(Guitar Recorded Versions). All 10 tunes from SRV and Double Trouble's monumental first album, transcribed in tab and notation: Dirty Pool * I Wanna Testify * I'm Cryin' * Lenny * Love Struck Baby * Mary Had a Little Lamb * Pride and Joy * Rude Mood * Tell Me * Texas Flood.

The American singer and guitarist Ramblin' Jack Elliott (1931- ) is a seminal figure in the folk music revivals of the United States and Great Britain. Declared an American treasure by former President Bill Clinton, Elliott has traveled and performed for more than 50 years, and his life and career neatly parallel the ascension of folk music's "renaissance" from the 1940s through the present day. Ramblin' Jack Elliott: The Never-Ending Highway is the first complete biography of this important figure in the history of folk music. Elliott's music and Beat-era sensibility influenced countless artists in the fields of folk, rock, and country and western music, and Hank Reineke provides the full story of Elliott's relationships and influences. Most notably, his associations with Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan are well-documented: Elliott is considered Guthrie's most famous protege and Elliott mentored Dylan in his early career. Reineke also recounts how Elliott's life intersected with Derroll Adams, Jack Kerouac and the Beats, Princess Margaret, James Dean, and scores of others. The book examines the full breadth of Elliott's career, discussing how the rough-edged cowboy singer survived in the music industry and eventually won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Recording and the prestigious National Medal of the Arts. In addition to the biography, Reineke has amassed the first exhaustive and comprehensive discography of albums from the singer's notable back-catalog (1955-2009), including nearly 60 LP and CD issues, many rare and sought-after 78rpm discs, EPs, and 45rpm recordings, as well as a number of contributions to compilations, soundtracks, festival recordings, and guest appearances. This impressive volume is rounded out with a bibliography, an index, and more than 30 photographs, making this a must-have for scholars and fans of American folk music."

"Kennedy's Blues: African American Blues and Gospel Songs on JFK" collects in a single volume the blues and gospel songs written by African Americans about the presidency of John F. Kennedy and offers a close analysis of Kennedy's hold upon the African American imagination. These blues and gospel songs have never been transcribed and analyzed in a systematic way, so this volume provides a hitherto untapped source on the perception of one of the most intriguing American presidents.

After eight years of Republican rule the young Democratic president received a warm welcome from African Americans. However, with the Cold War military draft and the slow pace of civil rights measures, inspiration temporarily gave way to impatience.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Medgar Evers, the March on Washington, the groundbreaking civil rights bill--all found their way into blues and gospel songs. The many blues numbers devoted to the assassination and the president's legacy are evidence of JFK's near-canonization by African Americans. Blues historian Guido van Rijn shows that John F. Kennedy became a mythical hero to blues songwriters despite what was left unaccomplished.

Guido van Rijn is teacher of English at Kennemer Lyceum in Overveen, the Netherlands. His previous books include "The Truman and Eisenhower Blues: African American Blues and Gospel Songs, 1945-1960."

In the past, they were the Queens, strong women who took an unconventional path. They were the Blues Women, and they changed the face of music. To undertand their history is to understand not only a great deal about black history but about the history of the country as a whole. Today, blues women still change the face of music and explore the feminine side of the human condition. This book explores the lives and legacies of eighteen great blues women, old and new. From Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith and other legends to Janis Joplin, Bonnie Raitt, and more contemporary blues women, this book explores their art and tells their stories.

This unique collection of essays examines the flow of African American music and musicians across the Atlantic to Europe from the time of slavery to the twentieth century. In a sweeping examination of different musical forms--spirituals, blues, jazz, skiffle, and orchestral music--the contributors consider the reception and influence of black music on a number of different European audiences, particularly in Britain, but also France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

The essayists approach the subject through diverse historical, musicological, and philosophical perspectives. A number of essays document little-known performances and recordings of African American musicians in Europe. Several pieces, including one by Paul Oliver, focus on the appeal of the blues to British listeners. At the same time, these considerations often reveal the ambiguous nature of European responses to black music and in so doing add to our knowledge of transatlantic race relations.

Contributions from Christopher G. Bakriges, Sean Creighton, Jeffrey Green, Leighton Grist, Bob Groom, Rainer E. Lotz, Paul Oliver, Catherine Parsonage, Iris Schmeisser, Roberta Freund Schwartz, Robert Springer, Rupert Till, Guido van Rijn, David Webster, Jen Wilson, and Neil A. Wynn

Neil A. Wynn is professor of twentieth-century American history at the University of Gloucestershire. He is the author of "Historical Dictionary from Great War to Great Depression," "From Progressivism to Prosperity: American Society and the First World War," and "The Afro-American and the Second World War."

In this extraordinary reconstruction of the origins of the blues, historian Marybeth Hamilton demonstrates that the story as we know it is largely a myth. Following the trail of characters like Howard Odum, who combed Mississippi's back roads with a cylinder phonograph to record vagrants, John and Alan Lomax, who prowled Southern penitentiaries and unearthed the rough, melancholy vocals of Leadbelly, and James McKune, a recluse whose record collection came to define the primal sounds of the Delta blues, Hamilton reveals this musical form to be the culmination of a longstanding white fascination with the exotic mysteries of black music.

By excavating the history of the Delta blues, Hamilton reveals the extent to which American culture has been shaped by white fantasies of racial difference.

In the 1920s, Southern record companies ventured to cities like Dallas, Atlanta, and New Orleans, where they set up primitive recording equipment in makeshift studios. They brought in street singers, medicine show performers, pianists from the juke joints and barrelhouses. The music that circulated through Southern work camps, prison farms, and vaudeville shows would be lost to us if it hadn't been captured on location by these performers and recorders. Eminent blues historian Paul Oliver uncovers these folk traditions and the circumstances under which they were recorded, rescuing the forefathers of the blues who were lost before they even had a chance to be heard. A careful excavation of the earliest recordings of the blues by one of its foremost experts, Barrelhouse Blues expands our definition of that most American style of music.

Charles Mingus was a pioneer figure in modern jazz. Besides being a virtuoso bass player who played with the top jazz musicians for four decades, he was also an accomplished pianist, bandleader and composer who recorded more than 100 albums and wrote more than 300 original and innovative scores. This incredible collection explores Mingus' background and prestigious career as well as 55 of his pieces. The stories behind each song are given and accompanied by notes on how Mingus played the piece. Mingus photos, anecdotes, quotes and an extensive discography fill this volume that collectors will treasure. A truly personal work that celebrates the genius within this jazz legend. Songs include: Fables of Faubus * Sue's Changes * Better Get Hit in Your Soul * Weird Nightmare * and more.

This is a wild insider's ride with one of music's most notorious journalists. Here are 15 gothic music profiles guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your seat from the author of "Tales of Times Square".Legendary musicians and songwriters captured in moments of crisis despair revelation and glory including: Leiber and Stoller the white fathers of RandB and rock and roll who possess what is perhaps the last great untold story of the music biz. Their history began at the twilight of the Guys and Dolls era when their declared mission statement was to Make Black Folks Laugh. And this they did creating the American songbook of the '50s and '60s led by Elvis the Coasters and the Drifters; Doc Pomus the only white blues singer in America making records in the 1940s; Half of the hit songwriting team of Pomus-Shuman during the Brill Building era Doc had the biggest heart in the music business.It also includes: The New York recording studio scene of the 1970s as told by the studio cats who played on the most important records of that era from Aretha to Steely Dan bassist Chuck Rainey Texas tenor saxman David Fathead Newman guitarist Cornell Dupress and Atlantic Records producer Joel Dorn. Dorn's profile reveals exactly how the record biz spiraled down its ruinous course that led to the sad corporate culture of today; A sad romance with the Ronettes' Ronnie Spector dubbed an oldie once she left her teens; Hard-luck-Texas fables of Austin musicians Keith Ferguson and Tommy Shannon, the original bass players behind the Fabulous Thunderbirds Johnny Winter and Stevie Ray Vaughan; and, the story of Rick Sikes and the Rhythm Rebels the Texas band that founded the Outlaw Country movement, but never got to recap its rewards since they were convicted of robbing banks in 1970.

For more than five decades, BB King has been the consummate Blues performer. His unique guitar playing, powerful vocals and repertoire of songs have taken him from Mississippi to worldwide renown. Published to coincide with his 80th birthday, this extensively revised edition includes 18 interviews. In this comprehensive volume, the best articles, interviews and reviews about BB King's life and career have been gathered. Learn how he made his mark as a disc jockey in Memphis; trace his early tours and recordings; see him be swept up in the blues revival; and finally, enjoy his fame as the greatest living exponent of the blues style.

The Lives in Music series meshes biography with discography. This debut title profiles the legendary King of Blues, B.B. King. An opening essay charts his life from childhood in the Mississippi Delta up to his first studio session. The author then takes an inside look at his distinguished career, album by album, offering a critical appraisal of each recording and a portrait of the making of each album. First-hand interviews with B.B. King, as well as producers, engineers, arrangers, and key musicians, bring these sessions to life and provide readers a context for understanding B.B. King's recordings in light of his career and life events that shaped them. This definitive book also incudes a complete history of every B.B. King session.

Musicians and music scholars rightly focus on the sounds of the blues and the colorful life stories of blues performers. Equally important and, until now, inadequately studied are the lyrics. The international contributors to Nobody Knows Where the Blues Come From explore this aspect of the blues and establish the significance of African American popular song as a neglected form of oral history. ""High Water Everywhere: Blues and Gospel Commentary on the 1927 Mississippi River Flood,"" by David Evans, is the definitive study of songs about one of the greatest natural disasters in the history of the United States. In ""Death by Fire: African American Popular Music on the Natchez Rhythm Club Fire,"" Luigi Monge analyzes a continuum of songs about exclusively African American tragedy. ""Lookin' for the Bully: An Enquiry into a Song and Its Story,"" by Paul Oliver traces the origins and the many avatars of the Bully song. In ""That Dry Creek Eaton Clan: A North Mississippi Murder Ballad of the 1930s,"" Tom Freeland and Chris Smith study a ballad recorded in 1939 by a black convict at Parchman prison farm. ""Coolidge's Blues: African American Blues from the Roaring Twenties"" is Guido van Rijn's survey of blues of that decade. Robert Springer's ""On the Electronic Trail of Blues Formulas"" presents a number of conclusions about the spread of patterns in blues narratives. In ""West Indies Blues: An Historical Overview 1920s-1950s,"" John Cowley turns his attention to West Indian songs produced on the American mainland. Finally, in ""Ethel Waters: 'Long, Lean, Lanky Mama,'"" Randall Cherry reappraises the early career of this blues and vaudeville singer. Robert Springer is a professor of English at the University of Metz in Longeville les Metz, France. Among other works, he is the author of Authentic Blues: Its History and Its Themes and the editor of The Lyrics in African American Popular Music.

Established in 1971 to recognize the major contributions that African Americans have made to American and world music, the Black Musicians Conference and Festival at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst came to be a magnet for perfomers, scholars, and fans of jazz, blues. and gospel music. This volume documents eleven years of the festival--"from 1989 to1999--"with a stimulating range of essays and panel discussions. The text is complemented by superb black-and-white photographs of the participants.

Memphis, Tennessee, is a major crossroads for blues musicians, songs, and styles. This volume tells the story of the blues in Memphis through previously unpublished interviews with nine performers who helped create and sustain the music from the days before its commercial success through the early 1970s. The performers' backgrounds range across the blues genres, from classic blues (Lillie Mae Glover) to country blues (Bukka White), from jug band blues (Laura Dukes) to tough, postwar electric blues (Joe Willie Wilkins and Houston Stackhouse). Each interview is illustrated by noted printmaker George D. Davidson and introduced with a biographical sketch by Fred J. Hay. In addition, Hay's extensive notes identify many other blues performers - friends and music partners of the interviewees whose names come up in their many asides and allusions. Together these materials document and pay tribute to the remarkable richness of the Memphis blues scene.

Description In When Your Way Gets Dark: A Rhetoric of the Blues, Jeffrey Carroll presents a cluster of rhetorical and literary theories that illuminate the blues' place in our social, political, and cultural traditions. Drawing from his 35 years of blues encounters, Carroll also analyzes performers and nine historic blues performances-including the blues of Charlie Patton, Skip James, Memphis Minnie, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and others-as well as their own accounts of performances, to understand, paraphrasing Dylan Thomas, the force through which the blue fuse drives the music. When Your Way Gets Dark uncovers the rhetorical positions of the most significant writing and writers on the blues-Samuel Charters, Paul Oliver, Robert Palmer, William Ferris, David Evans, LeRoi Jones, Ralph Ellison, Larry Neal, Albert Murray-and seeks to find rhetorics there that may resolve or exacerbate the question of race, the blues, and audience. In When Your Way Gets Dark, Carroll also shows how teachers and students can-by reinventing its contexts, sound, and effects-recover the rhetorical power of the blues. What Others Have Said When Your Way Gets Dark presents a sustained look at how African-American art and performance has extended and shaped the American aesthetic and cultural landscape. Carroll shows that the blues are a legitimate art-form for sustained study, academic and otherwise; in so doing, he stretches our conceptions of what constitutes a text . . . and how we can explore text as performance in terms of theory, interpretation, and pedagogy-without reducing the blues to being only a literary object. . . . Carroll writes about the blues with grace, style, and insight. -Thomas Rickert, Purdue University About the Author Jeffrey Carroll is Professor of English and Director of the Graduate Program in English at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, where he teaches courses on the blues, rhetoric and composition, and the American novel. He is the author of two textbooks, Dialogs: Reading and Writing in the Disciplines and The Active Reader (with Anne Ruggles Gere), as well as a novel, Climbing to the Sun.

An exciting lineage of women singers--originating with Ma Rainey and her protegee Bessie Smith--shaped the blues, launching it as a powerful, expressive vehicle of emotional liberation. Along with their successors Billie Holiday, Etta James, Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, and Janis Joplin, they injected a dose of reality into the often trivial world of popular song, bringing their message of higher expectations and broader horizons to their audiences. These women passed their image, their rhythms, and their toughness on to the next generation of blues women, which has its contemporary incarnation in singers like Bonnie Raitt and Lucinda Williams (with whom the author has done an in-depth interview). Buzzy Jackson combines biography, an appreciation of music, and a sweeping view of American history to illuminate the pivotal role of blues women in a powerful musical tradition. Musician Thomas Dorsey said, "The blues is a good woman feeling bad." But these women show by their style that he had it backward: The blues is a bad woman feeling good.

The embattled R&B star R. Kelly was arrested on a fugitive nationwide warrant issued as he was preparing to leave a rented vacation home where he had lived for more than a year with his wife and three children charged with 21 counts of child pornography. In Your Body's Calling Me: Music, Love, Sex and Money - The Story of the Life and Times of "Robert" R. Kelly, author Jake Brown explores the past to uncover the truth behind the crooner's celebrated, yet conflicted life, including: His childhood and impoverished upbringing, His abuse as a child, Experiences that molded him into both the man and celebrity, His collaboration with and marriage to Aaliyah, Child porn allegations filed against him, His haunting past and God-fearing, Soul, and Rhythm and Blues sounds that led him to a chart-topping career. R. Kelly's distinct sound has an ability to blend cutting edge, street-wise Hip-Hop music and storytelling with smooth love songs. His role as collaborative composer and producer with other artists expanded outside of his R&B genre, reflecting the diversity of his talents, as he crafted hits for many of the world's biggest Pop stars, including Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, Notorious BIG, Puffy, Janet Jackson, Toni Braxton, Mary J. Blige, NAS, Maxwell, Kirk Franklin, and KC & Jo Jo. R. Kelly, musical genius, racked up numerous Top 40 and Top Ten smashes hits in Billboard's Top 200 list. R. Kelly's music has topped Billboard's R & B Album, Adult Contemporary, Hot 100 Singles, Top 200 Album and the R & B/Hip Hop Charts. R. Kelly has been nominated for and received numerous awards including: Grammys for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance, Best R&B Album (R.), and Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group; Soul Train Music Awards for Best R&B/Soul Album, Male (R.); NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Male Artist and Music Video, and was the American Music Award's Favorite Male Soul/R&B Artist and Sammy Davis Jr. Entertainer of the Year. In an instant, R. Kelly would go from a revered global superstar to a man" whose freedom and security..whose very foundation. was being threatened. Your Body's Calling Me reveals all the details about how R. Kelly became the 'Prince of Pillowtalk' and how that title would come back to haunt him.again.and again

Elwood's Blues is an entertaining and informative collection of conversations with the legends and rising stars of blues and rock music, drawn from the popular syndicated radio series, The House of Blues Radio Hour. Host Dan Aykroyd, in character as Elwood Blues of the legendary Blues Brothers, has interviewed over 900 blues and rock greats since 1993. This book compiles the best of those, including discussions with living legends B.B. King and Buddy Guy, past masters John Lee Hooker and Stevie Ray Vaughan, rising stars Keb' Mo' and Susan Tedeschi, and blues-rooted rock stars such as Robert Plant and Bill Wyman.

Transcribed from 78 rpm recordings and preserved here long after many of the records have disappeared, this collection of nearly three hundred songs from more than one hundred singers celebrates the diversity of feeling and form that defines the blues. Ma Rainey, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Bessie Smith, Leadbelly, Memphis Minnie, Robert Johnson, and Muddy Waters are represented with their lesser-known contemporaries-Barefoot Bill, Barbecue Bob, Bumble Bee Slim, and Black Ivory King. This complete anthology also features lyrics by Blind Blake, Victoria Spivey, Blind Willie Johnson, "Funny Paper" Smith, Texas Alexander, Lightning Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, Ma Yancey, King Solomon Hill, Skip James, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, Son House, Willie Brown, Mississippi John Hurt, Bukka White, Furry Lewis, Sleepy John Estes, Rev. Gary Davis, Roosevelt Sykes, Peetie Wheatstraw, Sonny Boy Williamson, Kokomo Arnold, Tampa Red, Howlin'Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Charlie Patton, and more than 100 others. Dozens of illustrations are included.

Guide van Rijn presents a fascinating and exhaustive account of the gospel and blues music of the immediate postwar period, shedding much light on the civil rights situation of the time and the experience of segregation as well as events such as the Atom Bomb, the Cold War, Korea and of course the Republican victory in 1956. He concentrates on songs that comment on contemporary political events and issues during this crucial time in the shaping of black consciousness in America. In doing so, he uncovers a hidden black history on the eve of the emergence of the civil rights movement--a deep insight into the lives and opinions of people who had few other outlets of expression. Also available, from the author's own website, is a CD containing recordings of the songs discussed in the text, such as Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb, I'm a Democrat Man, and The Alabama Bus.

"They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday's just as bad/Wednesday's worse, and Thursday's also sad." There's a lot more to the blues than three chords played on an old beat-up guitar. Squeeze My Lemon is a collection of some of the best bluues lines ever recorded. From birth ("Born under a bad sign/I've been down since I began to crawl") to death ("Everybody wants to go to heaven/But nobody wants tto die") and everything in between, this volume quotes classic blues phrases by ssongwriter/artists B.B. King, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, T-Bone Walker, Robert JJohnson and many, many others. Compiled by award-winning author/Grammy-nominated record producer Randy Poe, Squeeze My Lemon: A Collection of Classic Blues Lyriics features classic photos of many leading blues artists. A great gift book, itt is highly entertaining not only for blues lovers, but for anyone who appreciatees great lyrics. Categorized by subject matter (Love - Or the Lack Thereof, Bluess and Booze, Blues Behind Bars, Make Mine a Double Entendre, etc.), Squeeze My Lemmon is a book you'll return to - and quote from - again and again.

How do you love and not like the same thing at the same time? This was the riddle that met Mississippi writer B. Brian Foster when he returned to his home state to learn about black culture and found himself hearing about the blues. One moment, black Mississippians would say they knew and appreciated the blues. The next, they would say they didn't like it. For five years, Foster listened and asked: "How?" "Why not?" "Will it ever change?" This is the story of the answers to his questions. In this illuminating work, Foster takes us where not many blues writers and scholars have gone: into the homes, memories, speculative visions, and lifeworlds of black folks in contemporary Mississippi to hear what they have to say about the blues and all that has come about since their forebears first sang them. In so doing, Foster urges us to think differently about race, place, and community development and models a different way of hearing the sounds of black life, a method that he calls listening for the backbeat.

This is a story of sacrifice and dedication, of being disappointed but bouncing back. It is the coming-of-age story of a young artist who became a major force in music and acting. Aaliyah had something extra that super successful people have, the ability to 'Dust Herself Off and Try Again' which is the title of one of her #1 hit songs. Although the sun has set on this magnificent young woman, Aaliyah lives forever in the hearts of her fans worldwide.