Press and Reviews

Long Lost Blues is required reading for lovers of the blues and historians of American popular music. “Sheet music is not my thing” is not a valid excuse for ignoring it, because Muir has succeeded in pushing back permanently the point of our historical certainty about early blues from 1920 to 1910. Furthermore, he provides new musically informed thoughts about proto-blues and the earliest datable blues of the 1890s and the 1900s, and they demand the most considerate of scholarly responses.
Edward Komara, Notes (December 2010), the quarterly journal of the Music Library Association
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Muir’s Long Lost Blues is a work of extraordinary scholarship and a valuable illumination of a largely forgotten corner of American music.
David Copser, Popular Music (October 2010)
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[Long Lost Blues is] an extremely gripping and far-reaching study of a major piece of early jazz history.
Wolfram Knauer, reviewer for the Darmstadt Jazz-Institut
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Muir’s study is fascinating, with implications larger than the history of blues in its examination of the interplay between orally passed-along folk music (which was where the blues stood at the dawn of the 20^th century) and popular music transmitted through commercial media.
David Luhrssen, “Long Lost Blues: The Tangled Roots of American Music” for the Milwaukee Express
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Long Lost Blues is both scholarly and highly readable. For me, it offered a fascinating view of the blues as a serious and genuine malady.
Barbara Bamberger Scott, reviewer for Curled Up With A Good Book
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Peter Muir … treated an audience at the Chappaqua Library to an intricate mix of historical lecture and performances.
Tom Auchterlonie, Editor for Chappaqua-Mount Kisco Patch
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Long Lost Blues is likely to become an important part of the historical literature of both blues and American popular music as a whole. Muir is to be credited for shining a spotlight on this critical period that has been, as he rightly notes, largely neglected in blues discourses. I would hope that this study will lead to a further reassessment of blues, both in terms of its historical narrative and for what blues means within the context of a popular audience that is deeply intertwined with debates over authorship, authenticity and identity. Muir’s work will be of great benefit and interest to anyone concerned with blues, from musicologists to casual fans, and is therefore strongly recommended.
Ken Prouty, Fontes Artae Musicae, 58/1, pp. 101-103.

Although [Long Lost Blues] advertises itself as a musicological study…, it scores highly in being more populist in its presentation and ability to hold the lay reader’s attention…chock-full of insights that one would be hard-pushed to find anywhere else.
Mark Berresford, Vintage Jazz Mart, 160 (Spring 2011)

Long Lost Blues is a fascinating and ground-breaking exploration of largely unexplored music terrain, an intelligent, well-documented, and highly readable journey through the intersection of popular and folk music in the early 1900s…It is highly recommended.
Tim Brooks, Journal of the Society for American Music, 5/2 (May 2011), 279-282.

Long Lost Blues is a remarkable achievement which stands on the twin pillars of exhaustive research and acute musical analysis.
Chris Smith, Blues & Rhythm No. 249 (May 2010)

Peter C. Muir’s book Long Lost Blues is a milestone. All music lovers are indebted to his painstaking search and diligent analysis, which will lead to a better understanding of the most important music of the 20th century.
Karl Gert zur Heide, author of Deep South Piano

Muir’s revealing book contributes significantly to understanding how sheet music and the pop music industry influenced the blues. An important work.
Tim Brooks, author of Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919

This fascinating work discusses the genesis and introduction of a minority music genre into mainstream culture in a way that is impossible to ignore, given the importance of blues connections to other genres. Essential reading for anyone interested in American music.
Dick Spottswood, host of The Dick Spottswood Show on BlueGrassCountry.org and editor of Ethnic Music on Records

…breaks new ground in blues research.
Steve Ramm, In the Groove (July 2010)

A fascinating book which is highly readable, despite its academic approach.
Doctor Jazz Magazine No. 209 (June 2010)

A study like Muir’s has been overdue for decades. He has done a thorough job and presents the results of his pioneering research in a highly readable manner.
Konrad Nowakowski, Austrian blues collector and author