Heroes of the Blues Card Set

Heroes of the Blues is a superb trading card set created by artist Robert Crumb for Yazoo Records in 1980. The set was reissued in 2004 by publisher Dennis Kitchen.  The cards are incredible — unique, informative tributes to the cream of the blues genre’s seminal practitioners, with each artist wonderfully rendered with nobility and grace in full color by Crumb, who is himself an early American Music devotee.

It is one of three similar sets. The others, Early Jazz Greats and Pioneers of Country Music, are also superbly done. You can click on the boxes at the upper right if you’d like to explore or purchase those as well.

In all the sets, Crumb’s meticulous illustrations, which were created mainly from photographs, belie the hard lives most of these men (and woman — Memphis Minnie is the only woman in the set) led. But the portraits are beautiful, and the card-back biographies by Stephen Calt are very informative, focusing on the often mercurial recording careers of the artists. They are obviously heartfelt, but not sentimental.

The set features 36 of the genre’s most influential and imitated practitioners, from Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Son House and Big Bill Broonzy , to lesser-known but no less accomplished progenitors like Blind Blake and Memphis Minnie. Calt covers the performers in super-concise prose, covering their origins as well as the number of sides they recorded and their respective places in blues history. This is a great place for budding rock players to get a feel for where it all began.