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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Contemporary popular music > Jazz
Skollie, saint, scholar, hippest of hippies, imperfect musician with a perfect imagination, Syd Kitchen was, like all great artists, born to enrich his art and not himself.
Plagued by drugs, alcohol and depression, too much of an outlaw to be embraced by record companies, he frequently sold his furniture to cover production costs of his albums, seduced fans at concerts and music festivals worldwide with his dazzling ‘Afro-Saxon’ mix of folk, jazz, blues and rock interspersed with marvellously irreverent banter, and finally became the subject of several compelling documentaries, one of which - Fool in a Bubble - premiered in New York in 2010.
Get into the music with David Leander Williams as he charts the
rise and fall of Indiana Avenue, the Majestic Entertainment
Boulevard of Indianapolis, which produced some of the nation's most
influential jazz artists. The performance venues that once lined
the vibrant thoroughfare were an important stop on the Chitlin'
Circuit and provided platforms for greats like Freddie Hubbard and
Jimmy Coe. Through this biography of the bustling street, meet
scores of the other musicians who came to prominence in the
avenue's heyday, including trombonist J.J. Johnson and guitarist
Wes Montgomery, as well as songwriters like Noble Sissle and Leroy
Carr.
This second updated edition of Notes from a Jazz Life includes
Digby Fairweather's career since the year 2000 as a jazz cornetist,
band leader, educator and broadcaster, working with George Melly
and leading his band the Half-Dozen. The book has much to offer to
people who are even marginally interested in jazz in all its wide
variety of forms as well as providing insights for regular jazz
readers. The author provides revealing reflections on the personal
life and career of a musician and, with a wealth of warm, hilarious
anecdotes, he writes honestly about all the challenges,
frustrations and rich rewards of being part of the jazz world.
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Washington, Dc, Jazz
(Paperback)
Regennia N Williams, Sandra Butler-truesdale; Foreword by Willard Jenkins
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R641
R528
Discovery Miles 5 280
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This book is primarily concerned with the story of traditional jazz
in Edinburgh since the mid-nineteen forties; that is, traditional
jazz played in and around Edinburgh by local jazz musicians and
bands. It is not much concerned with jazz played in and around
Edinburgh by visiting bands, professional or otherwise, except in
passing and when such bands have had a marked effect on local jazz,
this being especially the case in the early years. Similarly, the
significant number of local jazz musicians who went on to become
distinguished or even famous professional players at a UK or
international level, will primarily be discussed in respect of
their careers when playing in Edinburgh in local bands, rather than
their contributions in a wider and better known context. In some
cases, the wider reputations will be covered more than adequately
in more resounding publications than this.
Holy Ghost is the first extended study of free jazz saxophonist
Albert Ayler, who is seen today as one of the most important
innovators in the history of jazz. Ayler synthesized children s
songs, La Marseillaise, American march music, and gospel hymns,
turning them into powerful, rambunctious, squalling free-jazz
improvisations. Some critics considered him a charlatan, others a
heretic for unhinging the traditions of jazz. Some simply
considered him insane. However, like most geniuses, Ayler was
misunderstood in his time. His divine messages of peace and love,
apocalyptic visions of flying saucers, and the strange account of
the days leading up to his being found floating in New York s East
River are central to his mystique, but, as Koloda points out, they
are a distraction, overshadowing his profound impact on the
direction of jazz as one of the most visible avant-garde players of
the 1960s and a major influence on others, including John Coltrane.
A musicologist, and friend of Don Ayler, Albert s troubled
trumpet-playing brother, Richard Koloda has spent over two decades
researching this book. He follows Ayler from his beginnings in his
native Cleveland to France, where he received his greatest acclaim,
to his untimely death on November 25, 1970, at age thirty-four, and
puts to rest speculation concerning his mysterious death. A feat of
biography and a major addition to jazz scholarship, Holy Ghost
offers a new appreciation of one of the most important and
controversial figures in the twentieth-century music.
'A masterpiece, as fresh and shocking as if it were written
yesterday' Craig Brown "I've been told that no one sings the word
'hunger' like I do. Or the word 'love'." Lady Sings the Blues is
the inimitable autobiography of one of the greatest icons of the
twentieth century. Born to a single mother in 1915 Baltimore,
Billie Holiday had her first run-in with the law at aged 13. But
Billie Holiday is no victim. Her memoir tells the story of her life
spent in jazz, smoky Harlem clubs and packed-out concert halls, her
love affairs, her wildly creative friends, her struggles with
addiction and her adventures in love. Billie Holiday is a wise and
aphoristic guide to the story of her unforgettable life.
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Plainspeak
(Paperback)
Astrid Alben; Designed by Zigmunds Lapsa
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R356
R287
Discovery Miles 2 870
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John Lenwood McLean - sugar free saxophonist from Sugar Hill,
Harlem - is widely known as one of the finest, most consistent
soloists in jazz history. From early in his career Jackie's
powerful, unsentimental, sometimes astringent sound and inventive
style made audiences and critics sit up and listen. Steeped in -
but eventually moving well beyond - the influence of his mentor and
friend Charlie Parker, he built an attractive, instantly
recognisable musical personality. As author Derek Ansell says, his
career trajectory is far from the typical jazz story of the tragic
artist in which early brilliance leads to later decline. McLean's
story is one of glorious triumph over the drug addiction that
affected so many of his friends and might have destroyed him. Able
to produce uniformly fine recordings through the darkest periods of
his personal life, he saw his reputation as a musician steadily
grow and became not only a living legend as an improviser but a
much respected educator whose students carry on his legacy.
Fortunately, McLean's discography is large and Derek Ansell is a
surefooted guide through the recordings, presenting them in the
context in which they were made and indicating the special gems
among a vast body of recorded work that is one of jazz's greatest
treasures.
"Francis Wolff's images of musicians at work are so relaxed and
intimate that they capture the spirit not just of the moment but
also the era." - Herbie Hancock One of the most renowned Jazz
photographers of all time, Francis Wolff (1907-1971) was essential
to the success of the Blue Note record label. Born Jakob Franz
Wolff in Berlin, Germany, he soon became a Jazz enthusiast, despite
the government ban placed on this type of music after 1933. In
1939, Wolff, a Jew, left Berlin where he had worked as a commercial
photographer, and established himself in New York. He began working
there with his childhood friend Alfred Lion, who had co-founded
Blue Note Records with Max Margulis. The latter soon dropped out of
his involvement in the company, and Wolff joined Lion in running
it. Wolff took thousands of photographs during the Blue Note
recording sessions and rehearsals. His highly personal visual
concept would be forever associated with both Blue Note and jazz as
a whole. This book compiles more than 150 Francis Wolff photos of
jazz stars, most of which are published here for the very first
time. Among the many artists portrayed are Art Blakey, Tina Brooks,
Clifford Brown, Donald Byrd, Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, John
Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Grant Green, Herbie Hancock,
Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Elvin Jones, Thelonious Monk, Lee
Morgan, Bud Powell, Sonny Rollins, and Wayne Shorter. It also
includes a special introduction by Grammy Award Winning music
historian and jazz critic Ashley Kahn. Text in English, with an
introduction in English, French and Spanish.
Founded in 1917, Paramount Records incongruously was one of several
homegrown record labels of a Wisconsin chair-making company. The
company pinned no outsized hopes on Paramount. Its founders knew
nothing of the music business, and they had arrived at the scheme
of producing records only to drive sales of the expensive
phonograph cabinets they had recently begun manufacturing. Lacking
the resources and the interest to compete for top talent,
Paramount's earliest recordings gained little foothold with the
listening public. On the threshold of bankruptcy, the label
embarked on a new business plan: selling the music of Black artists
to Black audiences. It was a wildly successful move, with Paramount
eventually garnering many of the biggest-selling titles in the
"race records" era. Inadvertently, the label accomplished what
others could not, making blues, jazz, and folk music performed by
Black artists a popular and profitable genre. Paramount featured a
deep roster of legendary performers, including Louis Armstrong,
Charley Patton, Ethel Waters, Son House, Fletcher Henderson, Skip
James, Alberta Hunter, Blind Blake, King Oliver, Blind Lemon
Jefferson, Ma Rainey, Johnny Dodds, Papa Charlie Jackson, and Jelly
Roll Morton. Scott Blackwood's The Rise and Fall of Paramount
Records is the story of happenstance. But it is also a tale about
the sheer force of the Great Migration and the legacy of the music
etched into the shellacked grooves of a 78 rpm record. With
Paramount Records, Black America found its voice. Through creative
nonfiction, Blackwood brings to life the gifted artists and record
producers who used Paramount to revolutionize American music.
Felled by the Great Depression, the label stopped recording in
1932, leaving a legacy of sound pressed into cheap 78s that is
among the most treasured and influential in American history.
An black Iraq war veteran and an Iraqi-American Muslim teenager
form an unlikely friendship through their shared love of John
Coltrane. A supreme coming-of-age story of friendship, forgiveness
- and jazz. Tariq is is a young Iraqi-American Muslim man, beset by
danger on the streets and conflict at home. Music is his only
consolation. When he forms a friendship with the volatile but
intriguing record-store owner and Iraq war veteran, Jamal, Tariq
discovers the world of jazz - and the man he could become. Jamal is
exciting, eloquent, and troubled. He suffers from PTSD, is always
on edge. Tariq wants to learn from Jamal's knowledge of music, but
can he afford to get close to this volatile veteran? When violence
that has long threatened finally erupts, things suddenly clarify
for Tariq. He takes the ultimate risk - not on behalf of his friend
but his enemy - and the disparate worlds of modern America and
traditional Islam come together in an unexpected and gripping
resolution.
Free Jazz: A Research and Information Guide offers carefully
selected and annotated sources on free jazz, with comprehensive
coverage of English-language academic books, journal articles, and
dissertations, and selective coverage of trade books, popular
periodicals, documentary films, scores, Masters' theses, online
texts, and materials in other languages. Free Jazz will be a major
reference tool for students, faculty, librarians, artists,
scholars, critics, and serious fans navigating this literature.
From the Minds of Jazz Musicians: Conversations with the Creative
and Inspired celebrates contemporary jazz artists who have toiled,
struggled and succeeded in finding their creative space. The volume
was developed through transcribing and editing selected interviews
with 35 jazz artists, conducted by the author between 2009 and 2012
in New York City, with a historical essay on each artist to provide
context. The interviews feature musicians from a broad range of
musical styles and experiences, ranging from Gerald Wilson, born in
1918, to Chris Potter, born in 1971. Topics range from biographical
life histories to artists' descriptions of mentor relationships,
revealing the important life lessons they learned along the way.
With the goal to discover the person behind the persona, the author
elicits conversations that speak volumes on the creative process,
mining the individualistic perspectives of seminal artists who
witnessed history in the making. The interviews present the
artists' candid and direct opinions on music and how they have
succeeded in pursuing their unique and creative lives.
The official illustrated history of Blue Note, the most influential
and important brand in jazz. Blue Note is not only known as the
purveyor of extraordinary jazz but is also famous as an arbiter of
cool. The superb photography of co-founder Francis Wolff and the
cover designs of Reid Miles were integral to the label's success
and this highly illustrated publication - featuring the very best
photographs, covers and ephemera from the archives, including
never-before-published material - commemorates Blue Note's
momentous contribution to jazz, to art and design, and to the music
business. Tracing the evolution of jazz from the boogie-woogie and
swing of the 1930s, through bebop, funk and fusion, to the eclectic
mix Blue Note releases today, the book also narrates a complex
social history from the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany to the
developments in music and technology in the late 20th century.
Celebrating over eight decades of extraordinary music, this book
demonstrates how Blue Note has stayed true to its founders'
commitment to 'Uncompromising Expression'.
* first of a kind to explore the topic of contemporary Chinese
jazz, and unique in examining phenomena of contemporary music in
China * exposes the insiders' views of the very people - jazz
musicians, teachers, students, producers and fans - who in their
daily practices first created and developed Chinese jazz. * offers
a unique study of the vibrant culture in China, with an exclusive
comprehensive view on the increasing importance of music and urban
culture in the everyday lives of Chinese people. * engages debates
in jazz and popular music studies related to place, identity,
education, creativity, individuality, politics, economy, society
and cultural development in contemporary China.
An updated new edition of Ted Gioia's universally acclaimed history
of jazz, with a wealth of new insight on this music's past,
present, and future. Ted Gioia's The History of Jazz has been
universally hailed as the most comprehensive and accessible history
of the genre of all time. Acclaimed by jazz critics and fans alike,
this magnificent work is now available in an up-to-date third
edition that covers the latest developments in the jazz world and
revisits virtually every aspect of the music. Gioia's story of jazz
brilliantly portrays the most legendary jazz players, the
breakthrough styles, and the scenes in which they evolved. From
Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club, Miles
Davis's legendary 1955 performance at the Newport Jazz Festival,
and Ornette Coleman's experiments with atonality to current
innovators such as Kamasi Washington and Esperanza Spalding, Gioia
takes readers on a sweeping journey through the history of jazz. As
he traces the music through the swamp lands of the Mississippi
Delta, the red light district of New Orleans, the rent parties of
Harlem, the speakeasies of Chicago, and other key locales of jazz
history, Gioia also makes the social contexts in which the music
was born come alive. This new edition finally brings the often
overlooked women who shaped the genre into the spotlight and traces
the recent developments that have led to an upswing of jazz in
contemporary mainstream culture. As it chronicles jazz from its
beginnings and most iconic figures to its latest dialogues with
popular music, the developments of the digital age, and new
commercial successes, Gioia's History of Jazz reasserts its status
as the most authoritative survey of this fascinating music.
The BBC's Jazz Book of the Year for 2008. Few jazz musicians have
had the lasting influence or attracted as much scholarly study as
John Coltrane. Yet, despite dozens of books, hundreds of articles,
and his own recorded legacy, the "facts" about Coltrane's life and
work have never been definitely established. Well-known Coltrane
biographer and jazz educator Lewis Porter has assembled an
international team of scholars to write The John Coltrane
Reference, an indispensable guide to the life and music of John
Coltrane. The John Coltrane Reference features a a day-by-day
chronology, which extends from 1926-1967, detailing Coltrane's
early years and every live performance given by Coltrane as either
a sideman or leader, and a discography offering full session
information from the first year of recordings, 1946, to the last,
1967. The appendices list every film and television appearance, as
well as every recorded interview. Richly illustrated with over 250
album covers and photos from the collection of Yasuhiro Fujioka,
The John Coltrane Reference will find a place in every major
library supporting a jazz studies program, as well as John Coltrane
enthusiasts.
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