Download or read book Blue Notes Under a Green Felt Hat written by David Ritz and published by Dutton Adult. This book was released on 1989 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blue Notes Under a Green Felt Hat is a novel that evokes the wonderful '40s, when Swing was king and jazz was hot. Danny Klein, a Danny Runyan of the Bronx, and his family create a company of characters that grab the heartstrings and prove that in America anything is possible. Fine--Fiction)
Download or read book Jazz Fiction written by David Rife and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Broad in scope, meticulously researched, and including titles that have long been inaccessible, this resource is an overview of the history of the genre from its beginning to the present."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Rickles Book written by Don Rickles and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-03 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An internationally popular comedian describes his youth as a disadvantaged Jewish boy from Queens, the obstacles he overcame in order to achieve success, and his four-decade stage and screen career. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.
Download or read book Guillaume written by Robert Guillaume and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2002-11-01 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guillaume: A Life is the autobiography of esteemed Broadway, Hollywood, and television star Robert Guillaume. Ten months after suffering a stroke, Guillaume—perhaps best known as television’s Benson—began this autobiography with award-winning author and collaborator David Ritz. The book goes beyond the recounting of a long and successful career to examine the forces that shaped the man: family, religion, race, and class. Startlingly candid and disarmingly self-aware, Guillaume seeks to know and understand himself, his treatment of the women in his life, and the choices he made along the way. He pursues the truth, however painful it may be, says Ritz, guided by two questions, “Who the hell am I?” and “What made me do what I did?” Born in St. Louis in 1927 to a young, abused, unstable mother, and reared by a strong, hardworking grandmother, Robert Guillaume managed to move from the poverty and adversity of his youth to a rich, full career as an actor and a singer. Fierce determination and sharp focus enabled this man born to hardship and racial discrimination to study, learn, cultivate his natural talents, and succeed at the performance career he pursued with a vengeance. Guillaume first performed in the strict Catholic schools and churches to which his grandmother, who understood that education would be the key to any success he might achieve, sent him. There his love of classical music was nurtured, and he was encouraged to perform. From a child longing for his mother’s love to a man unsure of the meaning of love for many of the women in his life, from a young performer struggling to succeed on Broadway and in Hollywood to a grief-stricken father watching his son die of AIDS, Robert Guillaume tells what it was like to realize celebrity and what he sacrificed in the process. Readers will savor the success story of this artist who achieved great recognition and fame, but who never lost sight of his beginnings. Appealing to all audiences, Guillaume is a revealing and poignant autobiography of an extraordinary and distinguished American thespian.
Download or read book Howling at the Moon written by Walter Yetnikoff and published by Crown. This book was released on 2004-03-02 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Show biz memoir at its name-dropping, bridge-burning, profane best: the music industry’s most outspoken, outrageous, and phenomenally successful executive delivers a rollicking memoir of pop music’s heyday. During the 1970s and '80s the music business was dominated by a few major labels and artists such as Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Barbra Streisand and James Taylor. They were all under contract to CBS Records, making it the most successful label of the era. And, as the company’s president, Walter Yetnikoff was the ruling monarch. He was also the most flamboyant, volatile and controversial personality to emerge from an industry and era defined by sex, drugs and debauchery. Having risen from working-class Brooklyn and the legal department of CBS, Yetnikoff, who freely admitted to being tone deaf, was an unlikely label head. But he had an uncanny knack for fostering talent and intimidating rivals with his appalling behavior—usually fueled by an explosive combination of cocaine and alcohol. His tantrums, appetite for mind-altering substances and sexual exploits were legendary. In Japan to meet the Sony executives who acquired CBS during his tenure, Walter was assigned a minder who confined him to a hotel room. True to form, Walter raided the minibar, got blasted and, seeing no other means of escape, opened a hotel window and vented his rage by literally howling at the moon. In Howling at the Moon, Yetnikoff traces his journey as he climbed the corporate mountain, danced on its summit and crashed and burned. We see how Walter became the father-confessor to Michael Jackson as the King of Pop reconstructed his face and agonized over his image while constructing Thriller (and how, after it won seven Grammies, Jackson made the preposterous demand that Walter take producer Quincy Jones’s name off the album); we see Walter, in maniacal pursuit of a contract, chase the Rolling Stones around the world and nearly come to blows with Mick Jagger in the process; we get the tale of how Walter and Marvin Gaye—fresh from the success of “Sexual Healing”—share the same woman, and of how Walter bonds with Bob Dylan because of their mutual Jewishness. At the same time we witness Yetnikoff’s clashes with Barry Diller, David Geffen, Tommy Mottola, Allen Grubman and a host of others. Seemingly, the more Yetnikoff feeds his cravings for power, sex, liquor and cocaine, the more profitable CBS becomes—from $485 million to well over $2 billion—until he finally succumbs, ironically, not to substances, but to a corporate coup. Reflecting on the sinister cycle that left his career in tatters and CBS flush with cash, Yetnikoff emerges with a hunger for redemption and a new reverence for his working-class Brooklyn roots. Ruthlessly candid, uproariously hilarious and compulsively readable, Howling at the Moon is a blistering You’ll Never Eat Lunch in this Town Again of the music industry.
Download or read book Glow written by Rick James and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-07-08 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Hitmaker, singer, innovator, producer, award-winning pioneer in the fusion of funk groove and rock, the late Rick James collaborated with go-to music biographer David Ritz, in this wildly entertaining and profound expression of a rock star's life and soul"--
Download or read book Divided Soul The Life Of Marvin Gaye written by David Ritz and published by Omnibus Press. This book was released on 2010-01-07 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Ritz presents his uniquely candid and and intimate account of the tumultuous life of the Prince of Soul music, Marvin Gaye. Author Ritz has assembled years of conversations and interviews from his life as a close friend and lyricist to the gifted Soul sensation, and tells the Marvin Gaye story with fly-on-the-wall accuracy and detail. From his early years as an abused child in the slums of Washington DC, through his rise to the very peaks of the Motown phenomenon, his fall from grace and subsequent comeback, to his untimely death at the hands of his father, Marvin's story is the stuff of legends. The cast of characters includes the Jacksons, Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross and countless other icons of the world of soul music.The definitive biography of an enormously gifted and sensitive musician.
Download or read book Urban Blues written by Charles Keil and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-12-10 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Keil examines the expressive role of blues bands and performers and stresses the intense interaction between performer and audience. Profiling bluesmen Bobby Bland and B. B. King, Keil argues that they are symbols for the black community, embodying important attitudes and roles—success, strong egos, and close ties to the community. While writing Urban Blues in the mid-1960s, Keil optimistically saw this cultural expression as contributing to the rising tide of raised political consciousness in Afro-America. His new Afterword examines black music in the context of capitalism and black culture in the context of worldwide trends toward diversification. "Enlightening. . . . [Keil] has given a provocative indication of the role of the blues singer as a focal point of ghetto community expression."—John S. Wilson, New York Times Book Review"A terribly valuable book and a powerful one. . . . Keil is an original thinker and . . . has offered us a major breakthrough."—Studs Terkel, Chicago Tribune "[Urban Blues] expresses authentic concern for people who are coming to realize that their past was . . . the source of meaningful cultural values."—Atlantic "An achievement of the first magnitude. . . . He opens our eyes and introduces a world of amazingly complex musical happening."—Robert Farris Thompson, Ethnomusicology "[Keil's] vigorous, aggressive scholarship, lucid style and sparkling analysis stimulate the challenge. Valuable insights come from treating urban blues as artistic communication."—James A. Bonar, Boston Herald
Download or read book Brother Ray written by David Ritz and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2009-03-17 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ray Charles (1930-2004) led one of the most extraordinary lives of any popular musician. In Brother Ray, he tells his story in an inimitable and unsparing voice, from the chronicle of his musical development to his heroin addiction to his tangled romantic life. Overcoming poverty, blindness, the loss of his parents, and the pervasive racism of the era, Ray Charles was acclaimed worldwide as a genius by the age of thirty-two. By combining the influences of gospel, jazz, blues, and country music, he invented, almost single-handedly, what became known as soul. And throughout a career spanning more than a half century, Ray Charles remained in complete control of his life and his music, allowing nobody to tell him what he could and couldn't do.As the Chicago Sun-Times put it, Brother Ray is "candid, explicit, sometimes embarrassing, often hilarious, always warm, touching and deeply human-just like his music."
Download or read book Faith In Time written by David Ritz and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2009-07-21 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born in Cleveland in 1925, "Little" Jimmy Scott lost his mother at age thirteen, the same year he was diagnosed with Kallman's syndrome. The disease stunted his growth and earned him his nickname, but it also left him with a haunting voice, a mesmerizing voice. He soon built a following as a singer touring with Lionel Hampton's great orchestra in the '40s, then performed with many of the stars of the '50s, from Lester Young to Charlie Parker to Dinah Washington, and was signed by Savoy Records. He thought he had his big break when, in 1962, Ray Charles produced what was by all accounts Jimmy's best work, Falling in Love Is Wonderful. But when it was forced off the shelves by contract disputes, Scott worked as an orderly and clerk in Cleveland for almost two decades. Fans thought he was dead-until songwriter Doc Pomus's funeral in March of 1991.As Pomus had instructed in his will, Jimmy sang over his friend's coffin. High-pitched and androgynous, his voice seemed to come out of thin air, transcending gender and age, evoking pure heartbreak. No one knew who he was-heads turned, celebrities conferred, record executives were reduced to tears-until finally Lou Reed turned around and whispered, "He's Jimmy Scott, the greatest jazz singer in the world." And so he was. By the next morning, he had a record deal with Sire that relaunched his career with the masterpiece All the Way, and he has been performing to packed clubs ever since. With full cooperation from Jimmy, his siblings, spouses, and colleagues from Ray Charles to Ruth Brown, Faith in Time is at once an intimate biography, an invaluable history of a life that spanned big band to bebop to pop, and the poignant story of a man whose voice will live forever.
Download or read book The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash written by Grandmaster Flash and published by Crown Archetype. This book was released on 2008-06-10 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A no-holds-barred memoir from the primary architect of hip hop and one of the culture's most revered music icons—both the tale of his life and legacy and a testament to dogged determination. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five fomented the musical revolution known as hip hop. Theirs was a groundbreaking union between one DJ and five rapping MCs. One of the first hip hop posses, they were responsible for such masterpieces as “The Message” and “Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel.” In the 1970s Grandmaster Flash pioneered the art of break-beat DJing—the process of remixing and thereby creating a new piece of music by playing vinyl records and turntables as musical instruments. Disco-era DJs spun records so that people could dance. The original turntablist, Flash took it a step further by cutting, rubbing, backspinning, and mixing records, focusing on “breaks”—what Flash described as “the short, climactic parts of the records that really grabbed me”—as a way of heightening musical excitement and creating something new. Now the man who paved the way for such artists as Jay-Z, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, and 50 Cent tells all—from his early days on the mean streets of the South Bronx, to the heights of hip hop stardom, losing millions at the hands of his record label, his downward spiral into cocaine addiction, and his ultimate redemption with the help and love of his family and friends. In this powerful memoir, Flash recounts how music from the streets, much like rock ’n’ roll a generation before, became the sound of an era and swept a nation with its funk, flavor, and beat.
Download or read book Grace After Midnight written by Felicia Pearson and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Felicia Pearson, who starred of the acclaimed television series The Wire, reveals her incredible, hard-knock life story, one that dramatically parallels her television character. While Felicia is a brilliant actor who played a truly chilling role, what's most remarkable about "Snoop" is what she has overcome in her life. Snoop was born a three-pound cross-eyed crack baby in East Baltimore. Those streets are among the toughest in the world, but Snoop was tougher. The runt of the ghetto showed an early aptitude for drug slinging and violence and thrived as a baby gangsta until she landed in Jessup state penitentiary after killing a woman in self-defense. There she rebelled violently against the system, and it was only through the cosmic intervention of her mentor, Uncle Loney, that she turned her life around. Eventually, Snoop was discovered in a nightclub by one of The Wire's cast members and quickly recruited to be one of television's most frightening and intriguing villains. While the story of coming up from the hood has been told by Antwone Fisher and Chris Gardner, among others, Snoop's tale goes far deeper into The Life than any previous books. And like Mary Karr's story, Snoop's is a woman's story from a fresh point of view. She defied traditional conventions of gender and sexual preference on the hardest streets in America and in front of millions of viewers on TV.
Download or read book Annual Review of Jazz Studies 11 2000 2001 written by Edward Berger and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2002-11 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Continuing the rich tradition, this latest Annual is particularly impressive. The articles in this volume present important technical analyses of four major figures: Booker Little, Charlie Christian, Herbie Hancock, and Miles Davis.
Download or read book Rage To Survive written by David Ritz and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2003-06-05 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Etta tells it like it is. I related to every page. Great book!"--Ray Charles Etta James--brash, sassy, and uncannily gifted--has left a soul-sized footprint on modern music, from blues to R&B to jazz. As the Houston Chronicle puts it, her "expressive voice and exquisite dramatic timing can actually make you tremble." Rage to Survive captures that amazing voice. Etta tells riveting stories of her youth in Los Angeles--from being discovered at age five singing in her church choir (when celebrities like Lana Turner and Orson Welles would sneak in the back to listen to the girl genius) to why she hates encores (her father would drag her out of bed in the middle of the night to sing for his card-playing buddies) to her first hit record and her work with Chuck Berry, Tina Turner, and the great stars of the Golden Age of Soul. She tells of meeting the man she believes is her father--the legendary pool hustler Minnesota Fats--her recovery from the grip of drugs, her childhood dealing with a mother who worked on the streets, and her lifelong trouble with "bad men." To quote Liz Smith in Newsday: "Candid? Brutally honest? You don't know about candor and brutal honesty until you've read Etta's life story in her own rough, unvarnished, and humorously right-on words . . . any major movie studio would do itself a huge favor by turning this book into a sizzling, big-screen saga."
Download or read book Messengers written by David Ritz and published by Doubleday Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beautifully designed and featuring stunning photographs, this moving book will appeal to Christians of all denominations and colors who seek a deeper understanding of the meaning and the glories of their faith. This is a tribute to the people who awakened the author's personal faith.
Download or read book Aretha written by Aretha Franklin and published by Villard Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's Queen of Soul recounts the story of her life, from her childhood as a minister's daughter in Detroit to her rise to success, offering insights into the faith and determination that have taken her to the top.
Download or read book Harper s Bazaar written by and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 936 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
