Ryan Patrick Hooper
Mike Mattison of the Tedeschi Trucks Band and Professor Ernest Suarez invented the musical genre that blends popular blues-based music with poetry, finding its stride in the 1960s with the help of Bob Dylan.
Mississippi University Press
A new book invents a new musical genre.
“Poetic Song Verse: Blues-Based Popular Music and Poetry” explores the connection between poetry and music, beginning in the late 1950s before finding its stride with Bob Dylan and a generation of musicians who followed.
Ernest Suarez is a professor in Washington, DC, who wrote the book with Mike Mattison, who is the lead singer of the Tedeschi Trucks Band.
“We coined it to explain a type of music that happened when poetry came into contact with popular music. Is it literature or is it music? It’s both. —Ernest Suarez
Listen: Authors Ernest Suarez and Mike Mattison discuss their book ‘Poetic Song Verse.’
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