices in offices in New York City, Philadelphia and Emeryville, California...

in 1975 with minor edits, and a new introduction by the author.