Jacket price clipped, jacket lightly rubbed and toned. 1961 Hard Cover. xx, 355 pp. Includes foreword by Richard Wright, author of Native Son and Black Boy. Oliver examines the functions of the blues as black American folk music recorded during the 78 rpm era, from the 1920s to the 1950s. The lyrics are quoted extensively throughout the book, revealing their significance as a means of communication within black society. The author shows how the themes of labour and unemployment, migration and the Depression years, love, sex, and marriage, crime, violence and imprisonment, disasters, sickness, war and death are expressed in black idioms and he discusses their meaning on many levels.