(Book). Stevie Ray Vaughan tightly grips a place in music history as an unmatched blues man and guitar legend. His unique style is unmistakable and has never been repeated. His otherworldly talent and relentless drive took him from humble beginnings in Texas bars to world tours and superstar status. His bustling career and steady stream of inspiring music came to an abrupt end all too soon at the age of 35, immediately following his triumph over the demons of addiction that followed him for years. Finally free and ready for bigger, better things, Vaughan was killed in a helicopter crash in 1990, leaving his many fans to mourn the musician they had grown to love and wonder what could have been. In a day-by-day format, Craig Hopkins presents an unprecedented celebration of this artist. This book is the second installment of a two-volume account of Vaughan's life. With this work, Hopkins delivers one of the most detailed biographies of any musician. His Final Years covers Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble's recording career, from their debut release through their rise to stardom, an exciting journey with its fair share of glory and controversy. Filled with testimonials from those who knew him best and from fans everywhere, along with facts about tour dates and recordings, and a lavish gallery of rare photographs, this illustrated book (along with its companion, His Early Years, 1954-1982 ) is the ultimate collector's item for any Stevie Ray Vaughan fan.

At the height of the blues revival, Marina Bokelman and David Evans, young graduate students from California, made two trips to Louisiana and Mississippi and short trips in their home state to do fieldwork for their studies at UCLA. While there, they made recordings and interviews and took extensive field notes and photographs of blues musicians and their families. Going Up the Country: Adventures in Blues Fieldwork in the 1960s presents their experiences in vivid detail through the field notes, the photographs, and the retrospective views of these two passionate researchers. The book includes historical material as well as contemporary reflections by Bokelman and Evans on the times and the people they met during their southern journeys. Their notes and photographs take the reader into the midst of memorable encounters with many obscure but no less important musicians, as well as blues legends, including Robert Pete Williams, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Al Wilson (cofounder of Canned Heat), Babe Stovall, Reverend Ruben Lacy, and Jack Owens. This volume is not only an adventure story, but also a scholarly discussion of fieldwork in folklore and ethnomusicology. Including retrospective context and commentary, the field note chapters describe searches for musicians, recording situations, social and family dynamics of musicians, and race relations and the racial environment, as well as the practical, ethical, and logistical problems of doing fieldwork. The book features over one hundred documentary photographs that depict the field recording sessions and the activities, lives, and living conditions of the artists and their families. These photographs serve as a visual counterpart equivalent to the field notes. The remaining chapters explain the authors' methodology, planning, and motivations, as well as their personal backgrounds prior to going into the field, their careers afterwards, and their thoughts about fieldwork and folklore research in general. In this enlightening book, Bokelman and Evans provide an exciting and honest portrayal of blues field research in the 1960s.

(Guitar Recorded Versions). 30 tunes: Evil * Got My Mojo Working * Honey Bee * I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man * more.

(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.

**As featured on Barack Obama's Summer 2022 Reading List** Winner of the Gordon Burn Prize Winner of the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist for the Pen/Diamonstein-Spievogel Award for the Art of the Essay Shortlisted for the National Book Award 'Gorgeous' - Brit Bennett 'Pure genius' - Jacqueline Woodson 'One of the most dynamic books I have ever read' - Clint Smith At the March on Washington, Josephine Baker reflected on her life and her legacy. She had spent decades as one of the most successful entertainers in the world, but, she told the crowd, "I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too". Inspired by these words, Hanif Abdurraqib has written a stirring meditation on Black performance in the modern age, in which culture, history and his own lived experience collide. With sharp insight, humour and heart, Abdurraqib explores a sequence of iconic and intimate performances that take him from mid-century Paris to the moon -- and back down again, to a cramped living room in Columbus, Ohio. Each one, he shows, has layers of resonance across Black and white cultures, the politics of American empire, and his own personal history of love and grief -- whether it's the twenty-seven seconds of 'Gimme Shelter' in which Merry Clayton sings, or the magnificent hours of Aretha Franklin's homegoing; Beyonce's Super Bowl show or a schoolyard fistfight; Dave Chapelle's skits or a game of spades among friends.

John Coltrane was a key figure in jazz, a pioneer in world music, and an intensely emotional force whose following continues to grow. This new biography, the first by a professional jazz scholar and performer, presents a huge amount of never-before-published material, including interviews with Coltrane, photos, genealogical documents, and innovative musical analysis that offers a fresh view of Coltrane's genius.
Compiled from scratch with the assistance of dozens of Coltrane's colleagues, friends, and family, "John Coltrane: His Life and Music" corrects numerous errors from previous biographies. The significant people in Coltrane's life were reinterviewed, yielding new insights; some were interviewed for the first time ever.
The musical analysis, which is accessible to the nonspecialist, makes its own revelations--for example, that some of Coltrane's well-known pieces are based on previously unrecognized sources. The Appendix is the most detailed chronology of Coltrane's performing career ever compiled, listing scores of previously unknown performances from the 1940s and early 1950s.
Coltrane has become a musical inspiration for thousands of fans and musicians and a personal inspiration to as many more. For all of these, Porter's book will become the definitive resource--a reliable guide to the events of Coltrane's life and an insightful look into his musical practices.
." . . well researched, musically knowledgeable, and enormously interesting to read. Porter is a jazz scholar with deep knowledge of the tradition he is studying, both conceptually and technically." --Richard Crawford, University of Michigan
"Lewis Porter is a meticulous person with love and respect forAfro-American classical music. I applaud this definitive study of my friend John Coltrane's life adn achievements." --Jimmy Heath, jazz saxophonist, composer, educator
Lewis Porter is Associate Professor of Music, Rutgers University in Newark. A leading jazz scholar, he is the author of "Jazz Readings from a Century of Change" and coauthor of "Jazz: From Its Origins to the Present," He was a project consultant on "The Complete Atlantic Recordings of John Coltrane," which was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Historical Reissue, and an editor and assisting author of the definitive Coltrane discography by Y. Fujioka.

According to Eric Clapton, John Mayer, and the late Stevie Ray Vaughn, Buddy Guy is the greatest blues guitarist of all time. An enormous influence on these musicians as well as Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck, he is the living embodiment of Chicago blues. Guy's epic story stands at the absolute nexus of modern blues. He came to Chicago from rural Louisiana in the fifties,the very moment when urban blues were electrifying our culture. He was a regular session player at Chess Records. Willie Dixon was his mentor. He was a sideman in the bands of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. He and Junior Wells formed a band of their own. In the sixties, he became a recording star in his own right. When I Left Home tells Guy's picaresque story in his own unique voice, that of a storyteller who remembers everything, including blues masters in their prime and the exploding, evolving culture of music that happened all around him.

At the height of the blues revival, Marina Bokelman and David Evans, young graduate students from California, made two trips to Louisiana and Mississippi and short trips in their home state to do fieldwork for their studies at UCLA. While there, they made recordings and interviews and took extensive field notes and photographs of blues musicians and their families. Going Up the Country: Adventures in Blues Fieldwork in the 1960s presents their experiences in vivid detail through the field notes, the photographs, and the retrospective views of these two passionate researchers. The book includes historical material as well as contemporary reflections by Bokelman and Evans on the times and the people they met during their southern journeys. Their notes and photographs take the reader into the midst of memorable encounters with many obscure but no less important musicians, as well as blues legends, including Robert Pete Williams, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Al Wilson (cofounder of Canned Heat), Babe Stovall, Reverend Ruben Lacy, and Jack Owens. This volume is not only an adventure story, but also a scholarly discussion of fieldwork in folklore and ethnomusicology. Including retrospective context and commentary, the field note chapters describe searches for musicians, recording situations, social and family dynamics of musicians, and race relations and the racial environment, as well as the practical, ethical, and logistical problems of doing fieldwork. The book features over one hundred documentary photographs that depict the field recording sessions and the activities, lives, and living conditions of the artists and their families. These photographs serve as a visual counterpart equivalent to the field notes. The remaining chapters explain the authors' methodology, planning, and motivations, as well as their personal backgrounds prior to going into the field, their careers afterwards, and their thoughts about fieldwork and folklore research in general. In this enlightening book, Bokelman and Evans provide an exciting and honest portrayal of blues field research in the 1960s.

Artists like Bill Robinson, King Rastus Brown, John Bubbles, Honi Coles and others who speak to us in this book, are our Nijinskys, Daighilevs, Balanchines, and Grahams. There are so many books on ballet and modern dance. There are still a few on tap dance and they are so cavalierly allowed to go out of print even though the interest in them is so deep and sustaining.

This stellar collection contains banjo tab arrangements of 12 bluegrass/folk songs from this Grammy-winning Album of the Year. Includes: Angel Band * The Big Rock Candy Mountain * Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby * Down to the River to Pray * I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow * I Am Weary (Let Me Rest) * I'll Fly Away * In the Highways (I'll Be Somewhere Working for My Lord) * In the Jailhouse Now * Keep on the Sunny Side * and You Are My Sunshine, plus lyrics and a banjo notation legend.

Nadine Jansen, a flugelhornist and pianist, remembers a night in the 1940s when a man came out of the audience as she was playing both instruments. "I hate to see a woman do that," he explained as he hit the end of her horn, nearly chipping her tooth. Half a century later, a big band named Diva made its debut in New York on March 30, 1993, with Melissa Slocum on bass, Sue Terry on alto sax, Lolly Bienenfeld on trombone, Sherrie Maricle on drums, and a host of other first rate instrumentalists. The band made such a good impression that it was immediately booked to play at Carnegie Hall the following year. For those who had yet to notice, Diva signaled the emergence of women musicians as a significant force in jazz.
Madame Jazz is a fascinating invitation to the inside world of women in jazz. Ranging primarily from the late 1970s to today's vanguard of performance jazz in New York City and on the West Coast, it chronicles a crucial time of transition as women make the leap from novelty acts regarded as second class citizens to sought-out professionals admired and hired for their consummate musicianship. Author Leslie Gourse surveys the scene in the jazz clubs, the concert halls, the festivals, and the recording studios from the musicians' point of view. She finds exciting progress on all fronts, but also lingering discrimination. The growing success of women instrumentalists has been a long time in coming, she writes. Long after women became accepted as writers and, to a lesser extent, as visual artists, women in music--classical, pop, or jazz--faced the nearly insuperable barrier of chauvinism and the still insidious force of tradition and habit that keeps most men performing with the musicians they have always worked with, other men.
Gourse provides dozens of captivating no-holds-barred interviews with both rising stars and seasoned veterans. Here are up-and-coming pianists Renee Rosnes and Rachel Z., trumpeter Rebecca Coupe Frank, saxophonist Virginia Mayhew, bassist Tracy Wormworth, and drummer Terri Lynne Carrington, and enduring legends Dorothy Donegan, Marian McParland and Shirley Horne. Here, as well, are conversations with three pioneering business women: agent and producer Helen Keane, manager Linda Goldstein, and festival and concert producer Cobi Narita. All of the women speak insightfully about their inspiration and their commitment to pursuing the music they love. They are also frank about the realities of life on the road, and the extra dues women musicians pay in a tough and competitive field where everybody pays dues. A separate chapter offers a closer look at women musicians and the continual stress confronting those who would combine love, marriage, and/or motherhood with a life in music.
Madame Jazz is about the history that women jazz instrumentalists are making now, as well as an inspiring preview of the even brighter days ahead. It concludes with Frankie Nemko's lively evaluation of the West Coast jazz scene, and appends the most comprehensive list ever assembled of women currently playing instruments professionally.

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.

Bold and original, The Power of Black Music offers a new way of listening to the music of black America, and appreciating its profound contribution to all American music.

Created in the jazz clubs of New York City, and initially treated by most musicians and audiences as radical, chaotic, and bewildering: bebop has become, Thomas Owen writes, `the lingua franca of jazz, serving as the principal musical language of thousands of jazz musicians.'

In Bebop, Owens conducts us on an insightful, loving tour through the music, players, and recordings that changed American culture. Combining vivid portraits of bebop's gigantic personalities - among them Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis - with deft musical analysis, he offers an instrument-by-instrument look at the key players and their innovations.

Art Tatum was the greatest virtuoso performer in the history of jazz piano; his technique overwhelmed almost every jazz player who heard him and caused classical virtuosos to take notice.

Through extensive interviews with Tatum's friends and fellow musicians, James Lester captures the complexities of this remarkable talent and the vibrant jazz world of the 1930s and 1940s in which he played.

It was none other than Louis Armstrong who said, "These people who make the restrictions, they don't know nothing about music. It's no crime for cats of any color to get together and blow." "You can't know what it means to be black in the United States--in any field," Dizzy Gillespie once said, but Gillespie vigorously objected to the proposition that only black people could play jazz. "If you accept that premise, well then what you're saying is that maybe black people can only play jazz. And black people, like anyone else, can be anything they want to be."
In Cats of Any Color, Gene Lees, the acclaimed author of three previous collections of essays on jazz and popular music, takes a long overdue look at the shocking pervasiveness of racism in jazz's past and present--both the white racism that long ghettoized the music and generations of talented black musicians, and what Lees maintains is an increasingly virulent reverse racism aimed at white jazz musicians. In candid interviews, living jazz legends, critics, and composers step forward and share their thoughts on how racism has affected their lives. Dave Brubeck, part Modoc Indian, discusses native Americans' contribution to jazz and the deeply ingrained racism that for a time made it all but impossible for jazz groups with black and white players to book tours and television appearances. Horace Silver looks back on his long career, including the first time he ever heard jazz played live. Blacks were not not allowed into the pavilion in Connecticut where Jimmie Lunceford's band was performing, so the ten-year-old Silver listened and watched through the wooden slats surrounding the pavilion. "And oh man That was it " Silver recalls. Red Rodney recalls his early days with Charlie "Bird" Parker, and pianist and composer Cedar Walton tells of the time Duke Ellington played at the army base at Ford Dix and allowed the young enlisted Walton to sit in. Tracing the jazz world's shifting attitude towards race, many of the stories Lees tells are inspiring--Brubeck cancelling 23 out of 25 concert dates in the South rather than replace black bass player Eugene Wright, or Silver insisting that while he strives to provide his fellow black musicians opportunities, "I just want the best musicans I can get. I don't give a damn if they're pink or polka dot." Others are profoundly disturbing--Lees' first encounter with Oscar Peterson, after a Canadian barber flatly refused to cut Peterson's hair, or Wynton Marsalis on television claiming that blacks have been held back for so many years because the music business is controlled by "people who read the Torah and stuff."
From the old shantytowns of Louisville, to the streets of South Central L.A., to the up-to-the-minute controversies surrounding Marsalis's jazz program at Lincoln Center, and the Jazz Masters awards given by the NEA, Cats of Any Color confronts racism head-on. At its heart is a passionate plea to recognize jazz not as the sole property of any one group, but as an art form celebrating the human spirit--not just for the protection of individual musicians, but for the preservation of the music itself.

As music columnist for The Nation, Gene Santoro has established himself as an important new critical voice, able to write well on a broad spectrum of popular music and jazz, without losing touch with the cutting edge of today's music scene.

Dancing in Your Head gathers Santoro's liveliest reviews and essays for the first time, introducing a fresh and provocative perspective on several decades of musicians and their work. From the legendary blues singer Robert Johnson to Miles Davis and James Brown, from the sounds of Neil Young and Lou Reed to Public Enemy's controversial rap lyrics, this books offers sharp and honest reflections on the evolution of jazz, rock and roll, and rap.

Duke Ellington is universally recognized as one of the towering figures of 20th-century music, both a brilliant composer and one of the preeminent musicians in jazz history.

In The Duke Ellington Reader, Mark Tucker offers the first historical anthology of writings about this major African-American musician. The volume includes over a hundred selections - interviews, critical essays, reviews, memoirs, and over a dozen writings by Ellington himself - with generous introductions and annotations for each selection provided by the editor. The result is a unique sourcebook that illuminates Ellington's work and reveals the profound impact his music has made on listeners over the years.

In Chicago Jazz, William Howland Kenny offers a wide-ranging look at jazz in the Windy City, revealing how Chicago became the major centre for jazz in the 1920s, one of the most vital periods in the history of the music.

A well researched account of gospel blues that encompasses the broader cultural and religious histories of the African-American experience between the late 1890s and the 1930s. Harris skilfully contextualizes sacred and secular music styles within African-American religious history and significant social developments of the period.

Martin Williams is recognized as one of the most significant jazz critics of recent times. This third collection of record notes, interviews, portraits, and reviews recalls the Charlie Parker-Dizzy Gillespie Dial Record sessions, Langston Hughes reading poetry to the sound of jazz, and Thelonius Monk recording for the Library of Congress. In addition, there are profiles of such legendary performers as Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Duke Ellington, and Fats Waller, and lively essays on the importance of jazz history and a jazz-view of The Beatles.

No one can tell us more about jazz than the musicians themselves. Unfortunately, most oral histories have limited scope--focusing on a particular era or style--and fail to capture the full, rich story of jazz. Now, in this vivid oral history, W. Royal Stokes presents nearly a century of jazz--its people, places, periods, and styles--as it was seen by the artists who created America's most distinctive music.
Here, along with the author's enlightening commentary, are the words of musicians famous and little-known, veterans of the early years and pathbreakers of the present, telling us about their origins and adventures, about the places and performers they have known. We read of young artists learning their skills surrounded by poverty, going on to win fame around the world. We feel the excitement of jazz before the war ("The music was all over the place," recalled Wild Bill Davison. "It's just unbelievable how many bands there were in Chicago. You could go anywhere and there'd be a band."). And we glimpse the gritty, hard life hidden beneath the beauty of the notes they played: "I remember not eating practically a month several times," said Mary Lou Williams. "During the depression we played engagements and we knew we weren't going to get any money because Andy would scatch his face when he was walking toward the band and the trumpet player would pull out his horn and play the 'Weary Blues.' And we'd laugh about it. We hadn't eaten in a couple of days and nothing was said, because the music was our survival."
Stokes not only uncovers the history of jazz in the major cities and regions--New Orleans, for instance, Chicago in the '20s and '30s, Kansas City, and California from the '50s to the present--but he goes on to bring us the story of the big bands, post-bebop developments, vocalists, jazz around the globe, and the contemporary scene ("I was about eleven and my brother Mike started to bring home a lot of Miles Davis records from school and that did it for me," remembers Pat Metheny. "First time I heard Miles playing 'My Funny Valentine, ' that whole record just destroyed me."). And he takes a close look at the rising place of women as instrumentalists in the last decade.
Jazz is America's most original contribution to music, and--as the late Dexter Gordon lamented--America is the one country where it is little known. But W. Royal Stokes uncovers a scene that is as alive as ever, with this fascinating look at how it has been made and remade from the first decades of the century to today.

This perceptive study takes a fresh look at jazz in relation to other art forms and places it in the context of contemporary culture. This original approach relates the work of Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, and Ormette Coleman to such subjects as primitivism, neoclassicism, improvisation, aesthetics, and good taste.

Born of poor Jewish immigrant parents in Chicago in 1909, Beny Goodman joined the local synagogue band at the age of ten with two of his brothers. As he was the smallest of the three he was given a clarinet. Within a decade he was a musical legend, constantly in demand for radio shows and guest appearances with America's leading jazz orchestras. In 1934 he formed his own band, and by the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman was hailed as the undisputed `King of Swing'. James Lincoln Collier brilliantly recreates the colourful popular music world of the 1920s and 1930s, when the music industry was just expanding, radio was the great source of musical entertainment, and swing bands were first finding national audiences. He also offers perceptive insights into the character and music of a man whose magic transformed the Depression years into the Swing Era.