This is the blues-women¿s story, from the earliest days of the music to the way the blues sounds today. An exciting lineage of women singers -- originating with Ma Rainey and her protégée Bessie Smith -- launched the blues as a powerful, expressive vehicle of emotional liberation. Along with their successors, Billie Holliday, Etta James, Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, and Janis Joplin, they injected a dose of reality into the often trivial world of popular song. These women passed their image, rhythms, and toughness on to the next generation of blueswomen, which has its contemporary incarnation in singers like Bonnie Raitt and Lucinda Williams. ¿A sweeping view of American history to illuminate the role of blueswomen in a powerful musical tradition.¿.