Blue Rhythm Fantasy

Blue Rhythm Fantasy PDF Author: John Wriggle
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 025209882X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Behind the iconic jazz orchestras, vocalists, and stage productions of the Swing Era lay the talents of popular music's unsung heroes: the arrangers. John Wriggle takes you behind the scenes of New York City's vibrant entertainment industry of the 1930s and 1940s to uncover the lives and work of jazz arrangers, both black and white, who left an indelible mark on American music and culture. Blue Rhythm Fantasy traces the extraordinary career of arranger Chappie Willet--a collaborator of Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa, and many others--to revisit legendary Swing Era venues and performers from Harlem to Times Square. Wriggle's insightful music analyses of big band arranging techniques explore representations of cultural modernism, discourses on art and commercialism, conceptions of race and cultural identity, music industry marketing strategies, and stage entertainment variety genres. Drawing on archives, obscure recordings, untapped sources in the African American press, and interviews with participants, Blue Rhythm Fantasy is a long-overdue study of the arranger during this dynamic era of American music history.

Blue Rhythm Fantasy

Blue Rhythm Fantasy PDF Author: John Wriggle
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 025209882X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Behind the iconic jazz orchestras, vocalists, and stage productions of the Swing Era lay the talents of popular music's unsung heroes: the arrangers. John Wriggle takes you behind the scenes of New York City's vibrant entertainment industry of the 1930s and 1940s to uncover the lives and work of jazz arrangers, both black and white, who left an indelible mark on American music and culture. Blue Rhythm Fantasy traces the extraordinary career of arranger Chappie Willet--a collaborator of Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa, and many others--to revisit legendary Swing Era venues and performers from Harlem to Times Square. Wriggle's insightful music analyses of big band arranging techniques explore representations of cultural modernism, discourses on art and commercialism, conceptions of race and cultural identity, music industry marketing strategies, and stage entertainment variety genres. Drawing on archives, obscure recordings, untapped sources in the African American press, and interviews with participants, Blue Rhythm Fantasy is a long-overdue study of the arranger during this dynamic era of American music history.

To Be, Or Not-- to Bop

To Be, Or Not-- to Bop PDF Author: Dizzy Gillespie
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 0816665478
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 634

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Book Description
Originally published: New York: Doubleday, 1979.

Jazz and Ragtime Records (1897-1942): L-Z, index

Jazz and Ragtime Records (1897-1942): L-Z, index PDF Author: Brian Rust
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Jazz
Languages : en
Pages : 992

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Book Description


Blues Before Sunrise 2

Blues Before Sunrise 2 PDF Author: Steve Cushing
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252051688
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
In this new collection of interviews, Steve Cushing once again invites readers into the vaults of Blues Before Sunrise, his acclaimed nationally syndicated public radio show. Icons from Memphis Minnie to the Gay Sisters stand alongside figures like schoolteacher Flossie Franklin, who helped Leroy Carr pen some of his most famous tunes; saxman Abb Locke and his buddy Two-Gun Pete, a Chicago cop notorious for killing people in the line of duty; and Scotty "The Dancing Tailor" Piper, a font of knowledge on the black entertainment scene of his day. Cushing also devotes a section to religious artists, including the world-famous choir Wings Over Jordan and their travails touring and performing in the era of segregation. Another section focuses on the jazz-influenced Bronzeville scene that gave rise to Marl Young, Andrew Tibbs, and many others while a handful of Cushing's early brushes with the likes of Little Brother Montgomery, Sippi Wallace, and Blind John Davis round out the volume.Diverse and entertaining, Blues Before Sunrise 2 adds a chorus of new voices to the fascinating history of Chicago blues.

Jazz and Blues Musicians of South Carolina

Jazz and Blues Musicians of South Carolina PDF Author: Benjamin Franklin V
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1643362186
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
An oral history of musical genres from the Palmetto State musicians who helped define the sounds From Jabbo Smith, Dizzy Gillespie, and Drink Small to Johnny Helms, Dick Goodwin, and Chris Potter, South Carolina has been home to an impressive number of regionally, nationally, and internationally known jazz and blues musicians. Through richly detailed interviews with nineteen South Carolina musicians, jazz historian and radio host Benjamin Franklin V presents an oral history of the tradition and influence of jazz and the blues in the Palmetto State. Franklin takes as his subjects a range of musicians born between 1905 and 1971, representing every decade in between, to trace the progression of these musical genres from Tommy Benford's and Jabbo Smith's first recording sessions in the summer of 1926 to the present day. Diverse not only in age but also in race, gender, instruments, and style, these musicians exemplify the breadth of South Carolina's jazz and blues performers. In their own colorful words, the musicians recall love affairs with the distinctive sounds of jazz and blues, indoctrinations into the musical world, early gigs, fans, drugs, military service, amateur night at the Apollo Theater, and influential friendships with other well-known musicians. As the story of the South Carolina musical scene is tightly interwoven with that of the nation, these narratives also include appearances by Tony Bennett, Miles Davis, Count Basie, Helen Merrill, Pharoah Sanders, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and other significant musicians. These interviews also document the lasting value of music education. In particular they stress the importance of the famed Jenkins Orphanage in Charleston and of South Carolina State University in Orangeburg in nurturing young musicians' talent. Arranged in chronological order by the subjects' birth years, these interviews are augmented by photographs of the musicians, collectively serving as a unique record of representative jazz and blues musicians who have called South Carolina home.

Groovin' High

Groovin' High PDF Author: Alyn Shipton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190286822
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
Dizzy Gillespie was one of the most important and best-loved musicians in jazz history. With his horn-rimmed glasses, goatee, jive talk, and upraised trumpet bell, he was the hipster who most personified bebop. The musical heir to Louis Armstrong, he created the modern jazz trumpet-playing style and dazzled aficionados and popular audiences alike for over 50 years. In this first full biography, Alyn Shipton covers all aspects of Dizzy's remarkable life and career, taking us through his days as a flashy trumpet player in the swing bands of the 1930s, his innovative bebop work in the 1940s, the worldwide fame and adoration he earned through his big band tours in the 1950s, and the many recordings and performances which defined a career that extended into the early 1990s. Along the way, Shipton convincingly argues that Gillespie--rather than Charlie Parker as is widely believed--had the greatest role in creating bebop, playing in key jazz groups, teaching the music to others, and helping to develop the first original bebop repertory. Shipton also explores the dark side of Dizzy's mostly sunny personal life, his womanizing, the illegitimate daughter he fathered and supported--now a respected jazz singer in her own right--and his sometimes needless cruelty to others. For anyone interested in jazz and one of its most innovative and appealing figures, Groovin' High is essential reading.

Magic City

Magic City PDF Author: Burgin Mathews
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Magic City is the story of one of American music's essential unsung places: Birmingham, Alabama, birthplace of a distinctive and influential jazz heritage. In a telling replete with colorful characters, iconic artists, and unheralded masters, Burgin Mathews reveals how Birmingham was the cradle and training ground for such luminaries as big band leader Erskine Hawkins, cosmic outsider Sun Ra, and a long list of sidemen, soloists, and arrangers. He also celebrates the contributions of local educators, club owners, and civic leaders who nurtured a vital culture of Black expression in one of the country's most notoriously segregated cities. In Birmingham, jazz was more than entertainment: long before the city emerged as a focal point in the national civil rights movement, its homegrown jazz heroes helped set the stage, crafting a unique tradition of independence, innovation, achievement, and empowerment. Blending deep archival research and original interviews with living elders of the Birmingham scene, Mathews elevates the stories of figures like John T. "Fess" Whatley, the pioneering teacher-bandleader who emphasized instrumental training as a means of upward mobility and community pride. Along the way, he takes readers into the high school band rooms, fraternal ballrooms, vaudeville houses, and circus tent shows that shaped a musical movement, revealing a community of players whose influence spread throughout the world.

In the Mainstream

In the Mainstream PDF Author: Chip Deffaa
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810825581
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
18 profiles of lively contributors to jazz and popular music.

A Life in Jazz

A Life in Jazz PDF Author: Danny Barker
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349099368
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
As a musician who grew up in New Orleans, and later worked in New York with the major swing orchestras of Lucky Millinder and Cab Calloway, Barker is uniquely placed to give an authoritative but personal view of jazz history. In this book he discusses his life in music, from the children's 'spasm' bands of the seventh ward of New Orleans, through the experience of brass bands and jazz funerals involving his grandfather, Isidore Barbarin, to his early days on the road with the blues singer Little Brother Montgomery. Later he goes on to discuss New York, and the jazz scene he found there in 1930. His work with Jelly Roll Morton, as well as the lesser-known bands of Fess Williams and Albert Nicholas, is covered before a full account of his years with Millinder, Benny Carter and Calloway, including a description of Dizzy Gillespie's impact on jazz, is given. The final chapters discuss Barker's career from the late 1940s. Starting with the New York dixieland scene at Ryan's and Condon's he talks of his work with Wilbur de Paris, James P. Johnson and This is Jazz, before discussing his return to New Orleans and New Orleans Jazz Museum. A collection of Barker's photographs,

High Times Hard Times

High Times Hard Times PDF Author: Anita O'Day
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493053000
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
Celebrating the One Hundredth Anniversary of Anita O'Day's Birth. Jazz legend Anita O'Day was one of the most remarkable and unforgettable talents of the jazz world. A swinging, good-humored stylist, O'Day rose to fame as a vocalist with the Gene Krupa Big Band ("Let Me Off Uptown") and the Stan Kenton Band ("And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine") in the 1940s before she became a successful solo act in the 1950s—punctuated by her energetic performance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, as captured in the concert film Jazz on a Summer's Day. Unfortunately, O'Day was as well known for her drug problems as her jazz singing, and in High Times Hard Times, O'Day offers an unvarnished personal account of her life, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at the golden age of jazz. Starting out with her grisly 1966 overdose, then flashing back to tell all from the beginning, High Times Hard Times presents an intimate portrait of a larger-than-life jazz and big-band singer—the success of her early career, the tragedy of heroin addiction, her painful recovery, and her ultimate triumph. Filled with vivid characters, including Gene Krupa, Stan Kenton, Roy Eldridge, Billie Holiday, and other jazz legends, this candid, classic memoir is a must-read for anyone interested in the real details of jazz's golden age.