Anyone familiar with R. Crumb's illustrations recognizes his deep passion for music. For collectors of his work, the prized possessions include the Heroes of the Blues, Early Jazz Greats, and Pioneers of Country Music trading card sets from the early to mid-1980s. Now, for the first time, these sets are compiled in a book, accompanied by an exclusive 21-track CD curated by Crumb himself. The CD features original recordings by Charley Patton, "Dock" Boggs, "Jelly Roll" Morton, and others. Each musician comes with a biography and a full-color original illustration by the renowned cartoonist.

R. Crumb's Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country is a characteristically unique tribute by an underground icon to the musical innovators who inspired him. This collection is a must-have for Crumb enthusiasts, comics fans, and music lovers alike.

R. Crumb's Heroes of Blues, Jazz, and Country

Name: R. Crumb's Heroes of Blues, Jazz, and Country
Brand: Abrams Books
SKU: RCD024

SKU: RCD024

$21.95

Quantity

Robert Crumb
American illustrator Robert (R) Crumb, creator of Fritz the Cat and the ubiquitous Keep on Truckin' logo, is remarkable in at least two ways. He is the most famous and collectable artist of the Sixties and Seventies comic underground (proved by the fact that in the 1990s he obtained his current home in the Languedoc in exchange for six of his notebooks). He is also a rapacious collector of pre-Second World War music, nearly all of it on 78rpm platters.

This gorgeous book fuses his obsessions. In the early Eighties, he produced three sets of colourful trading cards (Heroes of the Blues, Early Jazz Greats and Pioneers of Country Music), making icons of his idols. Now, blown up to four times their original size and reproduced in sumptuous glossiness, all three pantheons are united between hard covers. It is a beautiful thing.

Logically, 114 cartoons, mostly based on rare photographs, by one man ought to be repetitive, even dull. Yet in the hands of a maven like Crumb, whose evident passion for his subjects glows from each pen-stroke, the parade is compelling. The cherry on the cake is a Crumb-compiled CD of 21 of the featured artists (including the Parham- Pickett Apollo Syncopators) which nestles unprepossessingly inside the back cover, a secret haven for some often secret sounds. At less than 11 quid, it's a stone bargain; regardless of price, it's one of the music - and art - books of the year. — Danny Kelly, The Guardian