Download or read book The Yazoo Blues written by John Pritchard and published by NewSouth Books. This book was released on 2008-08-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Junior Ray Loveblood, one of the most outrageous and original personalities to appear in American literature in many years, returns in The Yazoo Blues, the sequel to John Pritchard’s Junior Ray. Now semi-retired, Loveblood works as a security guard in one of the floating casinos that have replaced cotton as the cash crop in the Mississippi Delta. In his spare time, Junior Ray has become obsessed with the ill-fated Yazoo Pass expedition by a Union armada up the Mississippi River in 1863. He relates dual stories, both that of a soldier slowly driven mad by the haunting countryside, and of Loveblood’s friend Mad Owens, whose search for existential love meets its greatest challenge in the arms of the stripper Money Scatters. Loveblood’s conclusions are hilarious, absurd, and at times intensely revealing. Equally profane and profound, the fictional narrator of Pritchard’s novel illuminates the complex stew of evolving race relations, failed economies, and corrupt politics that define much of the post-civil rights rural Deep South.
Download or read book The Yazoo River written by Frank E. Smith and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 1988 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An immensely pleasurable book that unlocks the door to one of the most unusual and diverse regions in the United States, the culturally rich Delta flatland embraced by two rivers, the Mississippi and the Yazoo
Download or read book Josh White written by Elijah Wald and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born in South Carolina, White spent his childhood as a lead boy for traveling blind bluesmen. In the early '30s he moved to New York and became a popular blues star, then introduced folk-blues to a mass white audience in the 1940s. He was famed both for his strong Civil Rights songs, which made him a favorite of the Roosevelts, and for his sexy stage persona. The king of Café Society-also home to Billie Holiday--he was the one bluesman to consistently pack the New York nightspots, and the first black singer-guitarist to act in Hollywood films and star on Broadway. In the 1950s, White's bitter compromise with the blacklisters left him with few friends on either end of the political spectrum. He spent much of the decade in Europe, then came back strong in the 1960s folk revival. By 1963, he was voted one of America's top three male folk stars, but his health was failing and he did not survive the decade. Written in an engaging style, Society Blues portrays the difficult balancing act that all black performers must face in a predominantly white culture. Through the twists and turns of White's life, it traces the evolution of the blues and folk revival, and is a must read for anyone interested in the history of American popular culture, as well as a fascinating life story. Visit the author's website to see the Josh White photo gallery and learn more about Elijah Wald.
Download or read book Escaping the Delta written by Elijah Wald and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The life of blues legend Robert Johnson becomes the centerpiece for this innovative look at what many consider to be America's deepest and most influential music genre. Pivotal are the questions surrounding why Johnson was ignored by the core black audience of his time yet now celebrated as the greatest figure in blues history. Trying to separate myth from reality, biographer Elijah Wald studies the blues from the inside -- not only examining recordings but also the recollections of the musicians themselves, the African-American press, as well as examining original research. What emerges is a new appreciation for the blues and the movement of its artists from the shadows of the 1930s Mississippi Delta to the mainstream venues frequented by today's loyal blues fans.
Download or read book Brother Robert written by Annye C. Anderson and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Rolling Stone-Kirkus Best Music Book of 2020 “[Brother Robert} book does much to pull the blues master out of the fog of myth.”—Rolling Stone An intimate memoir by blues legend Robert Johnson's stepsister, including new details about his family, music, influences, tragic death, and musical afterlife Though Robert Johnson was only twenty-seven years young and relatively unknown at the time of his tragic death in 1938, his enduring recordings have solidified his status as a progenitor of the Delta blues style. And yet, while his music has retained the steadfast devotion of modern listeners, much remains unknown about the man who penned and played these timeless tunes. Few people alive today actually remember what Johnson was really like, and those who do have largely upheld their silence-until now. In Brother Robert, nonagenarian Annye C. Anderson sheds new light on a real-life figure largely obscured by his own legend: her kind and incredibly talented stepbrother, Robert Johnson. This book chronicles Johnson's unconventional path to stardom, from the harrowing story behind his illegitimate birth, to his first strum of the guitar on Anderson's father's knee, to the genre-defining recordings that would one day secure his legacy. Along the way, readers are gifted not only with Anderson's personal anecdotes, but with colorful recollections passed down to Anderson by members of their family-the people who knew Johnson best. Readers also learn about the contours of his working life in Memphis, never-before-disclosed details about his romantic history, and all of Johnson's favorite things, from foods and entertainers to brands of tobacco and pomade. Together, these stories don't just bring the mythologized Johnson back down to earth; they preserve both his memory and his integrity. For decades, Anderson and her family have ignored the tall tales of Johnson "selling his soul to the devil" and the speculative to fictionalized accounts of his life that passed for biography. Brother Robert is here to set the record straight. Featuring a foreword by Elijah Wald and a Q&A with Anderson, Wald, Preston Lauterbach, and Peter Guralnick, this book paints a vivid portrait of an elusive figure who forever changed the musical landscape as we know it.
Download or read book Yazoo City Blues written by Thomas L. Gayton and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book R Crumb s Heroes of Blues Jazz Country written by R. Crumb and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2014-11-26 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collectors of illustrator R. Crumb's work prize the music-oriented trading card sets he created in the 1980s. Now they appear together for the first time in book form, along with a CD of music selected and compiled by Crumb himself.
Download or read book The Land where the Blues Began written by Alan Lomax and published by . This book was released on 1994-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction, this mususical and cultural exploration of the rich, sorrow-laden birth of the blues is an intimate and respectful look at an integral part of African American culture--a master work that has been 60 years in the making. Photos.
Download or read book Deep Blues written by Robert Palmer and published by Viking Adult. This book was released on 1981 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Deep Blues" offers a concise, authoritative account of the music's Afircan beginnings, its early evolution, and its transformation from a backcountry good-time music into today's modern blues and rock and roll.
Download or read book This Delta this Land written by Mikko Saikku and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This environmental history of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta places the Delta's economic and cultural history in an environmental context. It reveals the human aspects of the region's natural history, including land reclamation, slave and sharecropper economies, ethnic and racial perceptions of land ownership and stewardship, and even blues music.
Download or read book The Story of the Blues written by Paul Oliver and published by UPNE. This book was released on 1998 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring over 200 vintage photographs and a new introduction by the author, the engaging, informative volume brings to life the African American singers and players who created this rich genre of music as well as the settings and experiences that inspired them. The author deftly traces the evolution of the blues from the work songs of slaves, to acoustic country ballads, to urban sounds, to electric rhythm and blues bands. Oliver vividly re-creates the economic, social, and regional forces that shaped the unique blues tradition, and superbly details every facet of the music, including themes and subjects, techniques, and recording history.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of the Blues K Z index written by Edward M. Komara and published by Taylor & Francis US. This book was released on 2006 with total page 746 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Play Pretty Blues written by Snowden Wright and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Wright's fervent, musical prose captures the very essence of the blues.Play Pretty Blues is a work of extraordinary imagination and soul."--Will Allison, author ofLong Drive Home The mysteries of blues legend Robert Johnson's life and death long ago became myth. Part researched reconstruction, part vivid imagination, this lyrical novel brings Johnson alive through the voices of his six wives, revealing the husband and son inside the legend. Snowden Wright was born and raised in Mississippi. His work has been published atSalon, theAtlantic Online,Esquire Online, and theNew York Daily News. He lives in New York.
Download or read book Dispatches from Pluto written by Richard Grant and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Yorkers Grant and his girlfriend Mariah decided on a whim to buy an old plantation house in the Mississippi Delta. This is their journey of discovery to a remote, isolated strip of land, three miles beyond the tiny community of Pluto. They learn to hunt, grow their own food, and fend off alligators, snakes, and varmints galore. They befriend an array of unforgettable local characters, capture the rich, extraordinary culture of the Delta, and delve deeply into the Delta's lingering racial tensions. As the nomadic Grant learns to settle down, he falls not just for his girlfriend but for the beguiling place they now call home.
Download or read book Delta Blues The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music written by Ted Gioia and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2009-11-02 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The essential history of this distinctly American genre.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution In this “expertly researched, elegantly written, dispassionate yet thoughtful history” (Gary Giddins), award-winning author Ted Gioia gives us “the rare combination of a tome that is both deeply informative and enjoyable to read” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). From the field hollers of nineteenth-century plantations to Muddy Waters and B.B. King, Delta Blues delves into the uneasy mix of race and money at the point where traditional music became commercial and bluesmen found new audiences of thousands. Combining extensive fieldwork, archival research, interviews with living musicians, and first-person accounts with “his own calm, argument-closing incantations to draw a line through a century of Delta blues” (New York Times), this engrossing narrative is flavored with insightful and vivid musical descriptions that ensure “an understanding of not only the musicians, but the music itself” (Boston Sunday Globe). Rooted in the thick-as-tar Delta soil, Delta Blues is already “a contemporary classic in its field” (Jazz Review).
Download or read book Langston Hughes and the Blues written by Steven C. Tracy and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2024-05-07 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The shades and structures of the blues had an immense impact on the poetry of Langston Hughes. Steven C. Tracy provides a cultural context for Hughes’s work while revealing how Hughes mined Black oral and literary traditions to create his poetry. Comparing Hughes’s poems to blues texts, Tracy reveals how Hughes’s experimental forms reflect the poetics, structures, rhythms, and musical techniques of the music. Tracy also offers a discography of recordings by the artists--Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and others--who most influenced the poet.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of the Blues written by Edward M. Komara and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 1274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive two-volume set brings together all aspects of the blues from performers and musical styles to record labels and cultural issues, including regional evolution and history. Organized in an accessible A-to-Z format, the Encyclopedia of the Blues is an essential reference resource for information on this unique American music genre. For a full list of entries, contributors, and more, visit the Encyclopedia of the Blues website.
