Download or read book Straight Ahead the Story of Stan Kenton written by Carol Easton and published by New York : William Morrow. This book was released on 1973 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Straight Ahead is the story of Stan Kenton's career as a musician, brom his first Artistry in Rhythm band in 1941, through his becoming "the greatest box-office attraction in the nation," through Progressive Jazz, the Innovations Orchestra, his becoming only the third musician elected to Down Beat's Hall of Fame (following Louis Armstrong and Glenn Miller), through the Mellophonium Band, up to the present, his twelfth band"--

Download or read book Stan Kenton written by Michael Sparke and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An expert on Stan Kenton, Sparke delivers a comprehensive history of Kenton's activities as a bandleader and creative force in jazz. Based largely on interviews with Kenton and members of the various incarnations of his orchestra, the book shows how the "Kenton sound" evolved over four decades, focusing on the role that Kenton himself played in that development. While Sparke's style is sometimes a bit florid, his vast knowledge and enthusiasm for his subject is evident throughout the book. Likely to become the standard history of Kenton's orchestra, this book will be enjoyed by any reader interested in the history of big-band jazz. Annotation ♭2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Download or read book Johnny Mercer written by Glenn T. Eskew and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2013-11-15 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Herndon “Johnny” Mercer (1909–76) remained in the forefront of American popular music from the 1930s through the 1960s, writing over a thousand songs, collaborating with all the great popular composers and jazz musicians of his day, working in Hollywood and on Broadway, and as cofounder of Capitol Records, helping to promote the careers of Nat “King” Cole, Margaret Whiting, Peggy Lee, and many other singers. Mercer’s songs—sung by Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Lena Horne, and scores of other performers—are canonical parts of the great American songbook. Four of his songs received Academy Awards: “Moon River,” “Days of Wine and Roses,” “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe,” and “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening.” Mercer standards such as “Hooray for Hollywood” and “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby” remain in the popular imagination. Exhaustively researched, Glenn T. Eskew’s biography improves upon earlier popular treatments of the Savannah, Georgia–born songwriter to produce a sophisticated, insightful, evenhanded examination of one of America’s most popular and successful chart-toppers. Johnny Mercer: Southern Songwriter for the World provides a compelling chronological narrative that places Mercer within a larger framework of diaspora entertainers who spread a southern multiracial culture across the nation and around the world. Eskew contends that Mercer and much of his music remained rooted in his native South, being deeply influenced by the folk music of coastal Georgia and the blues and jazz recordings made by black and white musicians. At Capitol Records, Mercer helped redirect American popular music by commodifying these formerly distinctive regional sounds into popular music. When rock ’n’ roll diminished opportunities at home, Mercer looked abroad, collaborating with international composers to create transnational songs. At heart, Eskew says, Mercer was a jazz musician rather than a Tin Pan Alley lyricist, and the interpenetration of jazz and popular song that he created expressed elements of his southern heritage that made his work distinctive and consistently kept his music before an approving audience.

Download or read book written by Joe Conzo and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2010-10-28 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joe Conzo and David A. Perez luminously recreate the life of widely acclaimed Afro-Cuban and jazz musician Tito Puente in the biography "Mambo Diablo - My Journey with Tito Puente." The authors chronicle the life of the popular and combative New York Puerto Rican multi talented musician and entertainer who climbed from his obscure and poor environment in East Harlem (El Barrio), New York to international fame and recognition. Countless stories have been written about Tito Puente's percussive musical abilities, but rarely has the talent, intuition, mishaps and controversies been presented in a vivid and personal biography. Joe Conzo was Tito's close friend, confidant and chronicler for nearly 40 years - no one was closer to Tito or knew him better, not even his family. Joe tells the story of a man and his music the way it has never been told. David A. Perez sets down Joe's personal recollections and fits them into the context of the social milieu and revolving world. Hundreds of articles have been written about Puente, and three books Powell, Josephine. Tito Puente - When The Drums are Dreaming, Authorhouse, 2007 (Information re: Tito is based on her conversations with Tito Puente. The book is self-published and chronicles many of his activities on the West Coast. There are many inconsistencies, mis-quotes, and errors of fact.) Loza, Steven. Tito Puente and the Making of Latin Music, University of Illinois Press, 1999 (A technical work that is based on interviews with people who knew Tito. The life of Puente is glanced over; the musicians he worked with are almost overlooked. Joe Conzo is among those interviewed.)Payne, Jim. Tito Puente - The King of Latin Music, Hudson Music, 2000. (Is presented as an overview of Tito Puente's music and includes a DVD with footage of Tito discussing his 50-year career. Joe Conzo provided much of the information for this endeavor.) record some of his achievements. None of them touch on the personal life of the man, expose his weaknesses, reveal his intensity for perfection, and describe the musical brilliance in such a delicate and personal way. Joe and David reveal the inner Tito Puente through his music, his musical associations and present a man that is more than a flamboyant percussionist. Tito played piano - and he played it well. Tito played the saxophone and often sat in the sax section of his orchestra. Tito played the vibes and had an incomparable style that was exciting, romantic and jazzy. He composed about 500 tunes, probably more. And, yet in the realm of American jazz historians, writers and critics ignore, brush over and avoid the importance of Tito's music and his contributions. A prime example of this is Ken Burn's television documentary about jazz - he virtually ignores Afro-Cuban music, Afro-Cuban jazz. Joe and David reveal Tito's rightful place in the history of music and give an unbiased, on-the-mark portrait of Puente's complexities like no book before it. Author and journalist Pete Hamill sets the stage for the journey in the preface.

Download or read book Dark Side of the Tune Popular Music and Violence written by Professor Bruce Johnson and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-01-28 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written against the academically dominant but simplistic romanticization of popular music as a positive force, this book focuses on the 'dark side' of the subject. It is a pioneering examination of the ways in which popular music has been deployed in association with violence, ranging from what appears to be an incidental relationship, to one in which music is explicitly applied as an instrument of violence. A preliminary overview of the physiological and cognitive foundations of sounding/hearing which are distinctive within the sensorium, discloses in particular their potential for organic and psychic violence. The study then elaborates working definitions of key terms (including the vexed idea of the 'popular') for the purposes of this investigation, and provides a historical survey of examples of the nexus between music and violence, from (pre)Biblical times to the late nineteenth century. The second half of the book concentrates on the modern era, marked in this case by the emergence of technologies by which music can be electronically augmented, generated, and disseminated, beginning with the advent of sound recording from the 1870s, and proceeding to audio-internet and other contemporary audio-technologies. Johnson and Cloonan argue that these technologies have transformed the potential of music to mediate cultural confrontations from the local to the global, particularly through violence. The authors present a taxonomy of case histories in the connection between popular music and violence, through increasingly intense forms of that relationship, culminating in the topical examples of music and torture, including those in Bosnia, Darfur, and by US forces in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay. This, however, is not simply a succession of data, but an argumentative synthesis. Thus, the final section debates the implications of this nexus both for popular music studies itself, and also in cultural policy and regulation, the ethics of citizenship, and arguments about human rights.

Download or read book If It Swings It s Music written by Gabe Baltazar and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2012-05-17 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hawai‘i’s legendary jazz musician Gabe Baltazar Jr. has thrilled audiences since the late 1940s with his powerful and passionate playing. In this, the first book on his life and career, Gabe takes readers through the highs, lows, and in-betweens on the long road to becoming one of the very few Asian Americans who has achieved worldwide acclaim as a jazz artist. At a young age Gabe was encouraged by his father, an accomplished musician, to take up the clarinet and saxophone. As a teenager during World War II, Gabe performed with the Royal Hawaiian Band but spent his weekends playing in swing bands. After establishing himself in the West Coast jazz scene, in 1960 he rose to prominence as lead alto saxophonist of the Stan Kenton Orchestra. Following a four-year stint with Kenton, Gabe worked as a valued studio musician, recording with Dizzy Gillespie, Oliver Nelson, and James Moody, among others. In 1969 he returned to Honolulu and went on to become Hawai‘i’s premier jazz artist, a role he admirably fulfilled for over forty years. Even into his eighties, Gabe remained active in jazz education and performed regularly. Gabe’s memorable encounters with some of the greatest names in jazz and popular entertainment will delight music fans, while readers of Hawai‘i and Asian-American life-writing will find in this work a fond record of days past told with humor and heart.

Download or read book Jazz written by Eddie S. Meadows and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-23 with total page 773 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jazz: Research and Pedagogy is the third edition of an annotated bibliography to books, recordings, videos, and websites in the field of jazz. Since the publication of the 2nd edition in 1995, the quantity and quality of books on jazz research, performance, and teaching materials have increased. Although the 1995 book was the most comprehensive annotated jazz bibliography published to that date, several books on research, performance, and teaching materials were omitted. In addition, given the proliferation of new books in all jazz areas since 1995, the need for a new, comprehensive, and annotated reference book on jazz is apparent. Multiply indexed, this book will serve as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars in sorting through the massive amount of new material that has appeared in the field over the last decade.

Download or read book West Coast Jazz written by Ted Gioia and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1998-10 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ted Gioia tells the story of jazz as it has never been told before, in a book that brilliantly portrays the legendary players, the breakthrough styles, and the world in which it evolved. Gioia provides readers with lively portraits of great musicians, intertwined with vibrant commentary on the music they created. 9 photos.

Download or read book The Encyclopedia of Popular Music written by Colin Larkin and published by Omnibus Press. This book was released on 2011-05-27 with total page 1600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text presents a comprehensive and up-to-date reference work on popular music, from the early 20th century to the present day.

Download or read book Reader s Guide to Music written by Murray Steib and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-02 with total page 2624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Reader's Guide to Music is designed to provide a useful single-volume guide to the ever-increasing number of English language book-length studies in music. Each entry consists of a bibliography of some 3-20 titles and an essay in which these titles are evaluated, by an expert in the field, in light of the history of writing and scholarship on the given topic. The more than 500 entries include not just writings on major composers in music history but also the genres in which they worked (from early chant to rock and roll) and topics important to the various disciplines of music scholarship (from aesthetics to gay/lesbian musicology).

Download or read book Straight Life the Story of Art Pepper written by Art Pepper and published by Canons. This book was released on 2022-11-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Art Pepper was described as the greatest alto-saxophonist of the post-Charlie Parker generation. Straight Life, originally narrated on tape to his wife Laurie, is an explosive work chronicling his work amidst a life dealing with alcoholism, heroin addiction, armed robberies and imprisonment. The result is an autobiography like no other, a masterpiece of the spoken word, shaped into a genuine work of literature.

Download or read book Music in the 20th Century 3 Vol Set written by Dave DiMartino and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 2298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an examination of the crucial formative period of Chinese attitudes toward nuclear weapons, the immediate post-Hiroshima/Nagasaki period and the Korean War. It also provides an account of US actions and attitudes during this period and China's response.

Download or read book Recasting America written by Lary May and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The freshness of the authors' approaches . . . is salutary. . . . The collection is stimulating and valuable."—Joan Shelley Rubin, Journal of American History

Download or read book A Concise History of Jazz written by JOHN ROBERT BROWN and published by Mel Bay Publications. This book was released on 2010-10-07 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Robert Brown presents an enthusiastic and authoritative account of a century of jazz. Written in a clear and engaging style by a well-known British author and jazz educator, this book offers an affectionate introduction to the people and places that are of worldwide importance in the history of this wonderful music.

Download or read book Golden Dreams written by Kevin Starr and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-09 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A narrative tour de force that combines wide-ranging scholarship with captivating prose, Kevin Starr's acclaimed multi-volume Americans and the California Dream is an unparalleled work of cultural history. In this volume, Starr covers the crucial postwar period--1950 to 1963--when the California we know today first burst into prominence. Starr brilliantly illuminates the dominant economic, social, and cultural forces in California in these pivotal years. In a powerful blend of telling events, colorful personalities, and insightful analyses, Starr examines such issues as the overnight creation of the postwar California suburb, the rise of Los Angeles as Super City, the reluctant emergence of San Diego as one of the largest cities in the nation, and the decline of political centrism. He explores the Silent Generation and the emergent Boomer youth cult, the Beats and the Hollywood "Rat Pack," the pervasive influence of Zen Buddhism and other Asian traditions in art and design, the rise of the University of California and the emergence of California itself as a utopia of higher education, the cooling of West Coast jazz, freeway and water projects of heroic magnitude, outdoor life and the beginnings of the environmental movement. More broadly, he shows how California not only became the most populous state in the Union, but in fact evolved into a mega-state en route to becoming the global commonwealth it is today. Golden Dreams continues an epic series that has been widely recognized for its signal contribution to the history of American culture in California. It is a book that transcends its stated subject to offer a wealth of insight into the growth of the Sun Belt and the West and indeed the dramatic transformation of America itself in these pivotal years following the Second World War.

Download or read book Popular Music written by Roman Iwaschkin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 675 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a comprehensive guide to popular music literature, first published in 1986. Its main focus is on American and British works, but it includes significant works from other countries, making it truly international in scope.

Download or read book Reading Jazz written by Robert Gottlieb and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-02-19 with total page 1087 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Comprehensive and intelligently organized. . . . Jazz aficionados . . . should be grateful to have so much good writing on the subject in one place."--The New York Times Book Review "Alluring. . . . Capture[s] much of the breadth of the music, as well as the passionate debates it has stirred, more vividly than any other jazz anthology to date."--Chicago Tribune No musical idiom has inspired more fine writing than jazz, and nowhere has that writing been presented with greater comprehensiveness and taste than in this glorious collection. In Reading Jazz, editor Robert Gottlieb combs through eighty years of autobiography, reportage, and criticism by the music's greatest players, commentators, and fans to create what is at once a monumental tapestry of jazz history and testimony to the elegance, vigor, and variety of jazz writing. Here are Jelly Roll Morton, recalling the whorehouse piano players of New Orleans in 1902; Whitney Balliett, profiling clarinetist Pee Wee Russell; poet Philip Larkin, with an eloquently dyspeptic jeremiad against bop. Here, too, are the voices of Billie Holiday and Charles Mingus, Albert Murray and Leonard Bernstein, Stanley Crouch and LeRoi Jones, reminiscing, analyzing, celebrating, and settling scores. For anyone who loves the music--or the music of great prose--Reading Jazz is indispensable. "The ideal gift for jazzniks and boppers everywhere. . . . It gathers the best and most varied jazz writing of more than a century."--Sunday Times (London)