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Books > Music > Contemporary popular music > Jazz
This is the first biography of the jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan
(1938-72). He was a prodigy: recruited to Dizzy Gillespie's big
band while still a teenager, joining Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers
not much after, by his early-20s Morgan had played on four
continents and dozens of albums. The trumpeter would go on to
cultivate a personal and highly influential style, and to make
records - most notably "The Sidewinder" - which would sell amounts
almost unheard of in jazz. While what should have been Morgan's
most successful years were hampered by a heroin addiction, the
ascendant black liberation movement of the late-60s gave the
musician a new, political impulse, and he returned to the jazz
scene to become a vociferous campaigner for black musicians' rights
and representation. But Morgan's personal life remained troubled,
and during a fight with his girlfriend at a New York club, he was
shot and killed, aged 33.
(Guitar Educational). Expand your guitar knowledge with the Guitar
Lesson Goldmine series Featuring 100 individual modules covering a
giant array of topics, each lesson in this Jazz volume includes
detailed instruction with playing examples presented in standard
notation and tablature. You'll also get extremely useful tips,
scale diagrams, chord grids, photos and more to reinforce your
learning experience, plus 2 full audio CDs featuring performance
demos of all the examples in the book A huge variety of jazz guitar
styles and techniques are covered, including: modes, arpeggios,
basic comping, blues comping, turnaround improvisation, chord
tones, tritone substitution, scale sequences, pentatonics, sus
chords, polyphonic harmony, and much more
Few British jazz musicians have been at the cutting edge of as many
movements as Ian Carr. A pioneer bebop player in his youth, a
colleague of Eric Burdon and John McLaughlin in the R'n'B explosion
of the 60s, co-leader of one of Britain's most innovative jazz
groups - the Rendell-Carr Quintet, a free-jazz colleague of John
Stevens and Trevor Watts, and the founding father of jazz rock in
the UK, with his band Nucleus, Carr's musical career alone is truly
remarkable, and a one-man history of British jazz in the 60s and
70s. Add to that his work as a member of the United Jazz and Rock
Ensemble, and with such distinguished leaders as George Russell,
Stan Tracey and Mike Gibbs, and his work as a player seems even
more remarkable. Yet Ian Carr is also one of the most perceptive
critical writers and broadcasters about jazz, being not only the
co-author of the "Rough Guide", but also the celebrated biographer
of Keith Jarrett and Miles Davis. In recent years, he has
transformed his writing talents into making innovative and
prizewinning films on the music he loves, for which he has always
been a fearless and outspoken advocate, from the time of his 1973
book, "Music Outside". As a teacher, his pupils have included such
stellar British talents as Julian Joseph, the Mondesir brothers and
Nikki Yeoh. He has been a professor of jazz at London's Guildhall
School of Music since the 1980s and was founder of the jazz
workshop at the Interchange arts scheme. In this full length
biography, Alyn Shipton examines the fascinating mix of ingredients
that comprise the man and his music, and in the process draws a
vivid picture of Carr's home region, the North-East of England, of
National Service, of such literary influences as W. Somerset
Maughan, of post-war continental Europe and its Bohemian arts
scene, and of the London jazz world from the 1960s onwards. The
book shows that jazz does not have to have an American accent to be
original and innovative, and to inspire audiences all around the
world.
Jazz Improvisation Using Simple Melodic Embellishment teaches
fundamental concepts of jazz improvisation, highlighting the
development of performance skills through embellishment techniques.
Written with the college-level course in mind, this introductory
textbook is both practical and comprehensive, ideal for the
aspiring improviser, focused not on scales and chords but melodic
embellishment. It assumes some basic theoretical knowledge and
level of musicianship while introducing multiple techniques,
mindful that improvisation is a learned skill as dependent on hard
work and organized practice as it is on innate talent. This
jargon-free textbook can be used in both self-guided study and as a
course book, fortified by an array of interactive exercises and
activities: musical examples performance exercises written
assignments practice grids resources for advanced study and more!
Nearly all musical exercises-presented throughout the text in
concert pitch and transposed in the appendices for E-flat, B-flat,
and bass clef instruments-are accompanied by backing audio tracks,
available for download via the Routledge catalog page along with
supplemental instructor resources such as a sample syllabus, PDFs
of common transpositions, and tutorials for gear set-ups. With
music-making at its core, Jazz Improvisation Using Simple Melodic
Embellishment implores readers to grab their instruments and play,
providing musicians with the simple melodic tools they need to
"jazz it up."
Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy came from Kansas City to find nationwide
fame in the later 1930s. The many records they made between 1929
and 1949 came to exemplify the Kansas City style of jazz, but they
were also criticized for their populism and inauthenticity. In The
Recordings of Andy Kirk' and his Clouds of Joy, George Burrows
considers these records as representing negotiations over
racialized styles between black jazz musicians and the racist music
industry during a vital period of popularity and change for
American jazz. The book explores the way that these reformative
negotiations shaped and can be heard in the recorded music. By
comparing the band's appropriation of musical styles to the
manipulation of masks in black forms of blackface performance-both
signifying and subverting racist conceptions of black
authenticity-it reveals how the dynamic between black musicians,
their audiences and critics impacted upon jazz as a practice and
conception.
(Piano Solo Songbook). Piano solo arrangements of 24 jazz
favorites, including: Almost like Being in Love * Angel Eyes *
Autumn Leaves * Bewitched * God Bless' the Child * If You Go Away *
It Might as Well Be Spring * Love Me or Leave Me * On Green Dolphin
Street * Smoke Gets in Your Eyes * That Old Black Magic * What's
New? * Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams (And Dream Your Troubles Away)
* and more.
Jazz Composition and Arranging In the Digital Age is a
comprehensive and practical instructional book and reference guide
on the art and craft of jazz composition and arranging for small
and large ensembles. In this book, veteran composers and arrangers
Richard Sussman and Michael Abene combine their extensive years of
experience as musicians and instructors to demonstrate how advances
in music technology and software may be integrated with traditional
compositional concepts to form a new and more efficient paradigm
for the creative process.
This book builds on material and issues treated in traditional jazz
composition and arranging courses, including all the fundamental
musical techniques and information associated with jazz arranging
and composition instruction. In addition, each chapter of the book
also contains specific examples demonstrating the effective
utilization of music software as applied to the realization of
these techniques. Software is employed both as both a learning tool
in the form of examples and exercises, and as a practical tool
illustrating how many modern day composer/arrangers are utilizing
these techniques successfully in the real world. The book also
offers several chapters devoted exclusively to the creative use of
music technology and software. The extensive companion website
provides listening examples for each chapter as well as enhanced
software tips, expanded and additional music examples, and
appendices of, basic principles and an expanded recommended
listening list for further study.
How is the Beatles' "Help " similar to Stravinsky's "Dance of the
Adolescents?" How does Radiohead's "Just" relate to the
improvisations of Bill Evans? And how do Chopin's works exploit the
non-Euclidean geometry of musical chords?
In this groundbreaking work, author Dmitri Tymoczko describes a new
framework for thinking about music that emphasizes the
commonalities among styles from medieval polyphony to contemporary
rock. Tymoczko identifies five basic musical features that jointly
contribute to the sense of tonality, and shows how these features
recur throughout the history of Western music. In the process he
sheds new light on an age-old question: what makes music sound
good?
A Geometry of Music provides an accessible introduction to
Tymoczko's revolutionary geometrical approach to music theory. The
book shows how to construct simple diagrams representing
relationships among familiar chords and scales, giving readers the
tools to translate between the musical and visual realms and
revealing surprising degrees of structure in otherwise
hard-to-understand pieces.
Tymoczko uses this theoretical foundation to retell the history of
Western music from the eleventh century to the present day. Arguing
that traditional histories focus too narrowly on the "common
practice" period from 1680-1850, he proposes instead that Western
music comprises an extended common practice stretching from the
late middle ages to the present. He discusses a host of familiar
pieces by a wide range of composers, from Bach to the Beatles,
Mozart to Miles Davis, and many in between.
A Geometry of Music is accessible to a range of readers, from
undergraduate music majors to scientists and mathematicians with an
interest in music. Defining its terms along the way, it presupposes
no special mathematical background and only a basic familiarity
with Western music theory. The book also contains exercises
designed to reinforce and extend readers' understanding, along with
a series of appendices that explore the technical details of this
exciting new theory.
`The best one-volume history of jazz.' That is how the American Music Guide described the book that Louis Armstrong once said `held ol' Satch spellbound'. A unique blend of history and criticism, this lively and perceptive book includes chapters on such jazz giants as King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman. In addition to an expanded essay on Count Basie, this revised edition also includes pieces on Eric Dolphy, Bill Evans, and the World Saxophone Quartet.
Jazz from Detroit explores the city's pivotal role in shaping the
course of modern and contemporary jazz. With more than two dozen
in-depth profiles of remarkable Detroit-bred musicians,
complemented by a generous selection of photographs, Mark Stryker
makes Detroit jazz come alive as he draws out significant
connections between the players, eras, styles, and Detroit's
distinctive history. Stryker's story starts in the 1940s and '50s,
when the auto industry created a thriving black working and middle
class in Detroit that supported a vibrant nightlife, and
exceptional public school music programs and mentors in the
community like pianist Barry Harris transformed the city into a
jazz juggernaut. This golden age nurtured many legendary
musicians-Hank, Thad, and Elvin Jones, Gerald Wilson, Milt Jackson,
Yusef Lateef, Donald Byrd, Tommy Flanagan, Kenny Burrell, Ron
Carter, Joe Henderson, and others. As the city's fortunes change,
Stryker turns his spotlight toward often overlooked but prescient
musician-run cooperatives and self-determination groups of the
1960s and '70s, such as the Strata Corporation and Tribe. In more
recent decades, the city's culture of mentorship, embodied by
trumpeter and teacher Marcus Belgrave, ensured that Detroit
continued to incubate world-class talent; Belgrave proteges like
Geri Allen, Kenny Garrett, Robert Hurst, Regina Carter, Gerald
Cleaver, and Karriem Riggins helped define contemporary jazz. The
resilience of Detroit's jazz tradition provides a powerful symbol
of the city's lasting cultural influence. Stryker's 21 years as an
arts reporter and critic at the Detroit Free Press are evident in
his vivid storytelling and insightful criticism. Jazz from Detroit
will appeal to jazz aficionados, casual fans, and anyone interested
in the vibrant and complex history of cultural life in Detroit.
Mission Impossible: My Life in Music is the engaging autobiography
of Lalo Schifrin, the musician, conductor, and composer of more
than 60 jazz and classical works and over 100 film and television
scores, including Bullitt, the Rush Hour series, Cool Hand Luke,
The Dead Pool, Tango, The Fox, Voyage of the Damned, The Amityville
Horror, The Sting II, and Mission Impossible. Edited by Richard
Palmer, this autobiography is a journey from Schifrin's formative
years in Argentina to the classical and jazz atmospheres in Paris
in the 1950s; and from his jazz career in the United States with
Dizzy Gillespie from 1958-1963 to his development as a film and
television composer from 1963 to the present. Organized in eight
parts, the book reflects on Schifrin's cosmopolitan experience and
provides impressions and vignettes of the extraordinary people with
whom he worked. As a composer whose works bridge three main musical
styles-jazz, classical, and film and television-his autobiography
offers invaluable insights on all three genres, as well as
politics, literature, and travel. This significant volume includes
over 30 photos, appendixes listing Schifrin's works, and a
discography, as well as an audio CD featuring some of Schifrin's
greatest compositions.
Your guitar becomes the ultimate jazz solo instrument when you
master the techniques and concepts in this book. Picking up where
the harmony lessons in Intermediate Jazz Guitar leave off, topics
include melody and harmony integration, bass line development,
chord enhancement, quartal harmonies, and how to arrange a guitar
solo. Learn to simultaneously play the harmony, melody, rhythm, and
bass parts of any song! Concepts are illustrated with lots of
examples to practice, including arrangements of some traditional
melodies. All music is shown in standard notation and TAB, and the
CD demonstrates the examples in the book. 64 pages.
A practical comprehensive guide to rock, jazz and pop arranged by
one of Britain's most gifted and versatile musicians. Written in
lively, accessible and entertaining style, this book contains
everything the professional arranger or aspiring amateur needs to
know, from setting out a lead sheet to scoring a full arrangement.
The problems and pitfalls of writing for every group of instrument
are discussed, from keyboards, drums and bass to brass strings,
woodwind, percussion, guitar and a 'cappella' vocal writing. Packed
with vital tips and hints, and presented in easy-to-use reference
format, Rock, Jazz and Pop Arranging also includes two valuable
appendices - on time saving shortcuts and chord symbols - and
indispensable glossary.
There were but four major galaxies in the early jazz universe, and
three of them-New Orleans, Chicago, and New York-have been well
documented in print. But there has never been a serious history of
the fourth, Kansas City, until now. In this colorful history, Frank
Driggs and Chuck Haddix range from ragtime to bebop and from Bennie
Moten to Charlie Parker to capture the golden age of Kansas City
jazz. Readers will find a colorful portrait of old Kaycee itself,
back then a neon riot of bars, gambling dens and taxi dance halls,
all ruled over by Boss Tom Pendergast, who had transformed a dusty
cowtown into the Paris of the Plains. We see how this wide-open,
gin-soaked town gave birth to a music that was more basic and more
viscerally exciting than other styles of jazz, its singers belting
out a rough-and-tumble urban style of blues, its piano players
pounding out a style later known as "boogie-woogie." We visit the
great landmarks, like the Reno Club, the "Biggest Little Club in
the World," where Lester Young and Count Basie made jazz history,
and Charlie Parker began his musical education in the alley out
back. And of course the authors illuminate the lives of the great
musicians who made Kansas City swing, with colorful profiles of
jazz figures such as Mary Lou Williams, Big Joe Turner, Jimmy
Rushing, and Andy Kirk and his "Clouds of Joy." Here is the
definitive account of the raw, hard-driving style that put Kansas
City on the musical map. It is a must read for everyone who loves
jazz or American music history.
Richard Cook and Brian Morton's Penguin Jazz Guide: The History of
the Music in 1001 Best Albums is an indispensible guide to the
recordings that every fan should know. Richard Cook and Brian
Morton's Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings is firmly established as
the world's leading guide to the music. In this book, Brian Morton
has picked out 1001 essential recordings from their acclaimed
guide, adding new information, revising and reassessing each entry,
and showing how these key pieces tell the history of the music -
and with it the history of the twentieth century. These are the
essential albums that that all true jazz fans should own, or - at
the very least - have listened to, from Kind of Blue to
lesser-known classics and more surprising choices. Full of
fascinating updated biographical information, new quotes and
interviews and, of course, highly opinionated and wittily trenchant
critical reviews, the result is an endlessly browsable companion
that will prove required reading for aficionados and jazz novices
alike. 'One of the great books of recorded jazz; the other guides
don't come close' Irish Times 'It's the kind of book that you'll
yank off the shelf to look up a quick fact and still be reading two
hours later' Fortune 'The leader in its field ... If you own only
one book on jazz, it really should be this one' International
Record Review 'Indispensable and incomparable' NME Brian Morton is
a freelance writer and broadcaster who for many years presented
Radio 3's jazz magazine Impressions and In Tune. Richard Cook
(1957-2007) was formerly editor of The Wire and edited Jazz Review.
He contributed to many other publications, including the New
Statesman and his books included Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopaedia
and It's About That Time: Miles Davis on Record.
In this volume author John Corcelli reveals Zappa's roots as a
musician from his diverse influences to his personal life. We also
learn more about his former band members and the enormous musical
legacy inherited by his son Dweezil. The book features a juried
examination of Zappa's recordings and his videos. It also features
a complete discography and a recommended reading list. Each chapter
has a special focus on Zappa's life with sections covering his
family his home studio a known as the Utility Muffin Research
Kitchen a his keen interest in the Synclavier (a device he first
used in 1980) his guitars and more. Special attention is paid to
the Mothers of Invention.THEFrank Zappa FAQE is a must-have for
fans new and old looking to delve into some of the best music ever
made by one of the most innovative artists the world has known.
The late Count Basie is one of the jazz immortals. The master of
swing, whose beat was the subtlest and supplest of all the
bandleaders, Basie featured some of the great soloists in jazz
history while he sat unobtrusively at the piano, keeping time with
his unmatched rhythm section, showing off the surging power of his
brass players, and commenting wittily with a single chord or
phrase. A man and musician of reserve and modesty, Basie
nonetheless will always be a landmark for his won achievements and
for the jazz musicians who passed through his band. In this
sociable and pioneering oral history of Basie and his band, Stanley
Dance talks with the Count himself, Jimmy Rushing, Buddy Tate, Buck
Clayton, Joe Williams, Jay McShann, Jo Jones, Dicky Wells, Lester
Young, and a dozen others, who reminisce about each other, Kansas
City jazz, and their legendary peers Billie Holiday and Charlie
Parker. With a rich flow of anecdote, opinion, and biographical
information,and with striking photographs,this history both
documents and assesses the legacy of Basie for American music.
What was the first jazz record? Are jazz solos really improvised?
How did jazz lay the groundwork for rock and country music? In Why
Jazz?, author and NPR jazz critic Kevin Whitehead provides lively,
insightful answers to these and many other fascinating questions,
offering an entertaining guide for both novice listeners and
long-time fans.
Organized chronologically in a convenient question and answer
format, this terrific resource makes jazz accessible to a broad
audience, and especially to readers who've found the music
bewildering or best left to the experts. Yet Why Jazz? is much more
than an informative Q&A; it concisely traces the century-old
history of this American and global art form, from its beginnings
in New Orleans up through the current postmodern period. Whitehead
provides brief profiles of the archetypal figures of jazz--from
Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to Wynton Marsalis and John
Zorn--and illuminates their contributions as musicians, performers,
and composers. Also highlighted are the building blocks of the jazz
sound--call and response, rhythmic contrasts, personalized
performance techniques and improvisation--and discussion of how
visionary musicians have reinterpreted these elements to
continually redefine jazz, ushering in the swing era, bebop, cool
jazz, hard bop, and the avant-garde. Along the way, Why Jazz?
provides helpful plain-English descriptions of musical terminology
and techniques, from "blue notes" to "conducted improvising." And
unlike other histories which haphazardly cover the stylistic
branches of jazz that emerged after the 1960s, Why Jazz? groups
latter-day musical trends by decade, the better to place them in
historical context.
Whether read in self-contained sections or as a continuous
narrative, this compact reference presents a trove of essential
information that belongs on the shelf of anyone who's ever been
interested in jazz.
Jazz Man's Journey chronicles the life and career of, Ellis Louis
Marsalis, Jr., one of New Orleans' most vivacious and talented jazz
musicians. From his childhood in a rural section of New Orleans, to
solo appearances with the New Orleans/Louisiana Philharmonic, as
well as appearances at Carnegie Recital Hall, Newport Jazz
Festival, and Harvard University, this unprecedented biography
accurately portrays Marsalis not only as a pianist and a Columbia
recording artist, but also as a successful teacher, composer,
lecturer, father, and human being. By conducting interviews with
Marsalis and his family, as well as with some of his friends and
professional acquaintances, D. Antoinette Handy provides
comprehensive background on Marsalis, as well as a revealing
personal narrative. Complete with discography, dozens of photos
from Marsalis's private collection, and a list of Marsalis
"profundities," this book is an important addition to jazz studies,
and an enjoyable read for jazz scholars and more casual fans alike.
'You the funkiest man alive.' Miles Davis' accolade was the perfect
expression of John Lee Hooker's apotheosis as blues superstar:
recording with the likes of Van Morrison, Keith Richards and Carlos
Santana; making TV commercials (Lee Jeans); appearing in films (The
Blues Brothers); and even starring in Pete Townshend's musical
adaptation of Ted Hughes' story The Iron Man. His was an
extraordinary life. Born in the American deep south, he moved to
Detroit and then, in a career spanning over fifty years, recorded
hypnotic blues classics such as 'Boogie Chillen', rhythm-and-blues
anthems such as 'Dimples' and 'Boom Boom' and, in his final,
glorious renaissance, the Grammy-winning album The Healer. Charles
Shaar Murray's authoritative biography vividly, and often in John
Lee Hooker's own words, does magnificent justice to the man and his
music.
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