You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The Harlem Renaissance is the best known and most widely studied cultural movement in African American history. Now, in Harlem Renaissance Lives, esteemed scholars Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham have selected 300 key biographical entries culled from the eight-volume African American National Biography, providing an authoritative who's who of this seminal period. Here readers will find engagingly written and authoritative articles on notable African Americans who made significant contributions to literature, drama, music, visual art, or dance, including such central figures as poet Langston Hughes, novelist Zora Neale Hurston, aviator Bessie Coleman, blues singer Ma Rainey, artist Romare Bearden, dancer Josephine Baker, jazzman Louis Armstrong, and the intellectual giant W. E. B. Du Bois. Also included are biographies of people like the Scottsboro Boys, who were not active within the movement but who nonetheless profoundly affected the artistic and political statements that came from Harlem Renaissance figures. The volume will also feature a preface by the editors, an introductory essay by historian Cary D. Wintz, and 75 illustrations.
I Remember is a first-hand account of the world of black American music told by a man who has been part of that world for eighty years. Clyde E. B. Bernhardt worked with a number of bands, including King Oliver, Marion Hard, Cecil Scott, the Bascomb Brothers, and Joe Garland. He started his own band, the Blue Blazers, in 1946 and formed the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band in 1972. The book is a primary document that provides information about a part of the history of American music for which there is little documentation.
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 ...
This is a revealing look at the history of race relations in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century portrayed through the lives and times of the first two African-American heavyweight boxing champions, Jack Johnson and Joe Louis. Incorporating extensive research into the black press of the time, the author explores how the public careers and private lives of these two sports figures both define and explain vital national issues from the early 1900s to the late 1940s.
The book that brings America's gateway city to life. Newark, New Jersey, is not only one of the oldest cities in the country but also a place that notable Americans from all walks of life have called home. Among the famous are Thomas Edison, Aaron Burr, Sarah Vaughan, Whitney Houston, Jerome Kern, Shaquille O'Neal, Queen Latifah, Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Jackie Gleason, Eva Marie Saint, Rod Steiger, Frankie Valli, Joe Pesci, and Wyclef Jean. Familiar names include the likes of Ed Koch, Dutch Schultz, Washington Irving, Fanny Brice, and Marvin Hagler. And then there are those who enjoyed their moment in the spotlight but have mostly faded from memory, like silent film star Harold Lockwoo...
None
While tap dancers Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and Eleanor Powell were major Hollywood stars, and the rhythms of Black male performers such as the Nicholas Brothers and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson were appreciated in their time, Black female tap dancers seldom achieved similar recognition. Who were these women? The author sought them out, interviewed them, and documented their stories for this book. Here are the personal stories of many Black women tap dancers who were hailed by their male counterparts, performed on the most prominent American stages, and were pioneers in the field of Black tap.
A vivid and fascinating up-close encounter with jazz, brim-full of anecdote and personal reminiscence, by an internationally known broadcaster and writer.
None
A Blues Bibliography, Second Edition is a revised and enlarged version of the definitive blues bibliography first published in 1999. Material previously omitted from the first edition has now been included, and the bibliography has been expanded to include works published since then. In addition to biographical references, this work includes entries on the history and background of the blues, instruments, record labels, reference sources, regional variations and lyric transcriptions and musical analysis. The Blues Bibliography is an invaluable guide to the enthusiastic market among libraries specializing in music and African-American culture and among individual blues scholars.