In 1912 James Reese Europe made history by conducting his 125-member Clef Club Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. The first concert by an African American ensemble at the esteemed venue was more than just a concert--it was a political act of desegregation, a defiant challenge to the status quo in American music. In this book, David Gilbert explores how Europe and other African American performers, at the height of Jim Crow, transformed their racial difference into the mass-market commodity known as ""black music."" Gilbert shows how Europe and others used the rhythmic sounds of ragtime, blues, and jazz to construct new representations of black identity, challenging many of the nation's preconceived ideas about race, culture, and modernity and setting off a musical craze in the process. Gilbert sheds new light on the little-known era of African American music and culture between the heyday of minstrelsy and the Harlem Renaissance. He demonstrates how black performers played a pioneering role in establishing New York City as the center of American popular music, from Tin Pan Alley to Broadway, and shows how African Americans shaped American mass culture in their own image.

When it was first published in 1994, King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and his Era was widely heralded not only as the most thorough investigation of Scott Joplin's life and music, but also as a gripping read, almost a detective story. This new and expanded edition-more than a third larger than the first-goes far beyond the original publication in uncovering new details of the composer's life and insights into his music. It explores Joplin's early, pre-ragtime career as a quartet singer, a period of his life that was previously unknown. The book also surveys the nature of ragtime before Joplin entered the ragtime scene and how he changed the style. Author Edward A. Berlin offers insightful commentary on each of all of Joplin's works, showing his influence on other ragtime and non-ragtime composers. He traces too Joplin's continued music studies late in life, and how these reflect his dedication to education and probably account for the radical changes that occur in his last few rags. And he puts new emphasis on Joplin's efforts in musical theater, bringing in early versions of his Ragtime Dance and its precedents. Joplin's wife Freddie is shown to be a major inspiration to his opera Treemonisha, with her family background and values being reflected in that work. Joplin's reputation faded in the 1920s-30s, but interest in his music slowly re-emerged in the 1940s and gradually built toward a spectacular revival in the 1970s, when major battles ensued for possession of rights.

Miles Davis was one of the musical giants of the twentieth century. In a career that spanned more than five decades, Miles transformed the face of jazz four or five times, and his music resonates far beyond the bounds of his genre. Miles made the most famous album in the history of jazz, "Kind of Blue", formed one of the greatest jazz quintets in the 1960s and fused jazz with rock. Including unique interviews with dozens of Miles' closest colleagues, many of whom have never before been interviewed about their time with him, "The Last Miles" concentrates on the final period of Miles' life, after he had emerged from a five-year lay-off from the world of music. Right up until the end of his life, he was still searching, still exploring and still refusing to play it safe. The focus is on the music Miles recorded and played, and how it evolved in the eyes of the musicians he played with. Those interviewed include, George Duke, Teo Macero, Tommy LiPuma, Marcus Miller, Darryl Jones and Easy Mo Bee. There are also interviews with musicians who played with Miles before the 1980s, including Dave Liebman, Pete Cosey, Michael Henderson and Mike Zwerin, who give their own assessment of the music Miles played during the final period of his life. Cheryl Davies, Miles' only daughter, is also interviewed. "The Last Miles" is full of fascinating new facts and stories about Miles. For the first time, every member of the group of young musicians from Chicago who helped bring Miles back into the music scene gives their story. Music journalist George Cole also reveals for the first time the full story behind a lost Miles Davis album recorded in 1985, tells you about a song Miles co-wrote for "Mick Jagger", how he worked with Prince, and discovers new and unreleased music that Miles recorded. If you've ever wanted to know how Miles recruited his band members, what it was like working with Miles in the studio or to play with him on-stage, "The Last Miles" has the answers. There is at least one chapter devoted to each album that Miles recorded during this period. Full track-by-track descriptions contain many new and interesting tales behind the songs including how Sting came to record on one of Miles' tracks, why Prince dropped a song slated to appear on the "Tutu" album, how Gil Evans helped Miles compose many of the tunes on the album "Star People", what Splatch means and who Ursula was.

This collection of interviews with nine of the world's greatest living musicians shines light on the jazz piano trio, one of the genre's most enduring formats. Interviewed musicians include Jeff Hamilton, Richard Davis, Joanne Brackeen, Jeff Ballard, Fred Hersch, Chuck Israels, Peter Erskine, Eric Reed, and Rufus Reid. There is also a lengthy analysis section comparing the diverse responses given by these intriguing individuals.

At the close of the Second World War, waves of African American musicians migrated to Paris, eager to thrive in its reinvigorated jazz scene. Jazz Diasporas challenges the notion that Paris was a color-blind paradise for African Americans. On the contrary, musicians adopted a variety of strategies to cope with the cultural and social assumptions that confronted them throughout their careers in Paris, particularly as France became embroiled in struggles over race and identity when colonial conflicts like the Algerian War escalated. Using case studies of prominent musicians and thoughtful analysis of interviews, music, film, and literature, Rashida K. Braggs investigates the impact of this postwar musical migration. She examines key figures including musicians Sidney Bechet, Inez Cavanaugh, and Kenny Clarke and writer and social critic James Baldwin to show how they performed both as artists and as African Americans. Their collaborations with French musicians and critics complicated racial and cultural understandings of who could represent "authentic" jazz and created spaces for shifting racial and national identities-what Braggs terms "jazz diasporas."

For the first time in English, the classic volume that developed a radical new understanding of free jazz and African American culture. 1971, French jazz critics Philippe Carles and Jean-Louis Comolli cowrote Free Jazz/Black Power, a treatise on the racial and political implications of jazz and jazz criticism. It remains a testimony to the long ignored encounter of radical African American music and French left-wing criticism. Carles and Comolli set out to defend a genre vilified by jazz critics on both sides of the Atlantic by exposing the new sound's ties to African American culture, history, and the political struggle that was raging in the early 1970s. The two offered a political and cultural history of black presence in the United States to shed more light on the dubious role played by jazz criticism in racial oppression. This analysis critiques the critics, building a work of cultural studies in a time and place where the practice was virtually unknown. The authors reached radical conclusions--free jazz was a revolutionary reaction against white domination, was the musical counterpart to the Black Power movement, and was a music that demanded a similar political commitment. The impact of this book is difficult to overstate, as it made readers reconsider their response to African American music. In some cases it changed the way musicians thought about and played jazz. Free Jazz/ Black Power remains indispensable to the study of the relation of American free jazz to European audiences, critics, and artists.

Benny More (1919-1963) was one of the giants at the center of the golden age of Cuban music. Arguably the greatest singer ever to come from the island, his name is still spoken with reverence and nostalgia by Cubans and Cuban exiles alike. Unable to read music, he nevertheless wrote more than a dozen Cuban standards. His band helped shape what came to be known as the Afro-Cuban sound and, later, salsa. More epitomized the Cuban big-band era and was one of the most important precursors to the music later featured in the Buena Vista Social Club. Even now, to hear his recordings for the first time, it is impossible not to be thrilled and amazed. Journalist John Radanovich has spent years tracking down the musicians who knew More and More family members, seeking out rare recordings and little-known photographs. Radanovich provides the definitive biography of the man and his music, whose legacy was forgotten in the larger scheme of political difficulties between the United States and Cuba. Even the exact spelling of More's first name was unknown until now. The author also examines the milieu of Cuban music in the 1950s, when Havana was the playground of Hollywood stars and the Mafia ran the nightclubs and casinos.

Jazz musician Bobby Hackett - 'one of the finest natural musicians in the business' according to Muggsy Spanier - began his career in the 1930s; it ended with his death in 1976. An extensively researched discography of the vast number of recorded sessions in which Hackett took part during these decades forms the essential core of this substantial book. It is prefaced with the fascinating biographical insights gathered from the articles, reviews, news stories, meetings and interviews which the editors accumulated as they worked, and illustrated throughout with contemporary photographs, advertising, and record labels and covers. Detailed indexes feature both the famous and the influential - Louis Armstrong, Eddie Condon, Jackie Gleason, Horace Heidt, Glenn Miller, Lee Wiley among them - and the lesser-known working musicians and artists of the era.Prompted by Hackett's death, this work of research started with hand-written index cards, and progressed through typewriters and several generations of word processors and computer operating systems; its publication is a realisation not only of Bobby Hackett's life in music, and place in a period of musical history, but also of an enthusiasm sustained through personal acquisitions, friendships and travel - and listening to a lot of jazz!

Original Music composed by Antonio Ciacca for the Chocolate Festival Event, pairing Richart chocolate with live jazz.

"Black Pearls" is an anthology of black women singers who made major contributions to American music. The word anthology derives from the Greek language meaning "gathering of flowers." In this collection, Josephine Qualls has described the evolution of Jazz music and its' related musical forms as embodied in the careers of these women ranging from Bessie Smith through Ma Rainey, Memphis Minnie, Pearl Bailey, Ethel Waters, Aretha Franklin, Mahalia Jackson (mother of pearls) and many others. Also included are descriptions of several early venues in which black women developed their talents. The musical art forms of Jazz, Blues, Gospel, Ragtime and Dixieland highlights the descriptions of the births, early years and lifelong careers of these African/American women. Spanning the years from 1895 to the present, this is an engaging and informative book leaving the reader fascinated by the amazing variety in this "collection of flowers." "Black Pearls" belongs in the library of any fan or historian of African/American music.

After around 35 years touring the world professionally in the many areas of music as both a sideman, and a leader, I am very proud to finally publish some of my original compositions. It has been many years that people ask me about my different originals, as well as enquire about the availability of the lead sheets. Finally I have assembled them into a book format. The book begins chronologically from 2003- 2011. My last 6 CD's starting with the Motive Series, One Step Closer, Family First, Live At The Bird's Eye, Good Rhythms Good Vibes, and Live at Chorus jazz Club. You will surely notice how my harmonic language skills grow and change over the years. Feel free to explore the different ways they can be performed. Many of the tunes can be played in multiple styles, and you can just use the harmonic/rhythmic roadmap and melody your way.

Women performers played a vital role in the development of American and transatlantic entertainment, celebrity culture, and gender ideology. Sara E. Lampert examines the lives, careers, and fame of overlooked figures from Europe and the United States whose work in melodrama, ballet, and other stage shows shocked and excited early U.S. audiences. These women lived and performed the tensions and contradictions of nineteenth-century gender roles, sparking debates about women's place in public life. Yet even their unprecedented wealth and prominence failed to break the patriarchal family structures that governed their lives and conditioned their careers. Inevitable contradictions arose. The burgeoning celebrity culture of the time forced women stage stars to don the costumes of domestic femininity even as the unsettled nature of life in the theater defied these ideals.A revealing foray into a lost time, Starring Women returns a generation of performers to their central place in the early history of American theater.