Download or read book Hound Dog The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography written by David Ritz and published by Omnibus Press. This book was released on 2010-10-18 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller shaped the rock and roll era - this is their story in their own words. In 1950 a couple of rhythm and blues loving teenagers named Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller met for the first time. Leiber was looking for someone to help compose music for lyrics he'd written, and a friend recommended a Piano player named Mike Stoller. They discovered their mutual affection for R&B, and, as Jerry and Mike put it in this fascinating autobiography, it was the beginning of an argument that has been going on for more than fifty years with no resolution in sight. With the assistance of David Ritz, they describe what it was like when Elvis was a fresh new face and when two young guys with tons of talent and an insatiable love of good old American R&B could create the soundtrack for a generation - and have a great time doing it. Jerry Leiber was born in Baltimore, Maryland on April 25th 1933, and Mike Stoller was born in Queens, New York on March 13th 1933. They first met in Los Angeles in 1950, moved to New York in 1957 and returned to L.A. in 1989, where they both still reside. They were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1985 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.
Download or read book Hound Dog written by Jerry Leiber and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-06 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dual portrait of the music team that shaped rock-and-roll music in the 1950s and 1960s describes their humble origins, their relationships with such performers as Elvis Presley and the Coasters, and their record-setting collaborative achievements.
Download or read book A Hound Dog Tale written by Ben Wynne and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2024-02-07 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The release of the song “Hound Dog” in 1953 marked a turning point in American popular culture, and throughout its history, the hit ballad bridged divides of race, gender, and generational conflict. Ben Wynne’s A Hound Dog Tale discusses the stars who made this rock ’n’ roll standard famous, from Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton to Elvis Presley, along with an eclectic cast of characters, including singers, songwriters, musicians, record producers and managers, famous television hosts, several lawyers, and even a gangster or two. Wynne’s examination of this American classic reveals how “Hound Dog” reflected the values and issues of 1950s American society, and sheds light on the lesser-known elements of the song’s creation and legacy. A Hound Dog Tale will capture the imagination of anyone who has ever tapped a foot to the growl of a blues riff or the bark of a rock ’n’ roll guitar.
Download or read book Always Magic in the Air written by Ken Emerson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-09-26 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the late 1950s and early 1960s, after the shock of Elvis Presley and before the Beatles spearheaded the British Invasion, fourteen gifted young songwriters huddled in midtown Manhattan's legendary Brill Building and a warren of offices a bit farther uptown and composed some of the most beguiling and enduring entries in the Great American Songbook. Always Magic in the Air is the first thorough history of these renowned songwriters-tunesmiths who melded black, white, and Latino sounds, integrated audiences before America desegregated its schools, and brought a new social consciousness to pop music.
Download or read book Hound Dog written by Eric Weisbard and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2023-08-04 with total page 77 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many listeners first heard “Hound Dog” when Elvis Presley’s single topped the pop, country, and R&B charts in 1956. But some fans already knew the song from Big Mama Thornton’s earlier recording, a giant but exclusively R&B hit. In Hound Dog Eric Weisbard examines the racial, commercial, and cultural ramifications of Elvis’s appropriation of a Black woman’s anthem. He rethinks the history and influences of rock music in light of Rolling Stone's replacement of Presley’s “Hound Dog” with Thornton’s version in its 2021 “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list. Taking readers from Presley and Thornton to Patti Page’s “Doggie in the Window,” the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” and other dog ditties, Weisbard uses “Hound Dog” to reflect on one of rock’s fundamental dilemmas: the whiteness of the wail.
Download or read book Lonely Avenue written by Alex Halberstadt and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2009-04-28 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most original, influential, and commercially successful American songwriters, Jerome Felder, aka Doc Pomus (1925-1991), gave the world a dazzling legacy of musical hits during rock 'n' roll's first decade. A role model for generations of writers and performers, Doc was renowned for his mastery of virtually every popular style, from the gutbucket rhythm and blues of "Lonely Avenue" to the symphonic soul of "Save the Last Dance for Me" to the pure pop of "Viva Las Vegas." His songs-"This Magic Moment," "A Teenager in Love," "Hushabye," "Little Sister," "Turn Me Loose," and many others-have been recorded by everyone from Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, and B. B. King to Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, and Bruce Springsteen, with sales exceeding 100 million. Doc was ready-made for literature. His collaborator Mort Shuman once described him as an "entire rollicking soul neighborhood rolled into one man." Garrulous, profane, hilarious, and Rabelaisian, Doc was never inhibited about offering his opinions and his friendship. His confidants, collaborators, and discoveries included Duke Ellington, John Lennon, Dr. John, Jimmy Scott, Bette Midler, and Lou Reed. In the words of renowned producer Jerry Wexler, "If the music industry had a heart, it would be Doc Pomus." Despite, or more likely because of, his successes, few acquaintances knew that this writer of jukebox hits led one of the most dramatic and unlikely lives of his time. Spanning extravagant wealth and desperate poverty, suburban domesticity and the depths of New York's underworld, worldwide fame and near-total obscurity, enduring love and persistent loneliness, Doc's story remains one of the great untold American lives. Its chapters comprise a back-room history of rock 'n' roll, touching on more than a half-century of American popular music-from the blues Doc performed with Lester Young to his collaborations with the luminaries of New York's punk scene, shot through with vivid portraits of virtually every major player. Lonely Avenueis the first biography of this American original, so elegantly rendered that it reads like a novel, and fortified by full, exclusive access to Doc Pomus's family, friends, voluminous journals, and archives.
Download or read book On Middle Ground written by Eric L. Goldstein and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2018-03-28 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A model of Jewish community history that will enlighten anyone interested in Baltimore and its past. Winner of the Southern Jewish Historical Society Book Prize by the Southern Jewish Historical Society; Finalist of the American Jewish Studies Book Award by the Jewish Book Council National Jewish Book Awards In 1938, Gustav Brunn and his family fled Nazi Germany and settled in Baltimore. Brunn found a job at McCormick’s Spice Company but was fired after three days when, according to family legend, the manager discovered he was Jewish. He started his own successful business using a spice mill he brought over from Germany and developed a blend especially for the seafood purveyors across the street. Before long, his Old Bay spice blend would grace kitchen cabinets in virtually every home in Maryland. The Brunns sold the business in 1986. Four years later, Old Bay was again sold—to McCormick. In On Middle Ground, the first truly comprehensive history of Baltimore’s Jewish community, Eric L. Goldstein and Deborah R. Weiner describe not only the formal institutions of Jewish life but also the everyday experiences of families like the Brunns and of a diverse Jewish population that included immigrants and natives, factory workers and department store owners, traditionalists and reformers. The story of Baltimore Jews—full of absorbing characters and marked by dramas of immigration, acculturation, and assimilation—is the story of American Jews in microcosm. But its contours also reflect the city’s unique culture. Goldstein and Weiner argue that Baltimore’s distinctive setting as both a border city and an immigrant port offered opportunities for advancement that made it a magnet for successive waves of Jewish settlers. The authors detail how the city began to attract enterprising merchants during the American Revolution, when it thrived as one of the few ports remaining free of British blockade. They trace Baltimore’s meteoric rise as a commercial center, which drew Jewish newcomers who helped the upstart town surpass Philadelphia as the second-largest American city. They explore the important role of Jewish entrepreneurs as Baltimore became a commercial gateway to the South and later developed a thriving industrial scene. Readers learn how, in the twentieth century, the growth of suburbia and the redevelopment of downtown offered scope to civic leaders, business owners, and real estate developers. From symphony benefactor Joseph Meyerhoff to Governor Marvin Mandel and trailblazing state senator Rosalie Abrams, Jews joined the ranks of Baltimore’s most influential cultural, philanthropic, and political leaders while working on the grassroots level to reshape a metro area confronted with the challenges of modern urban life. Accessibly written and enriched by more than 130 illustrations, On Middle Ground reveals that local Jewish life was profoundly shaped by Baltimore’s “middleness”—its hybrid identity as a meeting point between North and South, a major industrial center with a legacy of slavery, and a large city with a small-town feel.
Download or read book The Rolling Stones All the Songs written by Philippe Margotin and published by Black Dog & Leventhal. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 1024 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive visual history of the "World's Greatest Rock & Roll Band" as told through the recording of their monumental catalog, including 29 studio and 24 compilation albums, and more than a hundred singles. Since 1963, The Rolling Stones have been recording and touring, selling more than 200 million records worldwide. While much is known about this iconic group, few books provide a comprehensive history of their time in the studio. In The Rolling Stones All the Songs, authors Margotin and Guesdon describe the origin of their 340 released songs, details from the recording studio, what instruments were used, and behind-the-scenes stories of the great artists who contributed to their tracks. Organized chronologically by album, this massive, 704-page hardcover begins with their 1963 eponymous debut album recorded over five days at the Regent Studio in London; through their collaboration with legendary producer Jimmy Miller in the ground-breaking albums from 1968 to 1973; to their later work with Don Was, who has produced every album since Voodoo Lounge. Packed with more than 500 photos, All the Songs is also filled with stories fans treasure, such as how the mobile studio they pioneered was featured in Deep Purple's classic song "Smoke on the Water" or how Keith Richards used a cassette recording of an acoustic guitar to get the unique riff on "Street Fighting Man."
Download or read book Is That All There Is written by James Gavin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-11-11 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A biography of singer Peggy Lee"--
Download or read book Real Life Rock written by Greil Marcus and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 599 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Washington Post hails Greil Marcus as our greatest cultural critic. Writing in the London Review of Books, D. D. Guttenplan calls him probably the most astute critic of American popular culture since Edmund Wilson. For nearly thirty years, he has written a remarkable column that has migrated from the Village Voice to Artforum, Salon, City Pages, Interview, and The Believer and currently appears in the Barnes & Noble Review. It has been a laboratory where Marcus has fearlessly explored and wittily dissected an enormous variety of cultural artifacts, from songs to books to movies to advertisements, teasing out from the welter of everyday objects what amounts to a de facto theory of cultural transmission. Published to complement the paperback edition of The History of Rock & Roll in Ten Songs, Real Life Rock reveals the critic in full: direct, erudite, funny, fierce, vivid, astute, uninhibited, and possessing an unerring instinct for art and fraud. The result is an indispensable volume packed with startling arguments and casual brilliance.
Download or read book The Relentless Pursuit of Tone written by Robert Fink and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music assembles a broad spectrum of contemporary perspectives on how "sound" functions in an equally wide array of popular music. Ranging from the twang of country banjoes and the sheen of hip-hop strings to the crunch of amplified guitars and the thump of subwoofers on the dance floor, this volume bridges the gap between timbre, our name for the purely acoustic characteristics of sound waves, and tone, an emergent musical construct that straddles the borderline between the perceptual and the political. Essays engage with the entire history of popular music as recorded sound, from the 1930s to the present day, under four large categories. "Genre" asks how sonic signatures define musical identities and publics; "Voice" considers the most naturalized musical instrument, the human voice, as racial and gendered signifier, as property or likeness, and as raw material for algorithmic perfection through software; "Instrument" tells stories of the way some iconic pop music machines-guitars, strings, synthesizers-got (or lost) their distinctive sounds; "Production" then puts it all together, asking structural questions about what happens in a recording studio, what is produced (sonic cartoons? rockist authenticity? empty space?) and what it all might mean.
Download or read book Let s Rock written by Richard Aquila and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-10-28 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rock & roll was one of the most important cultural developments in post–World War II America, yet its origins are shrouded in myth and legend. Let’s Rock! reclaims the lost history of rock & roll. Based on years of research, as well as interviews with Bo Diddley, Pat Boone, and other rock & roll pioneers, the book offers new information and fresh perspectives about Elvis, the rise of rock & roll, and 1950s America. Rock & roll is intertwined with the rise of a post–World War II youth culture, the emergence of African Americans in society, the growth of consumer culture, technological change, the expansion of mass media, and the rise of a Cold War culture that endorsed traditional values to guard against communism. Richard Aquila’s book demonstrates that early rock & roll was not as rebellious as common wisdom has it. The new sound reflected the conservatism and conformity of the 1950s as much as it did the era’s conflict. Rock & roll supported centrist politics, traditional values, and mainstream attitudes toward race, gender, class, and ethnicity. The musical evidence proves that most teenagers of the 1950s were not that different from their parents and grandparents when it came to basic beliefs, interests, and pastimes. Young and old alike were preoccupied by the same concerns, tensions, and insecurities. Rock & roll continues to permeate the fabric of modern life, and understanding the music’s origins reminds us of the common history we all share. Music lovers who grew up during rock & roll’s early years as well as those who have come to it more recently will find Let’s Rock an exciting historical and musical adventure.
Download or read book The B Side written by Ben Yagoda and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-01-22 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an acclaimed cultural critic, a narrative and social history of the Great American Songwriting era. Everybody knows and loves the American Songbook. But it’s a bit less widely understood that in about 1950, this stream of great songs more or less dried up. All of a sudden, what came over the radio wasn’t Gershwin, Porter, and Berlin, but “Come on-a My House” and “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” Elvis and rock and roll arrived a few years later, and at that point the game was truly up. What happened, and why? In The B Side, acclaimed cultural historian Ben Yagoda answers those questions in a fascinating piece of detective work. Drawing on previously untapped archival sources and on scores of interviews—the voices include Randy Newman, Jimmy Webb, Linda Ronstadt, and Herb Alpert—the book illuminates broad musical trends through a series of intertwined stories. Among them are the battle between ASCAP and Broadcast Music, Inc.; the revolution in jazz after World War II; the impact of radio and then television; and the bitter, decades-long feud between Mitch Miller and Frank Sinatra. The B Side is about taste, and the particular economics and culture of songwriting, and the potential of popular art for greatness and beauty. It’s destined to become a classic of American musical history.
Download or read book The Business written by Simon Napier-Bell and published by Unbound Publishing. This book was released on 2023-01-27 with total page 509 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The only history of pop music you’ll ever have to read.”— Huffington Post Let legendary rock manager Simon Napier-Bell take you inside the (dodgy) world of popular music – not just a creative industry, but a business that has made people rich beyond their wildest dreams. This book describes the evolution of the music industry from 1713 – the year parliament granted writers ownership over what they wrote – to today, when a global, 100 billion pound industry is controlled by just three major players: Sony, Universal and Warner. Inside you will uncover some little-known facts about the industry, including: how a formula for writing hit songs in the 1900s helped create 50,000 of the best-known songs of all time; how Jewish immigrants and black jazz musicians dancing cheek-to-cheek created a template for all popular music that followed; and how rock tours became the biggest, quickest, sleaziest and most profitable ventures the music industry has ever seen. Through it all, Napier-Bell balances seductive anecdotes – pulling back the curtain on the gritty and absurd side of the industry – with an insightful exploration of the relationship between creativity and money.
Download or read book The Free World written by Louis Menand and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 880 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An engrossing and impossibly wide-ranging project . . . In The Free World, every seat is a good one." —Carlos Lozada, The Washington Post "The Free World sparkles. Fully original, beautifully written . . . One hopes Menand has a sequel in mind. The bar is set very high." —David Oshinsky, The New York Times Book Review | Editors' Choice One of The New York Times's 100 best books of 2021 | One of The Washington Post's 50 best nonfiction books of 2021 | A Mother Jones best book of 2021 In his follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menand offers a new intellectual and cultural history of the postwar years The Cold War was not just a contest of power. It was also about ideas, in the broadest sense—economic and political, artistic and personal. In The Free World, the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize–winning scholar and critic Louis Menand tells the story of American culture in the pivotal years from the end of World War II to Vietnam and shows how changing economic, technological, and social forces put their mark on creations of the mind. How did elitism and an anti-totalitarian skepticism of passion and ideology give way to a new sensibility defined by freewheeling experimentation and loving the Beatles? How was the ideal of “freedom” applied to causes that ranged from anti-communism and civil rights to radical acts of self-creation via art and even crime? With the wit and insight familiar to readers of The Metaphysical Club and his New Yorker essays, Menand takes us inside Hannah Arendt’s Manhattan, the Paris of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Merce Cunningham and John Cage’s residencies at North Carolina’s Black Mountain College, and the Memphis studio where Sam Phillips and Elvis Presley created a new music for the American teenager. He examines the post war vogue for French existentialism, structuralism and post-structuralism, the rise of abstract expressionism and pop art, Allen Ginsberg’s friendship with Lionel Trilling, James Baldwin’s transformation into a Civil Right spokesman, Susan Sontag’s challenges to the New York Intellectuals, the defeat of obscenity laws, and the rise of the New Hollywood. Stressing the rich flow of ideas across the Atlantic, he also shows how Europeans played a vital role in promoting and influencing American art and entertainment. By the end of the Vietnam era, the American government had lost the moral prestige it enjoyed at the end of the Second World War, but America’s once-despised culture had become respected and adored. With unprecedented verve and range, this book explains how that happened.
Download or read book The Poetry of Pop written by Adam Bradley and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-28 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A trailblazing exploration of the poetic power of popular songs, from Tin Pan Alley to the Beatles to Beyoncé and beyond. Encompassing a century of recorded music, this pathbreaking book reveals the poetic artistry of popular songs. Pop songs are music first. They also comprise the most widely disseminated poetic expression of our time. Adam Bradley traces the song lyric across musical genres from early twentieth-century Delta blues to mid-century rock 'n’ roll to today’s hits. George and Ira Gershwin’s “Fascinating Rhythm.” The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Rihanna’s “Diamonds.” These songs are united in their exacting attention to the craft of language and sound. Bradley shows that pop music is a poetry that must be heard more than read, uncovering the rhythms, rhymes, and metaphors expressed in the singing voice. At once a work of musical interpretation, cultural analysis, literary criticism, and personal storytelling, this book illustrates how words and music come together to produce compelling poetry, often where we least expect it.
Download or read book But Will You Love Me Tomorrow written by Laura Flam and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2023-09-05 with total page 509 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring over 300 hours of new interviews with 100+ subjects, an oral history of the girl groups (such as The Ronettes, The Shirelles, The Supremes, and The Vandellas) that redefined the early 1960s The girl group sound, made famous and unforgettable by acts like The Ronettes, The Shirelles, The Supremes, and The Vandellas, took over the airwaves by capturing the mixture of innocence and rebellion emblematic of America in the 1960s. As songs like "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," "Then He Kissed Me," and "Be My Baby" rose to the top of the charts, girl groups cornered the burgeoning post-war market of teenage rock and roll fans, indelibly shaping the trajectory of pop music in the process. While the songs are essential to the American canon, many of the artists remain all but anonymous to most listeners. With more than 100 subjects that made the music, from the singers to the songwriters, to their agents, managers, and sound engineers—and even to the present-day celebrities inspired by their lasting influence–But Will You Love Me Tomorrow: An Oral History of 60s Girl Groups tells a national coming-of-age story that gives particular insight into the experiences of the female singers and songwriters who created the movement.
