The Roots of the Blues began as a search to discover the origins of this music which has had such an influence on our culture and society. It became, though, much more than that. It is a musical exploration and a travelogue of Samuel Charter’s journey through West Africa. He says, ‘I’d come looking for a kind of song, and even is I hadn’t really found it, I’d found the people who sang it.’ Samuel Charters was born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania in 1929. He has been involved for many years in every aspect of black music, and is the author of about ten books on the sublect. He lives in the United States and also in Sweden. 

Author

Samuel Barclay Charters IV (1929, Pennsylvania - 2015, Sweden) was an American music historian, writer, record producer, musician, and poet. He was a widely published author on the subjects of blues and jazz. He also wrote fiction. In 1951, at the age of 21, he moved to New Orleans, Lousiana, where he absorbed the history and culture he had previously only read about; he lived there for most of the 1950s, moving back and forth between Berkeley and New Orleans. He served for two years in the United States Army (1951–53) and began to study jazz clarinet with George Lewis. He received a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1956. Charters's writings have been influential, bringing to light aspects of African-American music and culture that had previously been largely unknown to general public. He has published also poetry and novels. His writings include numerous books on subjects of blues, jazz, African music and Bahamian music. 

Samuel Charters, Wikipedia (en)