Download or read book The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records written by Scott Blackwood and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2023-03 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Founded in 1917, Paramount Records incongruously was one of several homegrown record labels of a Wisconsin chair-making company. The company pinned no outsized hopes on Paramount. Its founders knew nothing of the music business, and they had arrived at the scheme of producing records only to drive sales of the expensive phonograph cabinets they had recently begun manufacturing. Lacking the resources and the interest to compete for top talent, Paramount’s earliest recordings gained little foothold with the listening public. On the threshold of bankruptcy, the label embarked on a new business plan: selling the music of Black artists to Black audiences. It was a wildly successful move, with Paramount eventually garnering many of the biggest-selling titles in the “race records” era. Inadvertently, the label accomplished what others could not, making blues, jazz, and folk music performed by Black artists a popular and profitable genre. Paramount featured a deep roster of legendary performers, including Louis Armstrong, Charley Patton, Ethel Waters, Son House, Fletcher Henderson, Skip James, Alberta Hunter, Blind Blake, King Oliver, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Ma Rainey, Johnny Dodds, Papa Charlie Jackson, and Jelly Roll Morton. Scott Blackwood’s The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records is the story of happenstance. But it is also a tale about the sheer force of the Great Migration and the legacy of the music etched into the shellacked grooves of a 78 rpm record. With Paramount Records, Black America found its voice. Through creative nonfiction, Blackwood brings to life the gifted artists and record producers who used Paramount to revolutionize American music. Felled by the Great Depression, the label stopped recording in 1932, leaving a legacy of sound pressed into cheap 78s that is among the most treasured and influential in American history.
Download or read book Paramount s Rise and Fall written by Alex van der Tuuk and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first complete examamination of Paramount Records - the label that introduced Ma Rainey, Charley Patton, Skip James, and other blues greats to the world - and the company that produced it.
Download or read book Paramount s Rise and Fall written by Alex van der Tuuk and published by . This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book See How Small written by Scott Blackwood and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2015-01-20 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting novel about the aftermath of a brutal murder of three teenage girls, written in incantatory prose "that's as fine as any being written by an American author today" (Ben Fountain). One late autumn evening in a Texas town, two strangers walk into an ice cream shop shortly before closing time. They bind up the three teenage girls who are working the counter, set fire to the shop, and disappear. See How Small tells the stories of the survivors -- family, witnesses, and suspects -- who must endure in the wake of atrocity. Justice remains elusive in their world, human connection tenuous. Hovering above the aftermath of their deaths are the three girls. They watch over the town and make occasional visitations, trying to connect with and prod to life those they left behind. "See how small a thing it is that keeps us apart," they say. A master of compression and lyrical precision, Scott Blackwood has surpassed himself with this haunting, beautiful, and enormously powerful new novel.
Download or read book The New Paramount Book of Blues written by Alex van der Tuuk and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty-eight biographies of Paramount blues artists with sensational new information based on years of research: Lovie Austin, Charles Avery, Viola Bartlette, Ed Bell, Eloise Bennett, Arthur "Blind" Blake, Lucille Bogan, Ardell Bragg, Henry Brown, Willie Brown, Hattie Burleson, Bob Call, Ben Covington, Ben Curry, Teddy Darby, Emmett Dickenson, Aletha Dickerson, Mattie Dorsey, Sally Duffie, Amos Easton, Bernice Edwards, Kid Edwards, Will Ezell, Leroy Roscoe Garnett, Clifford Gibson, Roosevelt Graves, Lee Green, George Hannah, Walter Hawkins, Bertha Henderson, Edna Hicks, Eddie House, James Jackson, Charlie Jackson, Louise Johnson, Tommy Johnson, Moses Mason, Hattie McDaniel, Charles McFadden, Sodarisa Miller, Marshall Owens, Charley Patton, Joe Reynolds, Elzadie Robinson, Isadore Rodgers, J.D. Short, Henry Sims, Danny Small, Bessie Mae Smith, Charlie Spand, Freddie Spruell, Frank Stokes, Joel Taggart, Elvie Thomas and Geeshie Wiley, Willard Thomas, Wesley Wallace, Nolan Welsh, "Jabo" Williams.
Download or read book The Rise Fall of Paramount written by and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book All the Rave written by Joseph Menn and published by Crown Business. This book was released on 2003-04-08 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At age seventeen, Shawn Fanning designed a computer program that transformed the Internet into an unlimited library of free music. Tens of millions of young people quickly signed on, Time magazine put Fanning on its cover, and his company, Napster, became a household name. It did not take long for the music industry to declare war, one that has now engulfed the biggest entertainment and technology companies on the planet. For All the Rave, top cyberculture journalist Joseph Menn gained unprecedented access to Fanning, other key Napster and music executives, reams of internal e-mails, unpublished court records, and other resources. The result is the definitive account of the Napster saga, for the first time revealing secret take-over and settlement talks, the unseen role of Shawn’s uncle in controlling Napster, and hidden agendas and infighting from Napster’s trenches to the top ranks of the German media giant Bertelsmann. All the Rave is a riveting account of genius and greed, visionary leaps and disastrous business decisions, and the clash of the hacker and investor cultures with that of the copyright establishment. Napster left a generation of music fans feeling that paying the recording industry close to twenty dollars for a CD was a foolish and unnecessary extravagance, which provoked a still-growing backlash against digital media consumers that might leave them with less control than ever. Here is the inside story of the young visionary and the company that made it happen. From the Hardcover edition.
Download or read book Do Not Sell At Any Price written by Amanda Petrusich and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-07-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A thoughtful, entertaining history of obsessed music collectors and their quest for rare early 78 rpm records” (Los Angeles Times), Do Not Sell at Any Price is a fascinating, complex story of preservation, loss, obsession, and art. Before MP3s, CDs, and cassette tapes, even before LPs or 45s, the world listened to music on fragile, 10-inch shellac discs that spun at 78 revolutions per minute. While vinyl has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, rare and noteworthy 78rpm records are exponentially harder to come by. The most sought-after sides now command tens of thousands of dollars, when they’re found at all. Do Not Sell at Any Price is the untold story of a fixated coterie of record collectors working to ensure those songs aren’t lost forever. Music critic and author Amanda Petrusich considers the particular world of the 78—from its heyday to its near extinction—and examines how a cabal of competitive, quirky individuals have been frantically lining their shelves with some of the rarest records in the world. Besides the mania of collecting, Petrusich also explores the history of the lost backwoods blues artists from the 1920s and 30s whose work has barely survived and introduces the oddball fraternity of men—including Joe Bussard, Chris King, John Tefteller, and others—who are helping to save and digitize the blues, country, jazz, and gospel records that ultimately gave seed to the rock, pop, and hip-hop we hear today. From Thomas Edison to Jack White, Do Not Sell at Any Price is an untold, intriguing story of the evolution of the recording formats that have changed the ways we listen to (and create) music. “Whether you’re already a 78 aficionado, a casual record collector, a crate-digger, or just someone…who enjoys listening to music, you’re going to love this book” (Slate).
Download or read book Great God A mighty the Dixie Hummingbirds written by J. Jerome Zolten and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2003 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zolten offers a high-flying account of gospel's most revered groups and the social and musical history they helped make. 20 halftones.
Download or read book Blue Smoke written by Roger House and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2010-10 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A contemporary of blues greats Blind Blake, Tampa Red, and Papa Charlie Jackson, Chicago blues artist William "Big Bill" Broonzy influenced an array of postwar musicians, including Muddy Waters, Memphis Slim, and J. B. Lenoir. In Blue Smoke, Roger House tells the extraordinary story of "Big Bill," a working-class bluesman whose circumstances offer a window into the dramatic social transformations faced by African Americans during the first half of the twentieth century. One in a family of twenty-one children and reared by sharecropper parents in Mississippi, Broonzy seemed destined to stay on the land. He moved to Arkansas to work as a sharecropper, preacher, and fiddle player, but the army drafted him during World War I. After his service abroad, Broonzy, like thousands of other black soldiers, returned to the racism and bleak economic prospects of the Jim Crow South and chose to move North to seek new opportunities. After learning to play the guitar, he performed at neighborhood parties in Chicago and in 1927 attracted the attention of Paramount Records, which released his first single, "House Rent Stomp," backed by "Big Bill's Blues." Over the following decades, Broonzy toured the United States and Europe. He released dozens of records but was never quite successful enough to give up working as a manual laborer. Many of his songs reflect this experience as a blue-collar worker, articulating the struggles, determination, and optimism of the urban black working class. Before his death in 1958, Broonzy finally achieved crossover success as a key player in the folk revival movement led by Pete Seeger and Alan Lomax, and as a blues ambassador to British musicians such as Lonnie Donegan and Eric Clapton. Weaving Broonzy's recordings, writings, and interviews into a compelling narrative of his life, Blue Smoke offers a comprehensive portrait of an artist recognized today as one of the most prolific and influential working-class blues musicians of the era.
Download or read book Have Gun Will Travel written by Ronin Ro and published by Main Street Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preeminent rap journalist Ronin Ro exposes Death Row Records: an empire built on greed, corruption, murder, and exploitation. 16 photos.
Download or read book In Search of Buddy Bolden written by Donald M. Marquis and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2005-09-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beginnings of jazz and the story of Charles “Buddy” Bolden (1877–1931) are inextricably intertwined. Just after the turn of the century, New Orleanians could often hear Bolden’s powerful horn from the city’s parks and through dance hall windows. Despite his lack of formal training, his unique style—both musical and personal—made him the first “king” of New Orleans jazz and the inspiration for such later jazz greats as King Oliver, Kid Ory, and Louis Armstrong. For years the legend of Buddy Bolden was overshadowed by myths about his music, his reckless lifestyle, and his mental instability. In Search of Buddy Bolden overlays the myths with the substance of reality. Interviews with those who knew Bolden and an extensive array of primary sources enliven and inform Donald M. Marquis’s absorbing portrait of the brief but brilliant career of the first man of jazz. This paperback edition includes a new preface and appendix relating events and discoveries that have occurred since the book’s original publication in 1978.
Download or read book Drew s Blues written by Drew Page and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1999-03-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Congratulations on a much needed book on the Big Band era, especially from the viewpoint of the ‘side man’. Having been one for about eight years before becoming a ‘leader’ I can really appreciate your approach. A bandleader is no better than the men behind him and I have had some great ones, including of course Drew Page.” —Freddy Martin Having lived behind the scenes during the Big Band era of the thirties and forties, Page invites us to share that era with him. An instrumentalist or sideman, in many touring bands, he recounts friendships with now-famous as well as unknown musicians who made American dance music. Like them, Drew Page loved his music and the road. He did not want to stay in one place and one job for thirty years, repeating one year or experience thirty times. He wanted to see things, to observe people and places. After a lifetime of traveling and music, “every town began to seem like home.” Page’s life was touched with humor, disappointment, triumph, and some tragedy. “ Perhaps it’s the variety of my experiences, none seeming to relate to the others, that has given my life its discontinuity.” Certainly, discontinuity characterized his daily life, but continuity–his music–characterized its essence. Brought together by their art, the traveling bandmembers were apt to encounter each other any place, any time, and so they avoided goodbyes. “I’ll be seeing you.’ That’s the way I left Harry James and the boys in the band,” recalls Page. In this well-illustrated autobiography, he tells us what it was like to travel in the days before paved roads, and how the Great Depression, the death of vaudeville, and World War II affected the music business. He gives us anecdotes about the famous musicians he worked with–Harry James, Red Nichols, Freddy Martin among others–and he talks about his fellow sidemen. His narrative unrolls like a scroll inscribed with the names of those who made American dance music and jazz famous. Every music lover, nostalgia seeker, and student of American culture will want to own this book.
Download or read book Out of Anonymity written by Alex van der Tuuk and published by . This book was released on 2013-12-01 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A survey of dance bands playing in the Wisconsin area from the 1920's to the 1950's, with a particular emphasis on those who produced records with New York Recording Laboratories' Paramount and Broadway labels.
Download or read book Unforgivable Blackness written by Geoffrey C. Ward and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-08-04 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this vivid biography Geoffrey C. Ward brings back to life the most celebrated — and the most reviled — African American of his age. Jack Johnson battled his way out of obscurity and poverty in the Jim Crow South to win the title of heavyweight champion of the world. At a time when whites ran everything in America, he took orders from no one and resolved to live as if color did not exist. While most blacks struggled simply to exist, he reveled in his riches and his fame, sleeping with whomever he pleased, to the consternation and anger of much of white America. Because he did so the federal government set out to destroy him, and he was forced to endure prison and seven years of exile. This definitive biography portrays Jack Johnson as he really was--a battler against the bigotry of his era and the embodiment of American individualism.
Download or read book The Men Who Would Be King written by Nicole LaPorte and published by HMH. This book was released on 2010-05-04 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The definitive history of the studio” created by the larger-than-life team of Spielberg, Geffen, and Katzenberg (Los Angeles Times). For sixty years, since the birth of United Artists, the studio landscape was unchanged. Then came Hollywood’s Circus Maximus—created by director Steven Spielberg, billionaire David Geffen, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who gave the world The Lion King—an entertainment empire called DreamWorks. Now Nicole LaPorte, who covered the company for Variety, goes behind the hype to reveal for the first time the delicious truth of what happened. Readers will feel they are part of the creative calamities of moviemaking as LaPorte’s fly-on-the-wall detail shows us Hollywood’s bizarre rules of business. We see the clashes between the often-otherworldly Spielberg’s troops and Katzenberg’s warriors, the debacles and disasters, but also the Oscar-winning triumphs, including Saving Private Ryan. We watch as the studio burns through billions of dollars, its rich owners get richer, and everybody else suffers. LaPorte displays Geffen, seducing investors like Microsoft’s Paul Allen, showing his steel against CAA’s Michael Ovitz, and staging fireworks during negotiations with Paramount and Disney. Here is a blockbuster behind-the-scenes Hollywood story—up close, glamorous, and gritty.
Download or read book The Collector s Guide to Victor Records written by Michael W. Sherman and published by Dallas : Monarch Record Enterprises. This book was released on 1992 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This detailed reference (written with the collaboration of William R. Moran & Kurt Nauck) traces the history of Victor's 78-rpm records from 1892 through 1958. Nearly 300 photographs, with over 100 in full color, illustrate all known label varieties, & charts provide a guide to determine the pressing & recording date of Victor records. A must for Sound Archives, Music Libraries or institutions with 78-rpm record collections. To order: Monarch Record Enterprises, 100 Highland Park Village, Suite 200, Dallas, Texas 75205-2788. Telephone: 1-800-872-6467.
