Outlaw Blues: A Book of Rock Music

Paul Williams was the founder of the influential music magazine Crawdaddy! (1966-1979), one of the first American publications to treat rock music as a genre worthy of serious criticism. Outlaw Blues collects several of Williams's best articles, interviews and reviews from the early years of the magazine (1966-1969); his subjects include The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, and others. Williams's criticism tends toward the hagiographic, but he has a perceptive eye for the specific details that separate truly innovative artists from the imitators.