Condolences to all who knew our friend, board member, and author Paul Garon, who passed away on Monday at 80 years old.

Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company offers condolences to all who knew our friend, board member, and author Paul Garon, who passed away on Monday at eighty years old.

Paul was a scholar and lover of the blues. In 1970, he co-founded Living Blues magazine with Bruce Iglauer of Alligator Records and others; he was also a longtime contributor to the magazine. He authored The Devil's Son-In-Law: The Story of Peetie Wheatstraw & His Songs (Studio Vista, London, and Black Swan Press, 1971) and Blues and the Poetic Spirit (Eddison Press, London, 1975; Hachette Books, 1979; and City Lights Books, 1996). He co-authored with his spouse Beth Garon Woman with Guitar: Memphis Minnie's Blues (City Lights Books, 1992) and with Gene Tomko What's the Use of Walking if There's a Freight Train Going Your Way? Black Hoboes & Their Songs (Charles H. Kerr, 2006), a book that Robin D.G. Kelley described as a “masterpiece of cultural history.”

Paul became a member of the Chicago Surrealist Group in 1967, when he first met Franklin and Penelope Rosemont at Solidarity Bookshop and learned of their shared love for Peetie Wheatstraw. He was on the editorial board of Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion, English-language Journal of the International Surrealist Movement. Paul was the author of Rana Mozelle: Surrealist Texts (Black Swan Press, 1972). He co-edited with Franklin Rosemont and Penelope Rosemont The Forecast Is Hot! Tracts & Other Collective Declarations of the Surrealist Movement in the U.S., 1966-1976 (Black Swan Press, 1997). He contributed to the Radical America special issue on “Surrealism in the Service of the Revolution” (January 1970) edited by Franklin Rosemont, as well as the “Surrealism in the USA” special issue of the journal Race Traitor (The New Abolitionists, 2001) and Surrealist Subversions: Rants, Writings and Images by the Surrealist Movement in the United States, (Autonomedia, 2002), the latter two publications edited by Ron Sakolsky.

Paul was a seller and aficionado of rare books: he was founding partner of Chicago Rare Books, and with Beth Garon, ran Beasley Books. He was a longtime board member of the Midwest Antiquarian Bookseller's Association. He also compiled the voluminous Kerr back catalog in The Charles H. Kerr Company Archives 1885–1985: A Century of Socialist and Labor Publishing (1985).

Paul had a passion for Freudian psychology, which he incorporated into his studies of blues and surrealism. He was known among his surrealist accomplices as a fine drawer of sailboats. We will miss him tremendously.