Going to Cincinnati: A History of the Blues in the Queen City.

That Cincinnati has never been the center of the blues universe is borne out by the fact that the artists Steven Tracy chooses to mention in this history of the city's blues community can be counted on two hands. This should not lead the reader to infer that Going to Cincinnati is of little value. First of all, it sheds light on the society and culture of yet another out-of-the-way corner of the blues. Its greatest contribution, however, may be its unspoken insistence that the blues culture be recognized as existing in all the black neighborhoods, large and small, that saw the southern diaspora deposit tide after tide of black southerners on urban beaches far from their rural homes during the century following the end of the Reconstruction.

Going to Cincinnati chronologically traces the growth of the black community and blues in Cincinnati from the immediate post-Civil War era to the present day. A sixteen-page introduction discusses the history of the city's black community roughly up to World War I; it also presents an answer to the …