A Guide to Essential Popular Music-Volume One serves a guide to the best popular music ever recorded and the artists who created and recorded it. The book covers a number of genres that comprise popular music including pop, rock, blues, jazz, country, reggae, hip hop, ragtime, folk, and others. The premier performers of these various genres are included here along with references to their best and definitive musical recordings.

These guides cover a period of time spanning more than 100 years from the earliest recordings of ragtime and pop music and continuing up to the present day. These volumes include several musical styles such as traditional country and classic jazz music which have been largely ignored by similar reference guides of past years.

This book has been arranged in alphabetical order from A to J and serves as the first volume of what will be a two-volume set.