He never sang louder than a man leaning against a doorway, and never played a riff he couldn't repeat in his sleep. Yet Jimmy Reed—Mississippi sharecropper's son, Chicago steelworker, self-taught bluesman—wrote more songs other people wanted to sing than almost anyone of his generation. "e;Baby What You Want Me to Do."e; "e;Big Boss Man."e; "e;Bright Lights, Big City."e; The Rolling Stones learned from him. Elvis covered him.Behind the laid-back sound was a man wrestling with epilepsy, alcohol, and an industry that paid him pennies for records that made others rich—kept upright by his wife, Mama Reed, who fed him words he couldn't always remember.Bright Lights, Dark Road is the first book to take Jimmy Reed's music as seriously as the artists who covered it always did.Know the story. Hear the blues differently.
