This book focuses on 50 of the most important entertainers in contemporary country music, providing a brief biography of each artist with special emphasis on experiences that influenced their musical careers. The work is divided into five distinct categories. ""The New Traditionalists"" features artists such as George Strait, Reba McEntire, and Clint Black, who established the mainstream country sound in the 1980s and delivered country music to urban America for the first time. ""Alternative Country"" features artists such as Steve Earle and Bela Fleck, who made country music on their own terms and explored radical or alternative sounds. ""Groups"" includes several ensemble acts, among them Alabama, The Dixie Chicks, and Rascal Flatts, that have carried on the tight-knit traditions of the Carter family and other prominent groups of the 1920s and 1930s. ""Country-Pop"" features artists such as Garth Brooks and Shania Twain who firmly established the ""countrypolitan"" sound as the cash cow of Nashville while also attracting a new generation of fans. Finally, ""New Country"" focuses on the next generation of country-pop artists, with particular attention paid to international megastars, such as Keith Urban, and teen sensations, including LeAnn Rimes and Taylor Swift.

This is the second in a series of books focusing upon the history of folk music. This volume concentrates on the period that continues to fuel popular music to the present. It was an exciting time, one that changed the complexity of folk music. Included are biographies and discographies of such noted personalities as Harry Belafonte, Buffy St. Marie, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Simon and Garfunkel, and Peter, Paul and Mary. With information on influential artists from other countries (the Clancy Brothers, Miriam Makeba and others), people "behind the scenes" and major political figures, here is a solid representation of an epoch that still generates enormous enthusiasm.

The story of the first roughly half century of jazz is really the story of some of the greatest musicians of all time. Scott Joplin, Glenn Miller, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald all made tremendous contributions, influencing countless jazz musicians and singers. This work provides biographical sketches of the aforementioned artists and many others who made jazz so popular in the first half of the twentieth century. Biographies cover the pioneers of jazz in New Orleans in the late 1890s and early 1900s; the soloists who fueled the Jazz Age in the 1920s; the musicians and bandleaders of the big band and swing era of the late 1920s and early 1930s; and icons from the height of jazz's popularity on through the end of the war. A discography is provided for each artist.

This reference volume is intended for both the casual and the most avid blues fan. It is divided into five separately introduced sections and covers 50 artists with names like Muddy, Gatemouth and Hound Dog who helped shape 20th-century American music. Beginning with the pioneering Mississippi Delta bluesmen, the book then follows the spread of the genre to the city, in the section on the Chicago Blues School. The third segment covers the Texas blues tradition; the fourth, the great blueswomen; and the fifth, the genres development outside its main schools. The styles covered range from Virginia-Piedmont to Bentonia and from barrelhouse to boogie-woogie. The main text is augmented by substantial discographies and a lengthy bibliography.

This volume focuses on fifty of the most important entertainers in the history of country music, from its beginnings in the folk music of early America through the 1970s. Divided into five distinct categories, it discusses the pioneers who brought mountain music to mass audiences; cowboys and radio stars who spread country music countrywide; honky-tonk and bluegrass musicians who differentiated country music during the 1940s; the major contributions that female artists made to the genre; and the modern country sound which dominated the genre from the late 1950s to the mid - 1980s. Each entry includes a brief biography of the chosen artist with special emphasis on experiences which influenced their musical careers. Covered musicians include Fiddlin' John Carson, Riley Puckett, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Bob Willis, Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, Sr., Dale Evans, June Carter Cash, Loretta Lynn, Buck Owens, Roy Clark, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard.

From its very beginnings, the nature of jazz has been to reinvent itself. As the musical genre evolved from its roots - blues, European music, Voodoo ceremonies, and brass bands that played at funerals, parades and celebrations - the sound reflected the tenor of the times, from the citified strains of the Roaring '20s to the Big Band swing of pre - World War II to the bop revolution that grew out of the minimalist sound the war forced upon the art form. That the music continued to develop and evolve is a tribute to the power and creativity of its musicians. Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Sarah Vaughan, Art Blakey, Dave Brubeck, Sun Ra, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Diana Krall, Archie Shepp, Chick Corea, Branford Marsalis, Larry Coryell, and Kenny Kirkland are just some of the jazz greats profiled here. The five major periods of jazz - the bop revolution, hard bop and cool jazz, the avant-garde, fusion, and contemporary - form the basis for the sections in this reference work, with a brief history of each period provided. The artists who were integral to the evolution of each period are then profiled. Each biographical entry focuses on the artist's life and his or her influence on jazz and on music as a whole. A complete discography for each musician is also provided.