Download or read book Sanctified Blues written by Mable John and published by Crown. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Albertina Merci, a talented R&B singer, toured with Ray Charles, James Brown, and Wilson Pickett—until the fateful night her voice gave out in front of a sold-out crowd. Encouraged by her fans, she offered a little speech in praise of Jesus instead of a song. Her spontaneous words became the seed of “Sanctified Blues,” a song that soon captured the hearts of millions and gave Albertina the financial security to follow her true calling as an evangelist—sharing the Gospel with those in need of spiritual comfort. Sanctified Blues is the story of Albertina’s encounter with Maggie Clay, the biracial beauty who is TV’s reigning diva. A sudden mystery surrounding Maggie has the entire country wondering: Is Maggie having a nervous breakdown, and if so, why? What caused it? And who can save the star from self-destruction?Sanctified Blues introduces a heroine in the vein of Jessica Fletcher of Murder, She Wrote and Precious Ramotswe, head of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Her quiet but determined mission to solve spiritual mysteries and dilemmas will endear Albertina to both secular and Christian readers.
Download or read book Love Tornado written by Mable John and published by Crown. This book was released on 2008-06-10 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pastor Albertina Merci, the former blues singer turned minister, juggles rap, romance, family, and faith in the third book in this delightful series. The unexpected arrival of fifteen-year-old rapper J Love hits Pastor Merci with the force of a whirlwind. When J’s mother is killed in a tragic bus accident, Albertina is named his legal guardian. The situation quickly complicates her budding romance with Mario, the owner of a thriving L.A. café. As Albertina struggles to keep things on an even keel, J embarks on a dangerous journey of his own. Seduced by Bishop Henry Gold’s daughter Damitra, J abandons his career as a gospel rapper and joins the flashy, materialistic world of gangsta rap. Pastor Merci must draw on every ounce of faith she has to bring everyone’s voyage to a happy ending.
Download or read book Stay Out of the Kitchen written by Mable John and published by Crown. This book was released on 2007-06-26 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Albertina Merci is back in this delightful second book featuring everyone’s favorite blues singer turned evangelist! After Albertina’s dear friend Mr. Mario, the owner of Mr. Mario’s Downhome Café, has a heart attack and then loses his wife to diabetes, he decides that his lifetime love of soul food is over for good. Mr. Mario vows to go healthy, both personally and professionally, and tries to get Albertina on board, but it quickly becomes clear that he may be looking for more than pastoral support. And while he is undeniably romantic, Mr. Mario believes in the power of man…not God. The only heat isn’t in the kitchen, though. Clifford Bloom, a white DJ who has been a fan of Albertina’s since her days as a blues singer, is now a member of her church and he always seems to be there just when Albertina needs him. Could this blossoming friendship be leading somewhere romantic? Caught between two very different men, Pastor Merci also has to battle to save her little church in the heart of Los Angeles as mega-church pastor Bishop Gold wants not only the land where her church sits, but her nephew Patrick’s loyalty, as well.
Download or read book The Original Blues written by Lynn Abbott and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2017-02-27 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blues Book of the Year —Living Blues Association of Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence Best Historical Research in Recorded Blues, Gospel, Soul, or R&B–Certificate of Merit (2018) 2023 Blues Hall of Fame Inductee - Classic of Blues Literature category With this volume, Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff complete their groundbreaking trilogy on the development of African American popular music. Fortified by decades of research, the authors bring to life the performers, entrepreneurs, critics, venues, and institutions that were most crucial to the emergence of the blues in black southern vaudeville theaters; the shadowy prehistory and early development of the blues is illuminated, detailed, and given substance. At the end of the nineteenth century, vaudeville began to replace minstrelsy as America’s favorite form of stage entertainment. Segregation necessitated the creation of discrete African American vaudeville theaters. When these venues first gained popularity, ragtime coon songs were the standard fare. Insular black southern theaters provided a safe haven, where coon songs underwent rehabilitation and blues songs suitable for the professional stage were formulated. The process was energized by dynamic interaction between the performers and their racially-exclusive audience. The first blues star of black vaudeville was Butler “String Beans” May, a blackface comedian from Montgomery, Alabama. Before his bizarre, senseless death in 1917, String Beans was recognized as the “blues master piano player of the world.” His musical legacy, elusive and previously unacknowledged, is preserved in the repertoire of country blues singer-guitarists and pianists of the race recording era. While male blues singers remained tethered to the role of blackface comedian, female “coon shouters” acquired a more dignified aura in the emergent persona of the “blues queen.” Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and most of their contemporaries came through this portal; while others, such as forgotten blues heroine Ora Criswell and her protégé Trixie Smith, ingeniously reconfigured the blackface mask for their own subversive purposes. In 1921 black vaudeville activity was effectively nationalized by the Theater Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A.). In collaboration with the emergent race record industry, T.O.B.A. theaters featured touring companies headed by blues queens with records to sell. By this time the blues had moved beyond the confines of entertainment for an exclusively black audience. Small-time black vaudeville became something it had never been before—a gateway to big-time white vaudeville circuits, burlesque wheels, and fancy metropolitan cabarets. While the 1920s was the most glamorous and remunerative period of vaudeville blues, the prior decade was arguably even more creative, having witnessed the emergence, popularization, and early development of the original blues on the African American vaudeville stage.
Download or read book The Holy Profane written by Teresa L. Reed and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2003 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Literature and Ecotheology written by George B. Handley and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-22 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literature and Ecotheology: From Chaos to Cosmos challenges us in a time of climate crisis to find more common ground between the dual projects of ecocriticism and ecotheology. This book argues that in our postsecular age, literature has become an important repository of theological wisdom that can, like formal work in ecotheology, provide the moral grounds for environmental care. However, for any cosmological understanding to be adequate to the challenges before us, it must be responsive to the often-painful contingencies and uncertainties that inhere in the cosmos, something that both ecocriticism and ecotheology have often neglected. After a treatment of the ecocritical and ecotheological questions that pertain to the religious/secular divide, the study then turns to four contemporary American writers—Annie Dillard, Cormac McCarthy, Marilynne Robinson, and David James Duncan—as examples. Each uses the contingency of literary form and its promise of wholeness in order to imagine reasons for hope in light of the unpredictability and untold human and more-than-human suffering that lie at the heart of nature. The book will be of interest to students, scholars and researchers interested in ecotheology, religious studies, environmental literature, the environmental humanities, and environmental studies more broadly. It offers a needed paradigm shift in how Western societies have tended to misuse both secularity and religion.
Download or read book Uncloudy Days written by Bil Carpenter and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2005 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first true gospel music encyclopedia, Uncloudy Days explores the artists who profoundly influenced early rock 'n' roll and soul music and provided inspiration for millions of the faithful."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Lift Every Voice written by Burton W. Peretti and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2008-12-16 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since their enslavement in West Africa and transport to plantations of the New World, black people have made music that has been deeply entwined with their religious, community, and individual identities. Music was one of the most important constant elements of African American culture in the centuries-long journey from slavery to freedom. It also continued to play this role in blacks' post-emancipation odyssey from second-class citizenship to full equality. Lift Every Voice traces the roots of black music in Africa and slavery and its evolution in the United States from the end of slavery to the present day. The music's creators, consumers, and distributors are all part of the story. Musical genres such as spirituals, ragtime, the blues, jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues, rock, soul, and hip-hop—as well as black contributions to classical, country, and other American music forms—depict the continuities and innovations that mark both the music and the history of African Americans. A rich selection of documents help to define the place of music within African American communities and the nation as a whole.
Download or read book From Labor to Reward written by Martha C. Taylor and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2016-06-24 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Labor to Reward is a pioneering, epic, and groundbreaking book that fills a huge void in American religious history, black religious history, and traditions of the black church. Until now, no other book has chronicled the rich religious experiences of black church beginnings in the Bay Area. Martha C. Taylor provides penetrating insight into the early makings of the black church in the Bay Area. With attention to detail, Taylor captures the joys, frustrations, and unity of black people who left the segregated Deep South, came to the Bay Area seeking freedom only to face similar adversities of segregation, racism, housing discrimination, KKK threats of violence, and other socio-political barriers. Remarkably, these early pioneers brought their culture, traditions, and experiences from the South and built a strong vibrant religious community. From Labor to Reward speaks for the legacy of African Americans who were gospel social activists using the church as the anchor. Multiple sources of research and interviews were gathered from church records, newspaper clippings, and other written sources to tell this unknown story. This book is sure to be a classic and a must read for all persons interested in history.
Download or read book Shine A Light My Year with Blind Willie Johnson written by Shane Ford and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2011 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meant as a companion piece for those already familiar with Johnson's music and myth - journey through Texas with Shane Ford as he leads the way to honor the legend, Blind Willie Johnson. Included is new research and pictures, never-before-seen.
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 132 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 Not Dead Not for Sale written by Scott Weiland and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-05-17 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early 1990s, Stone Temple Pilots—not U2, not Nirvana, not Pearl Jam— was the hottest band in the world. STP toppled such mega-bands as Aerosmith and Guns N’ Roses on MTV and the Billboard charts. Lead singer Scott Weiland became an iconic front man in the tradition of Mick Jagger, David Bowie, and Robert Plant. Then, when STP imploded, it was Weiland who emerged as the emblem of rock star excess, with his well-publicized drug busts and trips to rehab. Weiland has since made a series of stunning comebacks, fronting the supergroup Velvet Revolver, releasing solo work, and, most recently, reuniting with Stone Temple Pilots. He still struggles with the bottle, but he has prevailed as a loving, dedicated father, as well as a business-savvy artist whose well of creativity is far from empty. These earthling papers explore Weiland’s early years as an altar boy right along with his first experiences with sex and drugs. Weiland discusses his complex relationships with his parents, stepfather, siblings, and the love of his life, Mary Forsberg Weiland. Readers learn the fascinating stories behind his most well-known songs and what it was like to be there at the beginning of the grunge phenomenon, as Rolling Stone proclaimed on its cover: “the year punk broke.” Not Dead & Not for Sale is a hard rock memoir to be reckoned with—a passionate, insightful, and at times humorous book that reads with extraordinary narrative force.
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 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 I ll Take You There written by Bill Friskics-Warren and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2006-09-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The urge to connect with that which transcends our experience, be it a higher power, another person or some artistic ideal or aspect of nature, is one of the things that makes us human. People view the object of this quest, as well as what it means to achieve it, differently. Yet regardless of how it is understood, the urge to participate in or belong to something greater and more lasting than ourselves—a feeling born of an awareness of our mortality—is what defines us as spiritual beings. Though often dismissed as ephemeral or, worse, demonic, popular music has given voice to this quest for transcendence since its beginnings. Pop singers are rarely as outwardly spiritual as, say, their gospel counterparts; they're forever pointing beyond themselves, though, be it to some better future, some higher ideal, or to some vision of deliverance. Fontella Bass's "Rescue Me," the Four Tops's "Reach Out (I'll Be There)," Jimmy Cliff's "Many Rivers to Cross," Afrika Bambaataa's "Looking for the Perfect Beat," and U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" are but a handful of popular recordings from the past few decades that express a longing for something more. What, other than transcendence, is Jimi Hendrix talking about in "Purple Haze" when he shouts, "'scuse me, while I kiss the sky"? Or Van Morrison, in "Caravan," when he implores us to crank our radios and sail away with him into the mystic? Heard in the right light, secular and even carnal records have the power to speak to transcendental concerns, galvanizing their historical and cultural moments. Regardless of their spiritual leanings, all of the subjects discussed in this book (including Public Enemy, Madonna, Sleater-Kinney, Tricky, Johnny Cash, Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Marvin Gaye, Eminem, Polly Harvey, Bruce Springsteen and Sly & the Family Stone) make music that expresses a basic striving for transcendence. Artists' stories and personalities inform these discussions, but only in as much as they illuminate the struggles and concerns that run through their music. I'll Take You There is a beautifully written, wide-ranging and illuminating examination of some of the most potent popular music ever recorded.
Download or read book The Folk Music Sourcebook written by Larry Sandberg and published by Da Capo Press, Incorporated. This book was released on 1989-08-21 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This revised and updated book is a guide for the listener, collector, singer, player and devotee of folk music. It covers music from string band to bluegrass, Canadian, Creole, Zydeco, jug bands, ragtime and the many kinds of blues. The book evaluates, reviews and recommends on such subjects as where to buy records and instruments and places where folk music flourishes.
Download or read book Love Brought Me Back written by Natalie Cole and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-11-09 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: IN THIS LUMINOUS MEMOIR, LEGENDARY SINGER AND ACTRESS NATALIE COLE TELLS A REMARKABLE STORY OF LIFE-THREATENING ILLNESS AND RECOVERY, AND THE STORY OF A DEATH THAT BROUGHT NEW LIFE. In 2009 Natalie Cole was on dialysis, her kidneys failing. Without a kidney transplant, her future was uncertain. Throughout Natalie’s illness one of her biggest supporters was her beloved sister Cooke. But then Cooke herself became ill, with cancer. Astonishingly, as Cooke lay dying in a hospital, Natalie received a call that a kidney was available, but the surgery had to be performed immediately. Natalie couldn’t leave her sister’s side—but neither could she refuse the kidney that would save her own life. This is a story of sisters, Natalie and Cooke, but also of the sisters who made the transplant possible, Patty and Jessica. It was Jessica’s death that gave new life to Natalie, even as Natalie experienced the devastating loss of Cooke. Patty, too, suffered her own terrible loss, but when she met Natalie, she found that her sister’s spirit still lived. Through the gift of life, Natalie and Patty became sisters in spirit. Love Brought Me Back is a story of loss and recovery, sorrow and joy, success and despair—and, finally, success again. It will touch you as few memoirs ever have.
