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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Contemporary popular music > Blues
For over sixty years, American guitarist John Fahey (1939-2001) has
been a storied figure, first within the folk and blues revival of
the long 1960s, later for fans of alternative music. Mythologizing
himself as Blind Joe Death, Fahey crudely parodied white
middle-class fascination with African American blues, including his
own. In this book, George Henderson mines Fahey's parallel careers
as essayist, notorious liner note stylist, musicologist, and
fabulist for the first time. These vocations, inspired originally
by Cold War educators' injunction to creatively express rather than
suppress feelings, took utterly idiosyncratic and prescient turns.
Fahey voraciously consumed ideas: in the classroom, the
counterculture, the civil rights struggle, the new left; through
his study of philosophy, folklore, African American blues; and
through his experience with psychoanalysis and southern
paternalism. From these, he produced a profoundly and unexpectedly
refracted vision of America. To read Fahey is to vicariously
experience devastating critical energies and self-soothing
uncertainty, passions emerging from a singular location-the place
where lone, white rebel sentiment must regard the rebellion of
others. Henderson shows the nuance, contradictions, and sometimes
brilliance of Fahey's words that, though they were never sung to a
tune, accompanied his music.
Taking its title from a lyric by Mississippi bluesman Charley
Patton, "Seems Liks Murder Here" offers a revealing new account of
the blues tradition. Far from mere laments about lost loves and
"hard times", blues songs and literature emerge in this provocative
work as vital responses to the violent realities and traumatic
legacies of African American life in the Jim Crow South. Blues
recording artist and critic Adam Gussow begins his story in the
1890s, when the spectacle lynching of blacks became an insidious
part of Southern life. Although lynchings are seldom referred to
directly in blues songs, veiled references to them abound, and
Gussow identifies these scattered mentions, tying them to real-life
incidents and historical events in the autobiographies of bluesmen
and -women. Southern violence, he shows also enters the blues
tradition through folklore about "badmen": African Americans who
take the lives of white aggressors in self-defence. Blues songs and
literature, meanwhile, teem with searing depictions of bloodshed,
such as the cutting and shooting that blacks inflicted on one
another in juke joints. For Gussow, such expressive acts of
violence are the quintessential blues gesture - burning examples of
racial and romantic anguish. As Langston Hughes once wrote, "My
love might turn into a knife/instead of to a song". With
interpretations of classic songs and writings, from the
autobiographies of W.C. Handy, David Honeyboy Edwards, and B.B.
King to the poetry of Hughes and the novels of Zora Neale Hurston,
"Seems Like Murder Here" should reshape our understanding of the
blues and its enduring power.
Praised as "suave, soulful, ebullient" (Tom Waits) and "a
meticulous researcher, a graceful writer, and a committed
contrarian" (New York Times Book Review), Elijah Wald is one of the
leading popular music critics of his generation. In The Blues, Wald
surveys a genre at the heart of American culture. It is not an easy
thing to pin down. As Howlin' Wolf once described it, "When you
ain't got no money and can't pay your house rent and can't buy you
no food, you've damn sure got the blues." It has been defined by
lyrical structure, or as a progression of chords, or as a set of
practices reflecting West African "tonal and rhythmic approaches,"
using a five-note "blues scale." Wald sees blues less as a style
than as a broad musical tradition within a constantly evolving pop
culture. He traces its roots in work and praise songs, and shows
how it was transformed by such professional performers as W. C.
Handy, who first popularized the blues a century ago. He follows
its evolution from Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith through Bob Dylan and
Jimi Hendrix; identifies the impact of rural field recordings of
Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton and others; explores the role
of blues in the development of both country music and jazz; and
looks at the popular rhythm and blues trends of the 1940s and
1950s, from the uptown West Coast style of T-Bone Walker to the
"down home" Chicago sound of Muddy Waters. Wald brings the story up
to the present, touching on the effects of blues on American
poetry, and its connection to modern styles such as rap. ABOUT THE
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In 1963, in a south London hotel, Andrew Loog Oldham discovered an
unknown rhythm and blues band called the Rolling Stones and became
their manager and producer; by 1967 they had achieved worldwide
celebrity, been arrested in a notorious drugs raid and split with
the manager that made them. 2Stoned is the remarkable record of
these years, when Oldham's radical strategies transformed them into
the Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band That Ever Drew Breath. In his first
book, Stoned, Oldham recorded his early years and the meeting with
the Stones that changed all their fates; 2Stoned is the story of
what followed.
From his emergence in the 1950s - when an uncannily beautiful young
man from Oklahoma appeared in the West Coast and became, seemingly
overnight, the prince of 'cool' jazz - until his violent,
drug-related death in Amsterdam in 1988, Chet Baker lived a life
that has become an American myth. At once sexy and forbidding, the
so-called 'James Dean of Jazz' struck a note of menace in the staid
fifties. In this first major biography, the story of Baker's demise
is finally revealed. So is the truth behind his tormented
childhood. Behind Baker's icy facade lay something ominous,
unspoken. The mystery drove both sexes crazy. But his only real
romance, apart from music, was with drugs. Gavin brilliantly
recreates the life of a man whose journey from golden promise to
eventual destruction mirrored America's fall from post-war
innocence - but whose music has never lost the power to enchant and
seduce us.
Steve Cushing, the award-winning host of the nationally syndicated
public radio staple Blues before Sunrise, has spent over thirty
years observing and participating in the Chicago blues scene. In
Pioneers of the Blues Revival, he interviews many of the prominent
white researchers and enthusiasts whose advocacy spearheaded the
blues' crossover into the mainstream starting in the 1960s.
Opinionated and territorial, the American, British, and French
interviewees provide fascinating first-hand accounts of the era and
movement. Experts including Paul Oliver, Gayle Dean Wardlow, Sam
Charters, Ray Flerledge, Paul Oliver, Richard K. Spottswood, and
Pete Whelan chronicle in their own words their obsessive early
efforts at cataloging blues recordings and retrace lifetimes spent
loving, finding, collecting, reissuing, and producing records. They
and nearly a dozen others recount relationships with blues
musicians, including the discoveries of prewar bluesmen Mississippi
John Hurt, Son House, Skip James, and Bukka White, and the
reintroduction of these musicians and many others to new
generations of listeners. The accounts describe fieldwork in the
South, renew lively debates, and tell of rehearsals in Muddy
Waters's basement and randomly finding Lightning Hopkins's guitar
in a pawn shop. Blues scholar Barry Lee Pearson provides a critical
and historical framework for the interviews in an introduction.
Influenced at a young age by classic country, Tejano, western
swing, and the popular music of wartime America, blues musician
Delbert McClinton grew up with a backstage pass to some of the most
significant moments in American cultural and music history. From
his birth on the high plains of West Texas during World War II to
headlining sold-out cruises on chartered luxury ships well into his
seventies, McClinton admits he has been "One of the Fortunate Few."
This book chronicles McClinton's path through a free-range
childhood in Lubbock and Fort Worth; an early career in the
desegregated roadhouses along Fort Worth's Jacksboro Highway, where
he led the house bands for Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddly, and
others while making a name for himself as a regional player in the
birth of rock and roll; headlining shows in England with a
little-known Liverpool quartet called The Beatles; and heading back
to Texas in time for the progressive movement, kicking off Austin's
burgeoning role in American music history. Today, more than sixty
years after he first stepped onto a stage, Delbert McClinton shows
no signs of slowing down. He continues to play sold-out concert and
dance halls, theaters, and festival events across the nation. An
annual highlight for his fans is the Delbert McClinton Sandy
Beaches Cruise, the longest-running music-themed luxury cruise in
history at more than twenty-five years of operation. More than the
story of a rags-to-riches musician, Delbert McClinton: One of the
Fortunate Few offers readers a soundtrack to some of the most
pivotal moments in the history of American popular music-all backed
by a cooking rhythm section and featuring a hot harmonica lead.
This stunning book charts the rich history of the blues, through
the dazzling array of posters, album covers, and advertisements
that have shaped its identity over the past hundred years. The
blues have been one of the most ubiquitous but diverse elements of
American popular music at large, and the visual art associated with
this unique sound has been just as varied and dynamic. There is no
better guide to this fascinating graphical world than Bill Dahl a
longtime music journalist and historian who has written liner notes
for countless reissues of classic blues, soul, R&B, and rock
albums. With his deep knowledge and incisive commentary
complementing more than three hundred and fifty lavishly reproduced
images the history of the blues comes musically and visually to
life. What will astonish readers who thumb through these pages is
the amazing range of ways that the blues have been represented
whether via album covers, posters, flyers, 78 rpm labels,
advertising, or other promotional materials. We see the blues as it
was first visually captured in the highly colorful sheet music
covers of the early twentieth century. We see striking and
hard-to-find label designs from labels big (Columbia) and small
(Rhumboogie). We see William Alexander's humorous artwork on
postwar Miltone Records; the cherished ephemera of concert and
movie posters; and Chess Records' iconic early albums designed by
Don Bronstein, which would set a new standard for modern album
cover design. What these images collectively portray is the
evolution of a distinctively American art form. And they do so in
the richest way imaginable. The result is a sumptuous book, a
visual treasury as alive in spirit as the music it so vibrantly
captures.
In The Heart of Rock & Soul, veteran rock critic Dave Marsh
offers a polemical guide to the 1,001 greatest rock and soul
singles ever made, encompassing rock, metal, R&B, disco, folk,
funk, punk, reggae, rap, soul, country, and any other music that
has made a difference over the past fifty years. The illuminating
essays,complete with music history, social commentary, and personal
appraisals,double as a mini-history of popular music. Here you will
find singles by artists as wide-ranging as Aretha Franklin, George
Jones, Roy Orbison, the Sex Pistols, Madonna, Run-D.M.C., and Van
Halen. Featuring a new preface that covers the hits,and misses,of
the'90s, The Heart of Rock & Soul remains as provocative,
passionate, and timeless as the music it praises.
Traditional jazz studies have tended to see jazz in purely musical
terms, as a series of changes in rhythm, tonality, and harmony, or
as a parade of great players. But jazz has also entered the
cultural mix through its significant impact on novelists,
filmmakers, dancers, painters, biographers, and photographers.
Representing Jazz explores the "other" history of jazz created by
these artists, a history that tells us as much about the meaning of
the music as do the many books that narrate the lives of musicians
or describe their recordings. Krin Gabbard has gathered essays by
distinguished writers from a variety of fields. They provide
engaging analyses of films such as Round Midnight, Bird, Mo' Better
Blues, Cabin in the Sky, and Jammin' the Blues; the writings of
Eudora Welty and Dorothy Baker; the careers of the great lindy
hoppers of the 1930s and 1940s; Mura Dehn's extraordinary
documentary on jazz dance; the jazz photography of William Claxton;
painters of the New York School; the traditions of jazz
autobiography; and the art of "vocalese." The contributors to this
volume assess the influence of extramusical sources on our
knowledge of jazz and suggest that the living contexts of the music
must be considered if a more sophisticated jazz scholarship is ever
to evolve. Transcending the familiar patterns of jazz history and
criticism, Representing Jazz looks at how the music actually has
been heard and felt at different levels of American culture. With
its companion anthology, Jazz Among the Discourses, this volume
will enrich and transform the literature of jazz studies. Its
provocative essays will interest both aficionados and potential
jazz fans.Contributors. Karen Backstein, Leland H. Chambers, Robert
P. Crease, Krin Gabbard, Frederick Garber, Barry K. Grant, Mona
Hadler, Christopher Harlos, Michael Jarrett, Adam Knee, Arthur
Knight, James Naremore
Focusing on blues, jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues, and soul music,
this text explores the rich musical heritage of African-Americans
in California. The contributors describe in detail the individual
artists, locales, groups, musical styles and regional qualities,
and the result is a book which seeks to lay the groundwork for a
whole new field of study. The essays draw from oral histories,
music recordings, newspaper articles and advertisements, as well as
population statistics to provide insightful discussions of topics
such as the Californian urban milieu's influence on gospel music,
the development of the West Coast blues style, and the significance
of Los Angeles's Central Avenue in the early days of jazz. Other
esays offer perspectives on how individual musicians have been
shaped by their African-American heritage and on the role of the
record industry and radio in the making of music. In addition to
the diverse range of essays, the book includes a bibliography of
African-American music and culture in California.
This text, the first of its kind, deals with some of the problems
to be faced. It discusses the new trend of musical thought that
jazz has brought about--the new combinations of instruments, a
different harmonic and melodic language, a new and an intriguing
approach to ensemble writing.
A contribution to the history of the blues in particular and of
Afro-American culture in general, new information about a
remarkable set of assertive, creative women as well as new insights
into the musical heritage they have left behind. Sippie Wallace,
Edith Wilson, Victoria Spivey and Alberta Hunter are the collective
focus of this work - four influential blues singers with diverse
styles, who were big in the 1920s and were still performing in the
1980s. Writing from a firm black/feminist standpoint, Harrison
shows the joys, trials, and heartbreaks in the lives of the first
popular women blues artists.
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