Author: Patti Jones
Publisher: Quartet Books (UK)
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
"Mose Allison is a pianist and singer whose importance and influence is often overlooked: his compositions and playing ranges from blues through jazz to twentieth century 'classical' music, and his influence on rock music has been profound. Born and raised in Mississippi during the Depression he was unaware that whites don't play the blues and developed his own style, mixing country blues with jazz swing." "Patti Jones has had the full co-operation of the self-effacing pianist and has written a critical biography that traces Mose's roots in Mississippi through a long, and still continuing, career. She is as alert to the social and cultural shifts that have influenced him as she is to the development of his piano style. The book includes interviews with some of the musicians influenced by Mose Allison: Pete Townshend, Bonnie Raitt, Black Francis, Al Kooper, Jack Bruce, Ray Davies and many more." --Book Jacket.
Author: Gerald W. Haslam
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 052092262X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 393
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Book Description
California has been fertile ground for country music since the 1920s, nurturing a multitude of talents from Gene Autry to Glen Campbell, Rose Maddox to Barbara Mandrell, Buck Owens to Merle Haggard. In this affectionate homage to California's place in country music's history, Gerald Haslam surveys the Golden State's contributions to what is today the most popular music in America. At the same time he illuminates the lives of the white, working-class men and women who migrated to California from the Dust Bowl, the Hoovervilles, and all the other locales where they had been turned out, shut down, or otherwise told to move on. Haslam's roots go back to Oildale, in California's central valley, where he first discovered the passion for country music that infuses Workin' Man Blues. As he traces the Hollywood singing cowboys, Bakersfield honky-tonks, western-swing dance halls, "hillbilly" radio shows, and crossover styles from blues and folk music that also have California roots, he shows how country music offered a kind of cultural comfort to its listeners, whether they were oil field roustabouts or hash slingers. Haslam analyzes the effects on country music of population shifts, wartime prosperity, the changes in gender roles, music industry economics, and television. He also challenges the assumption that Nashville has always been country music's hometown and Grand Ole Opry its principal venue. The soul of traditional country remains romantically rural, southern, and white, he says, but it is also the anthem of the underdog, which may explain why California plays so vital a part in its heritage: California is where people reinvent themselves, just as country music has reinvented itself since the first Dust Bowl migrants arrived, bringing their songs and heartaches with them.
Author: Ray Celestin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1681776081
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 358
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Book Description
Chicago, 1928. In the stifling summer heat, three disturbing events take place: A clique of city leaders is poisoned in a fancy hotel; a white gangster is found mutilated in an alleyway in the Blackbelt; and a famous heiress vanishes without a trace. Pinkerton detectives Michael Talbot and Ida Davis are hired to find the missing heiress by the girl’s troubled mother. But it soon proves harder than expected to find a face that is known across the city, and Ida must elicit the help of her friend, Louis Armstrong. While the police take little interest in the Blackbelt murder, Jacob Russo—crime scene photographer—can’t get the dead man’s image out of his head, leading him to embark on his own investigation. And Dante Sanfelippo—rum-runner and fixer—is back in Chicago on the orders of Al Capone, who suspects there’s a traitor in the ranks and wants Dante to investigate. But Dante is struggling with his own problems, as he is forced to return to the city he thought he’d never see again . . .
Author: Dan Dunn
Publisher: Dey Street Books
ISBN: 9780062394644
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
A professional booze writer whose life spins out of control tries to piece it back together by embarking upon an epic wine-fueled adventure that takes him to every corner of the U.S. Part vision quest, part guidebook, part journey into the bizarre tapestry of American life, it will make you laugh, make you cry and teach you a whole lot about wine. Former Playboy magazine nightlife columnist Dan Dunn has a made a career out of drinking. Yet this man’s man—a connoisseur of beer and whiskey—knew next to nothing about one of the major drinks enjoyed the world over: wine. When a fateful tasting experience coincided with a serious existential crisis, Dunn decided to hit the road on a journey of discovery. To quench his thirst for knowledge (and be able to throw down with the experts), he would educate himself about the industry glass by glass, from winery to winery, in nearly every region in the United States. His bold 15,000-mile road trip took Dunn from Sonoma, California, to Pawley’s Island, South Carolina, where he twirled, sniffed, and sipped glass after glass of a vast array of wines with vintners, savants, and celebrities, including Kurt Russell and “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” Jonathan Goldsmith. Dunn’s mission was to transform himself from a heartbroken schlub who barely knew the difference between Merlot and Meritage, into a confident connoisseur capable of wowing others simply by swirling some fermented grape juice around in his mouth and pronouncing it “troubling, yet brilliant.” In American Wino, Dunn shares it all—the good, the bad, the sublime. As his wine knowledge grows and becomes more complex, he shares it with the reader in the form of digestible, actionable nuggets in each chapter. It’s like a wine-tasting course at your local community college extension program, only with more sex and less crushing despair. An intoxicating blend of travel writing, memoir, and booze journalism that pairs earthy humor with fine wine for hilarious and enlightening results, it is the story of one man’s journey to find himself—and everyman’s journey to better understand the true spirit of this divine elixir.
Author: Adam Gussow
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469633671
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 417
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Book Description
The devil is the most charismatic and important figure in the blues tradition. He's not just the music's namesake ("the devil's music"), but a shadowy presence who haunts an imagined Mississippi crossroads where, it is claimed, Delta bluesman Robert Johnson traded away his soul in exchange for extraordinary prowess on the guitar. Yet, as scholar and musician Adam Gussow argues, there is much more to the story of the devil and the blues than these cliched understandings. In this groundbreaking study, Gussow takes the full measure of the devil's presence. Working from original transcriptions of more than 125 recordings released during the past ninety years, Gussow explores the varied uses to which black southern blues people have put this trouble-sowing, love-wrecking, but also empowering figure. The book culminates with a bold reinterpretation of Johnson's music and a provocative investigation of the way in which the citizens of Clarksdale, Mississippi, managed to rebrand a commercial hub as "the crossroads" in 1999, claiming Johnson and the devil as their own.
Author: Harold Battiste
Publisher: Louisiana Artists Biography
ISBN: 9780917860553
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
"Arrangements and productions": p. 177-179.
Author: Phil Pastras
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520236874
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
"It is hard to say which makes for the more compelling narrative: the life of jazz great Jelly Roll Morton or the detective work that Phil Pastras undertook in putting together this engaging book. Dead Man Blues tells both these tales admirably, drawing on a treasure-trove of previously unknown material. It is both an important contribution to jazz scholarship and a fascinating piece of storytelling."—Ted Gioia, author of The History of Jazz and West Coast Jazz "Meticulously researched, including primary source material recently uncovered by the author, Dead Man Blues is not only a masterfully written, definitive account of Jelly Roll Morton's west coast years, but also a penetrating psychological and social study of the man and the forces that drove and shaped him."—Steve Isoardi, co-author of Central Avenue Sounds "A must-read for all jazz aficionados."—Gerald Wilson "One of the best books ever written about Jelly Roll Morton."—Gerald Wiggins, jazz pianist
Author: O G Fillmore Slim
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781539014867
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
In his memoir, O. G. Fillmore Slim breaks down how he went from being the most prolific pimp in America, the legendary gentleman Mack, to an eminent blues musician later in life. Known as The Godfather and Pope of the Game, Slim leads his prostitution operation with charisma, kindness, and charm turning out more than ten thousand women in over thirty years in the game. He preaches the ethics of safe sex and nonviolence. "I pimped with my brain, not with my fists." His gentlemanly approach promotes his highly lucrative business, and in the eyes of many, gives him a highly celebrated and revered reputation in urban street culture. But when Slim emerges from his longest stint in prison-five years-he leaves the pimping life behind and transforms himself into a famous blues musician, which was his original dream. Despite the odds, his stardom soars and he goes on to perform with an array of famous musicians, from B. B. King to Ike and Tina Turner, touring America, Europe, Russia, and beyond. Slim explains how his two worlds-the streets and the entertainment industry-are much more linked than the average person would guess as he tells the unbelievable story of his life.
Author: Daniel de Vise
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 0802158072
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
The first full and authoritative biography of an American—indeed a world-wide—musical and cultural legend “No one worked harder than B.B. No one inspired more up-and-coming artists. No one did more to spread the gospel of the blues.”—President Barack Obama “He is without a doubt the most important artist the blues has ever produced.”—Eric Clapton Riley “Blues Boy” King (1925-2015) was born into deep poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi. Wrenched away from his sharecropper father, B.B. lost his mother at age ten, leaving him more or less alone. Music became his emancipation from exhausting toil in the fields. Inspired by a local minister’s guitar and by the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker, encouraged by his cousin, the established blues man Bukka White, B.B. taught his guitar to sing in the unique solo style that, along with his relentless work ethic and humanity, became his trademark. In turn, generations of artists claimed him as inspiration, from Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton to Carlos Santana and the Edge. King of the Blues presents the vibrant life and times of a trailblazing giant. Witness to dark prejudice and lynching in his youth, B.B. performed incessantly (some 15,000 concerts in 90 countries over nearly 60 years)—in some real way his means of escaping his past. Several of his concerts, including his landmark gig at Chicago’s Cook County Jail, endure in legend to this day. His career roller-coasted between adulation and relegation, but he always rose back up. At the same time, his story reveals the many ways record companies took advantage of artists, especially those of color. Daniel de Visé has interviewed almost every surviving member of B.B. King’s inner circle—family, band members, retainers, managers, and more—and their voices and memories enrich and enliven the life of this Mississippi blues titan, whom his contemporary Bobby “Blue” Bland simply called “the man.”
Author: Michael Poore
Publisher: Del Rey
ISBN: 039917849X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 372
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Book Description
A wildly imaginative novel about a man who is reincarnated over ten thousand lifetimes to be with his one true love: Death herself. “Tales of gods and men akin to Neil Gaiman’s Sandman as penned by a kindred spirit of Douglas Adams.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) First we live. Then we die. And then . . . we get another try? Ten thousand tries, to be exact. Ten thousand lives to “get it right.” Answer all the Big Questions. Achieve Wisdom. And Become One with Everything. Milo has had 9,995 chances so far and has just five more lives to earn a place in the cosmic soul. If he doesn’t make the cut, oblivion awaits. But all Milo really wants is to fall forever into the arms of Death. Or Suzie, as he calls her. More than just Milo’s lover throughout his countless layovers in the Afterlife, Suzie is literally his reason for living—as he dives into one new existence after another, praying for the day he’ll never have to leave her side again. But Reincarnation Blues is more than a great love story: Every journey from cradle to grave offers Milo more pieces of the great cosmic puzzle—if only he can piece them together in time to finally understand what it means to be part of something bigger than infinity. As darkly enchanting as the works of Neil Gaiman and as wisely hilarious as Kurt Vonnegut’s, Michael Poore’s Reincarnation Blues is the story of everything that makes life profound, beautiful, absurd, and heartbreaking. Because it’s more than Milo and Suzie’s story. It’s your story, too. Praise for Reincarnation Blues “The most fun you’ll have reading about a man who has been killed by both catapult and car accident.”—NPR “This book made me laugh out loud. And then a page later, it made me sob. Reminiscent of Tom Robbins and Christopher Moore, Poore finds humor in the dark absurdities of life.”—Chicago Review of Books “Charming . . . surprisingly light and uplifting . . . It reads like a writer having fun.”—New York Journal of Books
