Download or read book Those Crazy Memphis Blues written by Charles Robert Thomas and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2011-04-19 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Those Crazy Memphis Blues is a coming of age story overflowing with humor. Searching for excitement while armed with little more than false hope, poor judgment, eternal optimism and a bicycle, Matt Dwyer gets more than he bargained for when he moves to Memphis, Tennessee. Immersed in the theatre world of 1980’s Memphis, our hero finds himself the victim of an endless series of hysterically bizarre situations triggered by whacky neighbors, psychotic girlfriends, a profanity spewing boss, and an alcoholic roommate. Attempting to maintain his sanity amidst an unrelenting onslaught of implausible circumstances and eccentric characters is more than enough to give Matt Dwyer a severe case of Those Crazy Memphis Blues.
Download or read book Memphis Music Before the Blues written by Tim Sharp and published by Arcadia Library Editions. This book was released on 2007-04 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Memphis means music. That relationship was solidified in 1909 when W. C. Handy wrote the song "Mr. Crump" and later published it as the "Memphis Blues." As Handy's songs were sung and played in streets and music halls, a spotlight began to shine on a new mecca for innovation in music--Memphis, Tennessee. Memphis Music: Before the Blues surveys the people, music, and events that contributed to the rich musical life that emerged against the backdrop of the Civil War and yellow fever in the 19th century. The story is not just one of the building blocks to what has been called America's greatest export--popular music--but rather it is a story of ongoing innovation and creativity that came from a convergence of people of different cultures.
Download or read book Memphis Blues written by William Bearden and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2006-04-19 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The blues was born in the Mississippi Delta, and since that fateful night in 1903 when W. C. Handy heard the mournful sound of a pocketknife sliding over the strings of an acoustic guitar and the plaintive song of a long-forgotten musician in the hot night of Tutwiler, Mississippi, the blues has been on a journey around the world. From the cotton fields and juke joints of the Delta, up Highway 61 to Memphis's Beale Street, St. Louis, the Southside of Chicago, England, and points beyond, the blues is America's unique form of music. Blues is incisive in its honesty, elemental in its rhythm, and powerful in its almost visceral sensation. Nearly every style of popular music has its roots in the blues. Muddy Waters said it best: "The blues had a baby, and they called it rock and roll." Memphis has become the heart of the blues world, with a re-born Beale Street acting as its spiritual center. People come from the world over to experience its beat, savor its emotion, and feel its power. In the end . . . "it ain't nothin' but the blues."
Download or read book King of the Blues written by Daniel de Vise and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full and authoritative biography of an American—indeed a world-wide—musical and cultural legend “No one worked harder than B.B. No one inspired more up-and-coming artists. No one did more to spread the gospel of the blues.”—President Barack Obama “He is without a doubt the most important artist the blues has ever produced.”—Eric Clapton Riley “Blues Boy” King (1925-2015) was born into deep poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi. Wrenched away from his sharecropper father, B.B. lost his mother at age ten, leaving him more or less alone. Music became his emancipation from exhausting toil in the fields. Inspired by a local minister’s guitar and by the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker, encouraged by his cousin, the established blues man Bukka White, B.B. taught his guitar to sing in the unique solo style that, along with his relentless work ethic and humanity, became his trademark. In turn, generations of artists claimed him as inspiration, from Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton to Carlos Santana and the Edge. King of the Blues presents the vibrant life and times of a trailblazing giant. Witness to dark prejudice and lynching in his youth, B.B. performed incessantly (some 15,000 concerts in 90 countries over nearly 60 years)—in some real way his means of escaping his past. Several of his concerts, including his landmark gig at Chicago’s Cook County Jail, endure in legend to this day. His career roller-coasted between adulation and relegation, but he always rose back up. At the same time, his story reveals the many ways record companies took advantage of artists, especially those of color. Daniel de Visé has interviewed almost every surviving member of B.B. King’s inner circle—family, band members, retainers, managers, and more—and their voices and memories enrich and enliven the life of this Mississippi blues titan, whom his contemporary Bobby “Blue” Bland simply called “the man.”
Download or read book Long Lost Blues written by Peter C. Muir and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2024-03-18 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mamie Smith's 1920 recording of ""Crazy Blues"" is commonly thought to signify the beginning of commercial attention to blues music and culture, but by that year more than 450 other blues titles had already appeared in sheet music and on recordings. In this examination of early popular blues, Peter C. Muir traces the genre's early history and the highly creative interplay between folk and popular forms, focusing especially on the roles W. C. Handy played in both blues music and the music business. Long Lost Blues exposes for the first time the full scope and importance of early popular blues to mainstream American culture in the early twentieth century. Closely analyzing sheet music and other print sources that have previously gone unexamined, Muir revises our understanding of the evolution and sociology of blues at its inception.
Download or read book Memphis Rent Party written by Robert Gordon and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Blues, being the wellspring of all American music for over a century, is always worth studying. Robert does it right." --Keith Richards "An emotional map of musical Memphis. If you don't know these characters, let Robert Gordon introduce you." --Elvis Costello "Robert Gordon's book is proof that Southern heritage is American heritage, and all sorts of people--black and white, familiar and strange, dead and alive--are what it is." --Greil Marcus Profiles and stories of Southern music from the acclaimed author of Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion. The fabled city of Memphis has been essential to American music--home of the blues, the birthplace of rock and roll, a soul music capital. We know the greatest hits, but celebrated author Robert Gordon takes us to the people and places history has yet to record. A Memphis native, he whiles away time in a crumbling duplex with blues legend Furry Lewis, stays up late with barrelhouse piano player Mose Vinson, and sips homemade whiskey at Junior Kimbrough's churning house parties. A passionate listener, he hears modern times deep in the grooves of old records by Lead Belly and Robert Johnson. The interconnected profiles and stories in Memphis Rent Party convey more than a region. Like mint seeping into bourbon, Gordon gets into the wider world. He beholds the beauty of mistakes with producer Jim Dickinson (Replacements, Rolling Stones), charts the stars with Alex Chilton (Box Tops, Big Star), and mulls the tragedy of Jeff Buckley's fatal swim. Gordon's Memphis inspires Cat Power, attracts Townes Van Zandt, and finds James Carr always singing at the dark end of the street. A rent party is when friends come together to hear music, dance, and help a pal through hard times; it's a celebration in the face of looming tragedy, an optimism when the wolf is at the door. Robert Gordon finds mystery in the mundane, inspiration in the bleakness, and revels in the individualism that connects these diverse encounters.
Download or read book Goin Back to Sweet Memphis written by Fred J. Hay and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2005-03-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Memphis, Tennessee, is a major crossroads for blues musicians, songs, and styles. Memphis is where the blues first "came to town" and established itself as a cosmopolitan performance genre, and the city has long been a center of synthesis and evolution in blues recording. This volume tells the story of the blues in Memphis through previously unpublished interviews with nine performers who helped create and sustain the music from the days before its commercial success through the early 1970s. Their attitudes, experiences, and insights impart a deeper understanding of the blues aesthetic and philosophy. The performers' backgrounds range across the blues genres, from classic blues (Lillie Mae Glover) to country blues (Bukka White), from jug band blues (Laura Dukes) to tough, postwar electric blues (Joe Willie Wilkins and Houston Stackhouse). Some, like Furry Lewis and Bukka White, are known around the world. Others, like Laura Dukes, are locally popular, while Boose Taylor is virtually unknown. The range of instruments mastered by the musicians--banjo, fiddle, guitar, fife, bass, ukulele, piano, and harmonica--testifies to the many expressive voices of the blues. Some of the interviewees were singing and performing mostly for white blues/folk revivalist audiences by the 1970s; others, such as Joe Willie Wilkins and Houston Stackhouse, continued to perform mostly for black audiences in Memphis and in the small cafes that dotted the Mississippi Delta. Each interview is illustrated by noted printmaker George D. Davidson and introduced with a biographical sketch by Fred J. Hay. In addition, Hay's extensive notes identify many other blues performers--friends and music partners of the interviewees whose names come up in their many asides and allusions. Together these materials document and pay tribute to the remarkable richness of the Memphis blues scene.
Download or read book America s Musical Life written by Richard Crawford and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2001 with total page 1000 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated history of America's musical heritage ranges from the earliest examples of Native American traditional song to the innovative sound of contemporary rock and jazz.
Download or read book Beale Street written by David A. Jasen and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirty-eight songs and instrumental pieces from the era that witnessed the birth of the blues include the title piece, St. Louis Blues, The Hesitating Blues, Down Home Blues, I'm Crazy Bout Your Lovin', Jelly Roll Blues, Railroad Blues, and many more. Reproduced directly from rare sheet music — includes original covers. Introduction.
Download or read book Memphis Blues written by William Christopher Handy and published by . This book was released on 1916 with total page 3 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Memphis Blues written by and published by Heritage Music Press. This book was released on 2007-09-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "Father of the Blues," William Christopher Handy (1873-1958), was the first blues composer, and most music history scholars believe that The Memphis Blues was the first notated blues song in history. This arrangement was created using the original published sheet music from 1913, now located in Duke University's Historic American Sheet Music collection. As the chart unfolds, more modern elements are added but the unique character of the original is always present.
Download or read book Music around the World 3 volumes written by Andrew R. Martin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 1047 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With entries on topics ranging from non-Western instruments to distinctive rhythms of music from various countries, this one-stop resource on global music also promotes appreciation of other countries and cultural groups. A perfect resource for students and music enthusiasts alike, this expansive three-volume set provides readers with multidisciplinary perspectives on the music of countries and ethnic groups from around the globe. Students will find Music around the World: A Global Encyclopedia accessible and useful in their research, not only for music history and music appreciation classes but also for geography, social studies, language studies, and anthropology. Additionally, general readers will find the books appealing and an invaluable general reference on world music. The volumes cover all world regions, including the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and Asia and the Pacific, promoting a geographic understanding and appreciation of global music. Entries are arranged alphabetically. A preface explains the scope of the set as well as how to use the encyclopedia, followed by a brief history of traditional music and important current influences of music in each particular world region.
Download or read book The Memphis Blues Again written by Ernest C. Withers and published by Studio. This book was released on 2001 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Text by Daniel Wolff A stunning collection of photographs covering six decades of the music scene in Memphis, the birthplace of the blues and home to some of the greatest American popular music of the 20th century. From ragtime and jazz, through the blues, R & B and rock 'n' roll, to gospel, soul and funk, Ernest Withers has photographed it all - in dancehalls, bars, recording studios and on the streets. Includes: W C Handy, Muddy Waters, Elvis Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Al Green and many more. 150 duotones.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings written by Steve Sullivan and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2013-10-04 with total page 1027 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From John Philip Sousa to Green Day, from Scott Joplin to Kanye West, from Stephen Foster to Coldplay, The Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, Volumes 1 and 2 covers the vast scope of its subject with virtually unprecedented breadth and depth. Approximately 1,000 key song recordings from 1889 to the present are explored in full, unveiling the stories behind the songs, the recordings, the performers, and the songwriters. Beginning the journey in the era of Victorian parlor balladry, brass bands, and ragtime with the advent of the record industry, readers witness the birth of the blues and the dawn of jazz in the 1910s and the emergence of country music on record and the shift from acoustic to electrical recording in the 1920s. The odyssey continues through the Swing Era of the 1930s; rhythm & blues, bluegrass, and bebop in the 1940s; the rock & roll revolution of the 1950s; modern soul, the British invasion, and the folk-rock movement of the 1960s; and finally into the modern era through the musical streams of disco, punk, grunge, hip-hop, and contemporary dance-pop. Sullivan, however, also takes critical detours by extending the coverage to genres neglected in pop music histories, from ethnic and world music, the gospel recording of both black and white artists, and lesser-known traditional folk tunes that reach back hundreds of years. This book is ideal for anyone who truly loves popular music in all of its glorious variety, and anyone wishing to learn more about the roots of virtually all the music we hear today. Popular music fans, as well as scholars of recording history and technology and students of the intersections between music and cultural history will all find this book to be informative and interesting.
Download or read book All That I Am with Thoughts and Dreams written by Tanya Lynn Walker and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2010-05-21 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In understanding who I am and the journey it took to get me from one point in my life to another, I have written this book of poetry as the link to a creative process of true and honest emotions. I am the force behind my own energy and fate. Through purpose and passion it is with joy and happiness I share my unshakeable truths. My world revolves around interpretations of rhythm and rhyme. While some may view these poems as thought-provoking, they are merely words of beauty and power that surround me in my space and time. The passion and light reflected in this book are responses to inspirations, tragedies, love, and faith, a way that helps me to connect with the modern reader. They are words that I have spoken and thought of in my mind and heart. Poetry is love in any language and because I am in love with life, I have written these love songs to those that have achieved something greater than the power of words. Poetry is wisdom and the humility that comes from wisdom. All the knowledge that I have gained from wisdom comes from heaven. I am but a lonely dreamer.
Download or read book Billboard written by and published by . This book was released on 1955-04-30 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.
Download or read book Whose Blues written by Adam Gussow and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mamie Smith's pathbreaking 1920 recording of "Crazy Blues" set the pop music world on fire, inaugurating a new African American market for "race records." Not long after, such records also brought black blues performance to an expanding international audience. A century later, the mainstream blues world has transformed into a multicultural and transnational melting pot, taking the music far beyond the black southern world of its origins. But not everybody is happy about that. If there's "No black. No white. Just the blues," as one familiar meme suggests, why do some blues people hear such pronouncements as an aggressive attempt at cultural appropriation and an erasure of traumatic histories that lie deep in the heart of the music? Then again, if "blues is black music," as some performers and critics insist, what should we make of the vibrant global blues scene, with its all-comers mix of nationalities and ethnicities? In Whose Blues?, award-winning blues scholar and performer Adam Gussow confronts these challenging questions head-on. Using blues literature and history as a cultural anchor, Gussow defines, interprets, and makes sense of the blues for the new millennium. Drawing on the blues tradition's major writers including W. C. Handy, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Amiri Baraka, and grounded in his first-person knowledge of the blues performance scene, Gussow's thought-provoking book kickstarts a long overdue conversation.
