The noted blues scholar Paul Oliver here examines the many different skeins of the blues form, relating them to other black traditions - musical and religious - and tracing the origin of the blues through the dense, many-coloured warp and weft of influences and inspiration. He describes "the dozens," Christmas rituals, and the coded (as well as blatant) sexual imagery that has always been a vital element of every popular song tradition. With extensive source notes, photographs, a discography, and two indexes of song titles and singers, this book serves as a sound, serious, and entertaining guide to the blues heritage that has vitalized so much of the world's musical culture.

William Ferris, director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, has written a book as deep as the blues: rich in conversation, reference, history, and firsthand experience with blues musicians and the culture that informs the music. The poetry, games, house parties, religious and secular traditions of black life in the Delta are explored in living prose that is also a work of immense scholarship.

The emergence of Jack Teagarden as an important jazz stylist was a significant feature of the '20s jazz scene. He brought a maturity to the sound of the trombone and until late in his life played with a laconic grace that few, if any, on his instrument have equaled. His collaboration with Louis Armstrong--who rated their musical relationship higher than any he had known--was one of the great partnerships in jazz history. The story of this funny, happy Texan is told with affection and detail in this, the only biography of Jack Teagarden."Obviously a man like Teagarden, with his mastery of his instrument, might have stepped into almost any kind of music and made a career for himself. But one thing this book makes clear is that Jack could not have been any kind of musician except a jazz musician. A jazz musician simply has to make his music and dedicate his life to it, even though he may not tell you (or himself) why he has to. He may not, indeed, even be able to say why, or need to say why. The need is to make music and, necessarily, lead the life that makes that possible. All of which has little or nothing to do with ego or acclaim or money. He needs to give his music to the world and he hopes the world will understand.You will find out about that need in these pages. You will also find plenty of the pranks and boys-will-be-boys anecdotes that seem so prevalent, diverting, and (under the surface) necessary a part of the musical life."--Martin Williams, from his new preface.

Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Norman Granz, Oscar Peterson, Ray Charles, Don Ellis, and Miles Davis--these are the dozen jazz figures whom Leonard Feather chose to describe the development of jazz. This is the first Feather book to examine in-depth the innovative figures who have led the way throughout the music's history. As composer, producer, and for almost half-a-century one of its leading critics, Feather has a unique perspective of these jazz immortals. He has worked with and known all of them. "These are portraits of human beings first, analyses of musicians or musical history only peripherally if at all," says Feather in his new foreword. A warm, affectionate, and perceptive inside account of twelve originals, the book is packed with wonderful stories. As Feather says: "Most of all I am grateful for the inspiration and friendship of the artists themselves. Armstrong and Ellington were directly responsible, through their records, for drawing me to jazz. After their magic had worked on me, the others, one by one, sustained and refreshed and invigorated my interest in, an involvement with, this liveliest of twentieth-century arts."

This pioneering study documents the birth of soul music in America during the 1950s and '60s when, in response to the black community's new self-awareness and pride, musicians such as James Brown, The Impressions, Wilson Pickett, King Curtis, Stevie Wonder, and others were discovering in the urban blues, gospel, and r&b a new sound--soul--that expressed fresh musical and social ideals.

John Chilton's 'Who's Who of Jazz' has established itself as a major jazz reference book on the lives of over a thousand musicians born before 1920. The informative biographies give the essential details of each musician's life and career, and jazz greats jostle with unknowns for the readers attention. This completely revised edition adds much new information to the musical histories of the players, and the biographies of some of the major figures have been rewritten to incorporate recent research.

The fifties, though a quiescent period in many ways, was one of the most fervent decades in jazz history. The landmarks of modern jazz were firmly planted and, it could be argued, nearly all directions the music has taken since then can be charted back to recordings, groups, or individuals from this era. In this series of profiles, Joe Goldberg examines the lives and the music, the crucial events and dominant forces of a decade of great music and conflicting esthetics: Miles Davis's recording of Kind of Blue Gerry Mulligan's pianoless quartet Cecil Taylor's percussive keyboard experiments John Coltrane's and Sonny Rollins's marathon saxophone solos MJQ's blending of classical structure and jazz improvisation Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz. From Mingus to Monk to Blakey, it was an age of giants. Perhaps never before or since in jazz history have so many wildly idiosyncratic jazz innovators been contemporaries. Joe Goldberg was there and what his ears heard has become here a lasting music document.

Chicago has always had a reputation as a "wide open town" with a high tolerance for gangsters, illegal liquor, and crooked politicians. It has also been the home for countless black musicians and the birthplace of a distinctly urban blues,more sophisticated, cynical, and street-smart than the anguished songs of the Mississippi delta,a music called the Chicago blues. This is the history of that music and the dozens of black artists who congregated on the South and Near West Sides. Muddy Waters, Big Bill Broonzy, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, Tampa Red, Little Walter, Jimmy Reed, Otis Rush, Sonny Boy Williamson, Junior Wells, Eddie Taylor,all of these giants played throughout the city and created a musical style that had imitators and influence all over the world.

The last few years have witnessed an enormous resurgence in the popularity of jazz, after some lean times in the sixties when many potential jazz fans turned to rock. Now the pendulum is on the backswing, and vintage and modern jazz as well as "jazz rock" are attracting huge new audiences. One factor involved in the comeback of jazz among blacks and whites alike is the rise of black consciousness, with its search for roots in the American experience. Nat Hentoff's "The Jazz Life" explores the social, economic, and psychological elements that make up the context of modern jazz. Among the jazz greats whose lives and work are discussed are Count Basie, Charles Mingus, John Lewis, Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, and Ornette Coleman. Written with intelligence, passion, and wit, this jazz classic is of immense importance to anyone wanting a better understanding of the jazz--or indeed our American life.

Blues is a language--one which has evolved its own rules and which is the sole property of a culture always forced to the periphery of white society. As such it is a political language. Whether it is passed as a legacy from African village to Mississippi farm, or from farm to Chicago ghetto, or from ghetto to Paris cafe, it is part of a larger oral heritage that is an expression of black America. Makeshift instruments, runaway slaves, railroads, prisons, empty rooms, work gangs, blindness, and pain have all been involved in the passing of this legacy, which has moved from hand to hand like a bottle of whiskey among friends and which now, for whatever reasons, seems faced with extinction. As Lightnin' Hopkins says: "I see a few young musicians coming along. But it's not many. It's not many at all, and the few that is--I'll tell you, you know what I mean, they don't have it. They just don't feel it. . . . I never had that trouble. I had the one thing you need to be a blues singer. I was born with the blues."With an awareness of the urgency involved, and with considerable devotion, Samuel Charters has chosen twelve major bluesmen, each whom represents a major facet of the blues, and has written about them. Rather than adopt the voyeuristic tone of the academician, he has used the direct visceral images that have always composed the blues. Also included are interviews, photographs, lyrics, and separate chapters on the black experience in America, and the evolution of the blues language from its African origins. Samuel Charters has renewed contact with the greatness of the blues legacy--from the haunting lyric songs of the bluesmen like Robert Pete Williams and Lightnin' Hopkins to the fiercely joyous shouts of Champion Jack Depree, Memphis Slim, and Mighty Joe Young.

From the field cries and work chants of Southern Negroes emerged a rich and vital music called the country blues, an intensely personal expression of the pains and pleasures of black life. This music- recorded during the twenties by men like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Big Bill Broonzy, and Robert Johnson- had all but disappeared from memory until the folk music revival of the late 1950's created a new and appreciable audience for the country blues.On of the pioneering studies of this unjustly-neglected music was Sam Charter's The Country Blues. In it, Charters recreates the special world of the country bluesman- that lone black performer accompanying himself on the acoustic guitar, his music a rich reflection of his own emotional life.Virtually rewriting the history of the blues, Charters reconstructs its evolution and dissemination, from the first tentative soundings on the Mississippi Delta through the emergence, with Elvis Presley, of rock and roll. His carefully-researched biographies of near-legendary performers like Lonnie Johnson, Blind Boy Fuller, and Tampa Red- coupled with his perceptive discussions of their recordings- pay tribute to a kind of artistry that will never be seen or heard again. And his portraits of the still-strumming Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Muddy Waters, and Lightnin' Hopkins- point up the undying strength and vitality of the country blues.

Blues Book of the Year -Living Blues With this volume, Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff complete their groundbreaking trilogy on the development of African American popular music. Fortified by decades of research, the authors bring to life the performers, entrepreneurs, critics, venues, and institutions that were most crucial to the emergence of the blues in black southern vaudeville theaters; the shadowy prehistory and early development of the blues is illuminated, detailed, and given substance. At the end of the nineteenth century, vaudeville began to replace minstrelsy as America's favorite form of stage entertainment. Segregation necessitated the creation of discrete African American vaudeville theaters. When these venues first gained popularity ragtime coon songs were the standard fare. Insular black southern theaters provided a safe haven, where coon songs underwent rehabilitation and blues songs suitable for the professional stage were formulated. The process was energized by dynamic interaction between the performers and their racially-exclusive audience. The first blues star of black vaudeville was Butler "String Beans" May, a blackface comedian from Montgomery, Alabama. Before his bizarre, senseless death in 1917, String Beans was recognized as the "blues master piano player of the world." His musical legacy, elusive and previously unacknowledged, is preserved in the repertoire of country blues singer-guitarists and pianists of the race recording era. While male blues singers remained tethered to the role of blackface comedian, female "coon shouters" acquired a more dignified aura in the emergent persona of the "blues queen." Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and most of their contemporaries came through this portal; while others, such as forgotten blues heroine Ora Criswell and her protege Trixie Smith, ingeniously reconfigured the blackface mask for their own subversive purposes. In 1921 black vaudeville activity was effectively nationalized by the Theater Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A.). In collaboration with the emergent race record industry, T.O.B.A. theaters featured touring companies headed by blues queens with records to sell. By this time the blues had moved beyond the confines of entertainment for an exclusively black audience. Small-time black vaudeville became something it had never been before-a gateway to big-time white vaudeville circuits, burlesque wheels, and fancy metropolitan cabarets. While the 1920s was the most glamorous and remunerative period of vaudeville blues, the prior decade was arguably even more creative, having witnessed the emergence, popularization, and early development of the original blues on the African American vaudeville stage.

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.

John Mayall is an icon in the world of blues music and the Godfather of British blues. A pioneering musician, blues promoter and talent scout for over 50 years, his uncanny knack of picking young, talented musicians and then nurturing them in his bands is the stuff of legend. Under his guidance as leader and sometimes father figure, his groups developed into a blues school of learning par excellence. Many young members became huge stars later on, among them brilliant musicians such as Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Jack Bruce, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Mick Taylor and drummer Jon Hiseman. In Mayalls bands, an incredible 130 musicians have done their apprenticeship and earned their spurs. Top bands like Cream, Fleetwood Mac or Colosseum would never have existed without his inspiration and guidance. Now 80 and showing no signs of slowing down, John Mayall has an amazing back catalogue totalling some 86 albums, and has played over 5000 live concerts all over the world. He is still rated as one of the most influential and respected figures in the international blues and rock scene. This is the first detailed biography of Mayall, illuminating not only his life and career, but also providing deeper, more detailed insights into the development of his many fellow musicians. It follows the young Mayall from the early days of jamming in his tree house as a teenager to the vast tours he undertakes today. Even die-hard blues fans will find a lot of undiscovered anecdotes and stories here, as the book covers all phases of the Mayalls career and not just the 60s.

This token provides access to the companion website and streaming audio anthology for Richard J. Lawn's Experiencing Jazz. Course components The complete course comprises the textbook and Online Access to Music token, which are available to purchase separately. The textbook and Online Access to Music Token can also be purchased together in the Experiencing Jazz Book and Online Access to Music Pack. Book and Online Access to Music Pack: 978-0-415-65935-2 (Paperback and Online Access to Music) Book Only: 978-0-415-69960-0 (please note this does not include the Online Access to Music) Online Access to Music Token: 978-0-415-83735-4 (please note this does not include the textbook) eBook and Online Access to Music Pack: 978-0-203-37981-3 (available from the Taylor & Francis eBookstore) ebook: 978-0-203-37985-1 (please note this does not include the audio and is available from the Taylor & Francis eBookstore)

"Broadcasting the Blues: Black Blues in the Segregation Era "is based on Paul Oliver's award-winning radio broadcasts from the BBC that were created over several decades. It traces the social history of the blues in America, from its birth in the rural South through the heyday of sound recordings. Noted blues scholar Paul Oliver draws on decades of research and personal interviews with performers -- some of whom he "discovered" and recorded for the first time -- to draw a picture of how the blues aesthetic developed, giving new insights into the role blues played in American society before racial integration.
The book begins by outlining the history of the blues from African music through country stomps, ragtime songs, and field hollers. From the heroic figures of black folksong -- including the steel-driving railroad worker John Henry and the destructive Boll Weevil -- to the content of the emerging blues, the author discusses the "meaning" behind the often coded words of the blues, evoking topics such as playful sexuality, magic and medicine, the stresses of segregation, and commentary on national events. Finally, the author traces the history of blues documentation, showing how our views of the early blues have been shaped through a complex interplay of social forces, and indicating possible lines for future research.

One of the most innovative and ambitious books to appear on the civil rights and black power movements in America, "Just My Soul Responding" also offers a major challenge to conventional histories of contemporary black and popular music. Brian Ward explores in detail the previously neglected relationship between Rhythm and Blues, black consciousness, and race relations within the context of the ongoing struggle for black freedom and equality in the United States. Instead of simply seeing the world of black music as a reflection of a mass struggle raging elsewhere, Ward argues that Rhythm and Blues, and the recording and broadcasting industries with which it was linked, formed a crucial public arena for battles over civil rights, racial identities, and black economic empowerment.
Combining unrivalled archival research with extensive oral testimony, Ward examines the contributions of artists and entrepreneurs like Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, and Berry Gordy to the organized black struggle, explaining what they did for the Movement and--just as important--why they and most of their peers failed to do more. In the process, he analyses the ways in which various groups, from the SCLC to the Black Panthers, tried--with very mixed results--to use Rhythm and Blues and the politics of celebrity to further their cause. He also examines the role that black-oriented radio played in promoting both Rhythm and Blues and the Movement, and unravels the intricate connections between the sexual politics of the music and the development of the black freedom struggle.
This richly textured study of some of the most important music and complex political events in America since World War II challenges the belief that white consumption of black music necessarily helped eradicate racial prejudice. Indeed, Ward argues that the popularity of Rhythm and Blues among white listeners sometimes only reinforced racial stereotypes, while noting how black artists actually manipulated those stereotypes to increase their white audiences. Ultimately, Ward shows how the music both reflected and affected shifting perceptions of community, empowerment, identity, and gender relations in America during the civil rights and black power eras.

This vivid celebration of blues and early rock 'n' roll includes some of the first and most illuminating profiles of such blues masters as Muddy Waters, Skip James, and Howlin' Wolf; excursions into the blues-based Memphis rock 'n' roll of Jerry Lee Lewis, Charlie Rich, and the Sun record label; and a brilliant depiction of the bustling Chicago blues scene and the legendary Chess record label in its final days. With unique insight and unparalleled access, Peter Guralnick brings to life the people, the songs, and the performance that forever changed not only the American music scene but America itself.

Bands were playing, people were dancing, the music business was booming. It was the big-band era, and swing was giving a new shape and sound to American culture. Swing Changes looks at New Deal America through its music and shows us how the contradictions and tensions within swing-over race, politics, its own cultural status, the role of women-mirrored those played out in the larger society. Drawing on memoirs, oral histories, newspapers, magazines, recordings, photographs, literature, and films, Swing Changes offers a vibrant picture of American society at a pivotal time, and a new perspective on music as a cultural force.

Art Pepper (1925-1982) was called the greatest alto saxophonist of the post-Charlie Parker generation. But his autobiography, "Straight Life," is much more than a jazz book--it is one of the most explosive, yet one of the most lyrical, of all autobiographies. This edition is updated with an extensive afterword by Laurie Pepper covering Art Pepper's last years, and a complete and up-to-date discography by Todd Selbert.

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.

So You Want to Sing the Blues: A Guide for Performers shines a light on the history and vibrant modern life of blues song. Eli Yamin explores those essential elements that make the blues sound authentic and guides readers of all backgrounds and levels through mastering this art form. He provides glimpses into the musical lives of the women and men who created the blues along with a listening tour of seminal recordings in the genre's history. The blues presents many unique challenges for singers, who must shout, slide, and serenade around the accompanying music. By offering concrete explanations and exercises of key blues elements, this book guides singers to create authentic self-expressions informed by the style's rich history and supported by strong technique. Teachers and singers of all levels will find this book a welcome guide to participating in this culturally diverse and uplifting style. The So You Want to Sing series is produced in partnership with the National Association of Teachers of Singing. Like all books in the series, So You Want to Sing the Blues features online supplemental material on the NATS website. Please visit www.nats.org to access style-specific exercises, audio and video files, and additional resources.

Ethel Waters overcame her disadvantaged childhood to become the most famous African American actress, singer, and entertainer of her time. Her critically acclaimed move to Broadway in the mid 1920s-after having first triumphed in Black vaudeville during the Harlem Renaissance-brought the startlingly innovative and subtle character of Black Theatre into the mainstream. Ethel transformed such songs as "Dinah," "Am I Blue?," "Stormy Weather," and Irving Berlin's "Heat Wave" into classics and inspired the next generation of Black female vocalists. She gave sophistication and class to the blues and American popular song, and she influenced countless singers including Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra. Tough, uncompromising, courageous, and ambitious, Ethel Waters became one of the first African American women to be given equal billing with white stars on the Broadway stage. In 1943, the film version of her Broadway success, Cabin in the Sky, established her as Hollywood's first Black-leading lady. In such plays as Mamba's Daughters and films including The Member of the Wedding, she shattered the myth that Black women could perform only as singers. For her work in Pinky, she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, the second African American to be so honored. Although she was arguably the most influential female blues and jazz singer of the 1920s and 1930s, as well as a major Black figure in 20th century theatre, cinema, radio, and television, she is now the least remembered. In Ethel Waters: Stormy Weather, Stephen Bourne documents the career of this monumental figure in American popular culture, offering new insights into the work of this forgotten legend. Supplemented by fourteen photographs, this biography leaves little doubt as to why-for decades-no other Black star was held in such high regard.

W. C. Handy's blues, Memphis Blues," "Beale Street Blues," "St. Louis Blues",changed America's music forever. In Father of the Blues, Handy presents his own story: a vivid picture of American life now vanished. W. C. Handy (1873-1958) was a sensitive child who loved nature and music but not until he had won a reputation did his father, a preacher of stern Calvinist faith, forgive him for following the "devilish" calling of black music and theatre. Here Handy tells of this and other struggles: the lot of a black musician with entertainment groups in the turn-of-the-century South his days in minstrel shows, and then in his own band how he made his first 100 from "Memphis Blues" how his orchestra came to grief with the First World War his successful career in New York as publisher and song writer his association with the literati of the Harlem Renaissance.Handy's remarkable tale,pervaded with his unique personality and humour,reveals not only the career of the man who brought the blues to the world's attention, but the whole scope of American music, from the days of the old popular songs of the South, through ragtime to the great era of jazz.

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.