# Dirty Bird Blues

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/clarence-major/dirty-bird-blues

![Dirty Bird Blues](https://quivercdn.com/covers/penguin-classics/clarence-major/dirty-bird-blues_978-01-4313-659-0.jpg?v=2026-04-24%2009%3A19%3A49)

- Authors: [Clarence Major](https://www.bookquiver.com/clarence-major)
- Language: en_GB
- Published: 2022-10-27

## Description

It is Chicago in the 1950s and Manfred Banks has the Dirty Bird Blues. A musician and a blue-collar worker, he feels hard the tug of his two responsibilities: those to his wife and child, and those to rhythm and rhyme, to the lyrics that groove a hollow in his mind. Beneath both is the awful grinding racism Manfred meets on streets each day; that which plucks opportunity from his grasp; that which keeps him wandering in search of fresh starts. And so, in want of easy answers, he turns to the 'Dirty Bird': Old Crow brand whiskey. One of Clarence Major's most influential novels, Dirty Bird Blues is both an extraordinary portrayal of twentieth-century Black reality, and an ode to the richness and power of the blues.

## Editions

### Dirty Bird Blues

- Publisher: penguin_classics
- ISBN: 978-01-4313-659-0
- Pages: 288
- Published: 2022-10-27
- Language: en_GB