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Today, jazz is considered high art, America’s national music, and the catalog of its recordings—its discography—is often taken for granted. But behind jazz discography is a fraught and highly colorful history of research, fanaticism, and the intense desire to know who played what, where, and when. This history gets its first full-length treatment in Bruce D. Epperson’s More Important Than the Music. Following the dedicated few who sought to keep jazz’s legacy organized, Epperson tells a fascinating story of archival pursuit in the face of negligence and deception, a tale that saw curses and threats regularly employed, with fisticuffs and lawsuits only slightly rarer. Epperson exami...
Universally recognized as one of the greatest blues artists, Memphis Minnie (1897–1973) wrote and recorded hundreds of songs. Blues people as diverse as Muddy Waters, Johnny Shines, Big Mama Thornton, and Chuck Berry have acknowledged her as a major influence. At a time when most female vocalists sang Tin Pan Alley material, Minnie wrote her own lyrics and accompanied her singing with virtuoso guitar playing. Thanks to her merciless imagination and dark humor, her songs rank among the most vigorous and challenging popular poetry in any language. Woman with Guitar is the first full-length study of the life and work of this extraordinary free spirit, focusing on the lively interplay between ...
Notes and Sources to Folk Songs of the Catskills, also published by the State University of New York Press, is the companion volume to Folk Songs of the Catskills. It contains extensive reference notes that exemplify and support detailed citations in the commentary preceding each song. The book also includes a comprehensive list of sources, including books, broadsides or pocket songsters, disc recordings, music publications, periodicals, tape archives, and other miscellaneous material, as well as information on variants, adaptations, comments or references, texts, and tunes. These notes are designed to provide succinct reference information.
Not so long ago, songs by the Andrews Sisters and Lawrence Welk blasted from phonographs, lilted over the radio, and dazzled television viewers across the country. Lending star quality to the ethnic music of Poles, Italians, Slovaks, Jews, and Scandinavians, luminaries like Frankie Yankovic, the Polka King, and "Whoopee John" Wilfart became household names to millions of Americans. In this vivid and engaging book, Victor Greene uncovers a wonderful corner of American social history as he traces the popularization of old-time ethnic music from the turn of the century to the 1960s. Drawing on newspaper clippings, private collections, ethnic societies, photographs, recordings, and interviews wi...
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.
Joe Davis (1896–1978), the focus of The Melody Man, enjoyed a fifty-year career in the music industry, which covered nearly every aspect of the business. He hustled sheet music in the 1920s; copyrighted compositions by artists as diverse as Fats Waller, Carson Robison, Otis Blackwell, and Rudy Vallee; oversaw hundreds of recording sessions; and operated several record companies beginning in the 1940s. Davis also worked fearlessly to help ensure that black recording artists and song writers gained equal treatment for their work. Much more than a biography, this book is an investigation of the role played by music publishers during much of the twentieth century. Joe Davis was not a music “...
Artie Shaw, the world famous clarinet-playing bandleader who became popular during the Swing Era, was immersed in the music business as a performer for 30 years, from the summer of 1924, when he began to study saxophone, until the summer of 1954, when he stopped performing. This period of activity is the focus of this musical biography and discography, a detailed account of Shaw's musical career and recorded output. The book begins with a summary of Shaw's career in the contexts of jazz history and social setting, then moves into more detail. The chronologically arranged sections, mirroring each phase of his career, incorporate contemporary reviews and interview quotes to create an insightful narrative. The discography lists all known recordings and is separate from the text to facilitate easy reference. Includes appendixes and index.
Christopher Wilkinson uncovers a fascinating and unexplored side of American musical and social history in this richly detailed account of Don Albert's musical career and the multicultural forces that influenced it. Albert was born Albert Dominque in New Orleans in 1908. Wilkinson discusses his musical education in the Creole community of New Orleans and the fusion of New Orleans jazz and the Texas blues styles in the later 1920s during his tenure with Troy Floyd's Orchestra of Gold. He documents the founding of Albert's own band in San Antonio, its tours through twenty-four states during the 1930s, its recordings, and its significant reputation within the African American community. In addi...
Blues of a Lifetime is essential reading for people interested in suspense novelist Cornell Woolrich, author of Rear Window. Woolrich’s autobiography includes accounts of his working methods, his family and home, memories of childhood, college experience, and his philosophy of life.
Best known as the writer of the lyric for the popular Disney song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" as well as the American standard "Willow Weep for Me," Ann Ronell was also a translator and orchestrator for operatic works. This biography traces Ronell's life from her early days in Omaha, Nebraska, and recounts her marriage to producer Lester Cowan and her friendships with George Gershwin, Kurt Weill and the baritone John Charles Thomas. Includes more than 40 photographs, a chronology, family tree and film credits.