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.

Robert Johnson is the subject of the most famous myth about the blues: he allegedly sold his soul at the crossroads in exchange for his incredible talent, and this deal led to his death at age 27. But the actual story of his life remains unknown save for a few inaccurate anecdotes. Up Jumped the Devil is the result of over 50 years of research. Gayle Dean Wardlow has been interviewing people who knew Robert Johnson since the early 1960s, and he was the person who discovered Johnson's death certificate in 1967. Bruce Conforth began his study of Johnson's life and music in 1970 and made it his mission to fill in what was still unknown about him. In this definitive biography, the two authors relied on every interview, resource and document, most of it material no one has seen before. As a result, this book not only destroys every myth that ever surrounded Johnson, but also tells a human story of a real person. It is the first book about Johnson that documents his years in Memphis, details his trip to New York, uncovers where and when his wife Virginia died and the impact this had on him, fully portrays the other women Johnson was involved with, and tells exactly how and why he died and who gave him the poison that killed him. Up Jumped the Devil will astonish blues fans who thought they knew something about Johnson.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The author of "Women, Race and Class" suggests that "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday represent a black working-class, feminist ideology and historical consciousness. Davis' illuminating analysis of the songs performed by these artists provides readers with a compelling and transformative understanding of their musical and social contributions and of their relation to both the African-American community and American culture. of photos.

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.

Martin Williams is one of the most perceptive and entertaining jazz critics writing in America today. This collection of pieces on the past, present, and future of the jazz idiom includes profiles of Sidney Bechet, Ornette Coleman, and Miles Davis, an assessment of jazz-rock fusion, and a look at the pressures placed on musicians and their music by commercialism.

The 1920s were not called the Jazz Age for nothing. Celebrated by writers from Langston Hughes to Gertrude Stein, jazz was the dominant influence on American popular music, despite resistance from whites who distrusted its vibrant expression of black culture and by those opposed to the overt sexuality and raw emotion of the `devil's music'. As Kathy Ogren shows, the breathless pace and syncopated rhythms were as much a part of twenties America as Prohibition and the economic boom, which enabled millions throughout the states to enjoy the latest sounds on radios and phonographs.

It's never too late to play blues, rags & boogies is the latest addition to the best-selling piano tutor series, It's Never Too Late... by Pam Wedgwood. Through favourite repertoire in easy-to-play arrangements, classic tunes and great new pieces in blues, ragtime and boogie styles, this book helps pianists learn and explore all the different skills and techniques needed to play. Pam Wedgwood is one of the UK's favourite composers of popular piano music and creator of Jazzin' About, After Hours and Up-Grade. The ground-breaking It's never too late... Series gives adults the opportunity to learn the piano with a method devised especially for them. This best-selling tutor breaks the learning into manageable chunks, features online audio, and is packed with irresistible music and fascinating information - all the motivation needed to make learning fun!

`The Roaring Twenties' - the time when Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Duke Ellington, Gershwin, Berlin, and Porter all burst onto the musical scene.

Covering blues, jazz, band music, torch ballads, operettas, and musicals, Arnold Shaw's lively account embraces all the major personalities of the Jazz Age, from instrumentalists to composers, singers to lyricists. It also includes a bibliography, a detailed discography, and lists of songs and relevant films from the 1920s.

Exploring the diverse landscape of American life, the stories in Blues and Trouble: Twelve Stories capture the lives of people caught between circumstance and their own natures or on the run from fate, from a Jewish couple encountering a dealer in Nazi memorabilia to the troubled family of a Gulf Coast fisherman awaiting a hurricane. Tom Piazza's debut short story collection, originally published in 1996, heralded the arrival of a startlingly original and vital presence in American fiction and letters. Set in Memphis, New Orleans, Florida, Texas, New York City, and elsewhere, the stories echo voices from Ernest Hemingway to Robert Johnson in their sharp eye for detail and their emotional impact. New to this volume is an introduction written by the author. Drawing themes, forms, and stylistic approaches from blues and country music, these stories present a tough, haunting vision of a landscape where the social and spiritual ground shifts constantly underfoot.

Over a ten-year period, Ira Gitler interviewed more than fifty of the major figures in jazz history to preserve for posterity their recollections of how jazz moved from the big band era in the late 1930s and 1940s into the modern jazz period. The musicians interviewed recreate their own experiences and also evoke the legendary figures of bop who were especially influential in its development but were rarely or never recorded, people like Clyde Hart and Freddie Webster.

Beginning with the African musical heritage and its fusion with European forms in the New World, Marshall Stearns's history of jazz guides the reader through work songs, spirituls, ragtime, and the blues, to the birth of jazz in New Orleans and its adoption by St Louis, Chicago, Kansas City, and New York. From swing and bop to the early days of rock, this lively book introduces us to the great musicians and singers and examines jazz's cultural effects on American and the world.

An essential how-to guide for students and teachers, this publication is a complete step-by-step guide to playing jazz with confidence and style. Designed for the complete beginner, it breaks down the process of learning jazz into simple activities and contains a range of easy music examples. The accompanying CD provides examples, activities and some great trio playing to use as a backdrop to your own work. It is an indispensable companion to the ABRSM's Jazz Piano exams, with Part III dealing with the exam in detail.

Probes the principal contradiction in the jazz world: that between black artistry on the one hand and white ownership of the means of jazz distribution -- the recording companies, booking agencies, festivals, nightclubs, and magazines -- on the other.

(Harmonica Play-Along). The Harmonica Play-Along Series will help you play your favorite songs quickly and easily. Just follow the notation, listen to the CD to hear how the harmonica should sound, and then play along using the separate backing tracks. The melody and lyrics are also included in the book in case you want to sing, or to simply help you follow along. The audio CD is playable on any CD player, and also enhanced so PC and Mac users can adjust the recording to any tempo without changing pitch Volume 10 includes: Baby, Scratch My Back * Eyesight to the Blind * Good Morning Little Schoolgirl * Honest I Do * I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man * My Babe * Ride and Roll * Sweet Home Chicago.

This latest entry in Backbeat's bestselling handbook series starts by exploring the humble beginnings of blues guitar through the early decades of the 20th century, including profiles of such players as Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, and Son House. As the story moves into the '40s and '50s, and blues players migrate to major urban centers, author Adam St. James follows the evolution of the music at the hands of such electric blues kingpins as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and B. B. King. Then it's the blues-rockers of the '60s, '70s, and '80s (including Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Stevie Ray Vaughan) before the story comes up to date, with blues flame-keepers such as Keb Mo' or Duke Robillard, and some not-quite-traditionalists, such as Robben Ford or Derek Trucks. A comprehensive section for mastering electric and acoustic blues follows this historic overview. Starting from the very basics, it leads you into more advanced rhythm and lead techniques before examining four key styles: acoustic blues, classic electric blues, blues rock, and jazz blues. The many exercises in the book are supported by specially recorded audio tracks accessed online using the unique code inside each book. The audio files include PLAYBACK+, a multi-functional audio player that allows you to slow down audio without changing pitch, set loop points, change keys, and pan left or right.