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Here is the first book to explore the legacy of Jimmie Rodgers, offering a lively look at Rodgers' career, tracing his rise from working-class obscurity to the pinnacle of renown. As Mazor shows, Rodgers brought emotional clarity and a unique sense of narrative drama to every song he performed. But more than anything else, Mazor suggests, it was Rodgers' shape-shifting ability to assume many public personas--working stiff, decked-out cowboy, suave ladies' man--that connected him to a broad public and set the stage for the stars who followed.
This is the first biography of Ralph Peer, the adventurous—even revolutionary—A&R man and music publisher who saw the universal power locked in regional roots music and tapped it, changing the breadth and flavor of popular music around the world. It is the story of the life and fifty-year career, from the age of cylinder recordings to the stereo era, of the man who pioneered the recording, marketing, and publishing of blues, jazz, country, gospel, and Latin music. The book tracks Peer’s role in such breakthrough events as the recording of Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” (the record that sparked the blues craze), the first country recording sessions with Fiddlin’ John Carson, his di...
To celebrate the tenth anniversary of alternative country music magazine "No Depression," this anthology contains 25 of the magazine's best and most representative feature articles on venerated artists and songwriters of genuine American roots music.
The definitive biography of the Everly Brothers, one of the greatest and most influential acts in popular music history, based on dozens of exclusive and archival interviews, as well as long-lost global reporting In between the Elvis years and the rise of the Beatles, there was no bigger act than The Everly Brothers. From 1957-1962, they were among the highest selling pop acts in the U.S., with 11 Number One singles and over 35 high- charting records in all. In that time, they developed their own brand of rock ‘n' roll and gentle pop balladry that leaned heavily on older, close harmony styles of country music singing. “Wake Up, Little Susie,” “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” “Cathy...
For over fifty years, Bill C. Malone has researched and written about the history of country music. Today he is celebrated as the foremost authority on this distinctly American genre. This new collection brings together his significant article-length work from a variety of sources, including essays, book chapters, and record liner notes. Sing Me Back Home distills a lifetime of thinking about country and southern roots music. Malone offers the heartfelt story of his own working-class upbringing in rural East Texas, recounting how in 1939 his family’s first radio, a battery-powered Philco, introduced him to hillbilly music and how, years later, he went on to become a scholar in the field be...
Talent is not enough to make it in the music business, and the insights, tips, and techniques in Make Me A Star will give readers the edge they need to stand out to even the toughest judges - on television or anywhere in the music business. Anastasia Brown, music producer and judge of Nashville Star, provides the insight anyone wanting to make it in the music business needs to know, whether through music contests or going the traditional route. From creating a memorable first impression to planning a winning strategy for sustained success, every step of the process is addressed. Behind the scenes stories of what worked (and what didn't) from such performers as Keith Urban, Reba McIntire, Car...
Approaches country music through an interdisciplinary lens, Features close analyses of gendered and racial disparities in country music, Examines politics of both the performance of country music and the scholarship surrounding it Book jacket.
Sara Le Menestrel explores the role of music in constructing, asserting, erasing, and negotiating differences based on the notions of race, ethnicity, class, and region. She discusses established notions and brings to light social stereotypes and hierarchies at work in the evolving French Louisiana music field. She also draws attention to the interactions between oppositions such as black and white, urban and rural, differentiation and creolization, and local and global. Le Menestrel emphasizes the importance of desegregating the understanding of French Louisiana music and situating it beyond ethnic or racial identifications, amplifying instead the importance of regional identity. Musical ge...
Booker “Bukka” White (1905–1977) was one of the most important blues musicians of the twentieth century. The twelve songs he recorded in Chicago in 1940 are considered to be among the finest in country blues. In The Life and Music of Booker “Bukka” White: Recalling the Blues, David W. Johnson traces the trajectory of White’s life from his early years in Chickasaw and Grenada Counties, Mississippi, through his imprisonment in the notorious Mississippi State Penal Farm in the late 1930s, to making a new life for himself in Memphis, Tennessee. For years only a name on old 78 records—and believed by some to be dead—White was “rediscovered” by John Fahey and ED Denson in the s...
“Fifty years after its first publication, Country Music USA still stands as the most authoritative history of this uniquely American art form. Here are the stories of the people who made country music into such an integral part of our nation’s culture. We feel lucky to have had Bill Malone as an indispensable guide in making our PBS documentary; you should, too.” —Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan, Country Music: An American Family Story From reviews of previous editions: “Considered the definitive history of American country music.” —Los Angeles Times “If anyone knows more about the subject than [Malone] does, God help them.” —Larry McMurtry, from In a Narrow Grave “With Cou...