Download or read book A Thousand Honey Creeks Later written by Preston Love and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 1997-11-10 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of jazz and Motown seen through the eyes of a premier African American performer.
Download or read book Rhythm Is My Beat written by Alfred Green and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-08-06 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Rhythm Is My Beat: Jazz Guitar Great Freddie Green and the Count Basie Sound, Alfred Green tells the story of his father, rhythm guitarist Freddie Green, whose guitar work served as the pulse of the Count Basie Band. A quiet but key figure in big band jazz, Freddie Green took a distinct pride in his role as Basie’s rhythm guitarist, redefining the outer limits of acoustic rhythm guitar and morphing it into an art form. So distinct was Green’s style that it would eventually give birth to notations on guitar charts that read: “Play in the style of Freddie Green.” This American jazz icon, much like his inimitable sound, achieved stardom as a sideman, both in and out of Basie’s band. Green’s signature sound provided lift to soloists like Lester Young and vocalist Lil’ Jimmy Rushing, a reflection of Green’s sophisticated technique, that produced, in Green’s words, his “rhythm wave.” Billie Holiday, Ruby Braff, Benny Goodman, Gerry Mulligan, Teddy Wilson, Ray Charles, Judy Carmichael, Joe Williams and other recording artists all benefited from the relentless fours of the man who came to be known as Mr. Rhythm. The mystique surrounding Freddie Green’s technique is illuminated through generous commentary by insightful interviews with other musicians, guitar professionals and scholars, all of whom offer their ideas on Freddie Green’s sound. Alfred Green throughout demystifies the man behind the legend. This work will interest jazz fans, students, and scholars; guitar enthusiasts and professionals; music historians and anyone interested not only in the history of jazz but of the African American experience in jazz.
Download or read book The Later Swing Era 1942 to 1955 written by Lawrence McClellan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2004-08-30 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today's Retro Swing bands, like the Squirrel Nut Zippers and the Brian Setzer Orchestra, all owe their inspiration to the original masters of Swing. This rich reference details the oeuvre of the leading Swing musicians from the WWII and post-WWII years. Chapters on the masters of Swing (Ella Fitzgerald, Woody Herman, Billy Strayhorn), the legendary Big Band leaders (such as Les Brown, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Kenton, Buddy Rich, Vaughan Monroe, etc.), vocalists (including Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington), and Small Groups (Louis Jordan, Art Tatum, Charlie Ventura, etc.) introduce these timeless musicians to a new generation of musicians and music fans. An opening chapter recounts how the cultural changes during the war and postwar years affected performers-especially women and African-Americans-and an A-to-Z appendix provides synopses of almost 700 entrants, including related musicians and famous venues. A bibliography and subject index provide additional tools for those researching Swing music and its many roles in mid-century American culture. This volume is a perfect sequel to Dave Oliphant's The Early Swing Era: 1930 to 1941. Together, these books provide the perfect reference guide to an enduring form of American music.
Download or read book Uptown Conversation written by Robert G. O'Meally and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Uptown Conversation' asserts that jazz is not only a music to define, it is a culture. The essays illustrate how for more than a century jazz has initiated a call and response across art forms, geographies, and cultures, inspiring musicians, filmmakers,painters and poets.
Download or read book Midnight at the Barrelhouse written by George Lipsitz and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2010-03-03 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considered by many to be the godfather of R&B, Johnny Otis—musician, producer, artist, entrepreneur, pastor, disc jockey, writer, and tireless fighter for racial equality—has had a remarkable life by any measure. In this first biography of Otis, George Lipsitz tells the largely unknown story of a towering figure in the history of African American music and culture who was, by his own description, “black by persuasion.” Born to Greek immigrant parents in Vallejo, California, in 1921, Otis grew up in an integrated neighborhood and identified deeply with black music and culture from an early age. He moved to Los Angeles as a young man and submerged himself in the city’s vibrant African American cultural life, centered on Central Avenue and its thriving music scene. Otis began his six-decade career in music playing drums in territory swing bands in the 1930s. He went on to lead his own band in the 1940s and open the Barrelhouse nightclub in Watts. His R&B band had seventeen Top 40 hits between 1950 and 1969, including “Willie and the Hand Jive.” As a producer and A&R man, Otis discovered such legends as Etta James, Jackie Wilson, and Big Mama Thornton. Otis also wrote a column for the Sentinel, one of L.A.’s leading black newspapers, became pastor of his own interracial church, hosted popular radio and television shows that introduced millions to music by African American artists, and was lauded as businessman of the year in a 1951 cover story in Negro Achievements magazine. Throughout his career Otis’s driving passion has been his fearless and unyielding opposition to racial injustice, whether protesting on the front lines, exposing racism and championing the accomplishments of black Americans, or promoting African American musicians. Midnight at the Barrelhouse is a chronicle of a life rich in both incident and inspiration, as well as an exploration of the complicated nature of race relations in twentieth-century America. Otis’s total commitment to black culture and transcendence of racial boundaries, Lipsitz shows, teach important lessons about identity, race, and power while encapsulating the contradictions of racism in American society.
Download or read book The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia written by Gerald L. Smith and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2015-08-28 with total page 1467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of African Americans in Kentucky is as diverse and vibrant as the state's general history. The work of more than 150 writers, The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia is an essential guide to the black experience in the Commonwealth. The encyclopedia includes biographical sketches of politicians and community leaders as well as pioneers in art, science, and industry. Kentucky's impact on the national scene is registered in an array of notable figures, such as writers William Wells Brown and bell hooks, reformers Bessie Lucas Allen and Shelby Lanier Jr., sports icons Muhammad Ali and Isaac Murphy, civil rights leaders Whitney Young Jr. and Georgia Powers, and entertainers Ernest Hogan, Helen Humes, and the Nappy Roots. Featuring entries on the individuals, events, places, organizations, movements, and institutions that have shaped the state's history since its origins, the volume also includes topical essays on the civil rights movement, Eastern Kentucky coalfields, business, education, and women. For researchers, students, and all who cherish local history, The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia is an indispensable reference that highlights the diversity of the state's culture and history.
Download or read book Footsteps in the Dark written by George Lipsitz and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most pop songs are short-lived. They appear suddenly and, if they catch on, seem to be everywhere at once before disappearing again into obscurity. Yet some songs resonate more deeply—often in ways that reflect broader historical and cultural changes. In Footsteps in the Dark, George Lipsitz illuminates these secret meanings, offering imaginative interpretations of a wide range of popular music genres from jazz to salsa to rock. Sweeping changes that only remotely register in official narratives, Lipsitz argues, can appear in vivid relief within popular music, especially when these changes occur outside mainstream white culture. Using a wealth of revealing examples, he discusses such topics as the emergence of an African American techno music subculture in Detroit as a contradictory case of digital capitalism and the prominence of banda, merengue, and salsa music in the 1990s as an expression of changing Mexican, Dominican, and Puerto Rican nationalisms. Approaching race and popular music from another direction, he analyzes the Ken Burns PBS series Jazz as a largely uncritical celebration of American nationalism that obscures the civil rights era’s challenge to racial inequality, and he takes on the infamous campaigns to censor hip-hop and the radical black voice in the early 1990s. Teeming with astute observations and brilliant insights about race and racism, deindustrialization, and urban renewal and their connections to music, Footsteps in the Dark puts forth an alternate history of post–cold war America and shows why in an era given to easy answers and clichd versions of history, pop songs matter more than ever. George Lipsitz is professor of black studies and sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Among his many books are Life in the Struggle, Dangerous Crossroads, and American Studies in a Moment of Danger (Minnesota, 2001).
Download or read book Blues Funk Rhythm and Blues Soul Hip Hop and Rap written by Eddie S. Meadows and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-06-10 with total page 916 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the influence of African American music and study as a worldwide phenomenon, no comprehensive and fully annotated reference tool currently exists that covers the wide range of genres. This much needed bibliography fills an important gap in this research area and will prove an indispensable resource for librarians and scholars studying African American music and culture.
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 The Blues Encyclopedia written by Edward Komara and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-07-01 with total page 1274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Blues Encyclopedia is the first full-length authoritative Encyclopedia on the Blues as a musical form. While other books have collected biographies of blues performers, none have taken a scholarly approach. A to Z in format, this Encyclopedia covers not only the performers, but also musical styles, regions, record labels and cultural aspects of the blues, including race and gender issues. Special attention is paid to discographies and bibliographies.
Download or read book The Blues Encyclopedia written by Edward Komara and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-07 with total page 1279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full-length authoritative Encyclopedia on the Blues as a musical form. A to Z in format, this work covers not only the performers, but also musical styles, regions, record labels and cultural aspects of the blues.
Download or read book The Bastard Instrument written by Brian F. Wright and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2024-07-16 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bastard Instrument chronicles the history of the electric bass and the musicians who played it, from the instrument’s invention through its widespread acceptance at the end of the 1960s. Although their contributions have often gone unsung, electric bassists helped shape the sound of a wide range of genres, including jazz, rhythm & blues, rock, country, soul, funk, and more. Their innovations are preserved in performances from artists as diverse as Lionel Hampton, Liberace, Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline, the Supremes, the Beatles, James Brown, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Jefferson Airplane, and Sly and the Family Stone, all of whom are discussed in this volume. At long last, The Bastard Instrument gives these early electric bassists credit for the significance of their accomplishments and demonstrates how they fundamentally altered the trajectory of popular music.
Download or read book Going Back to T Town written by Carmen Fields and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2023-06-08 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Countless young people in the Midwest, South, and Southwest went to dances and stage shows in the early to mid-twentieth century to hear a territory band play. Territory bands traveled from town to town, performing jazz and swing music, and Tulsa-based musician Ernie Fields (1904–97) led one of the best. In Going Back to T-Town, Ernie’s daughter, Carmen Fields, tells a story of success, disappointment, and perseverance, extending from the early jazz era to the 1960s. This is an enlightening account of how this talented musician and businessman navigated the hurdles of racial segregation during the Jim Crow era. Because few territory bands made recordings, their contributions to the development of jazz music are often overlooked. Fortunately, Ernie Fields not only recorded music but also loved telling stories. He shared his “tales from the road” with his daughter, a well-known Boston journalist, and his son, Ernie Fields Jr., who has carried on his legacy as a successful musician and music contractor. As much as possible, Carmen Fields tells her father’s story in his own voice: how he weathered the ups and downs of the music industry and maintained his optimism even while he faced entrenched racial prejudice and threats of violence. After traveling with his band all over the United States, Fields eventually caught the attention of renowned music producer John Hammond. In 1939, Hammond arranged for recording sessions and bookings that included performances in the famed Apollo Theater in New York. Ernie finally scored a top-ten hit in 1959 with his rock-and-roll rendition of “In the Mood.” At a time when most other territory bands had faded, the Ernie Fields Orchestra continued to perform. A devoted husband and family man, Ernie Fields also respected and appreciated his fellow musicians. The book includes a “Roll Call” of his organization’s members, based on notes he kept about them. Going Back to T-Town is a priceless source of information for historians of American popular music and African American history.
Download or read book Upstream Metropolis written by Lawrence Harold Larsen and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Being a man, like being a woman, is something you have to learn," Aaron Raz Link remarks. Few would know this better than the coauthor of What Becomes You , who began life as a girl named Sarah and twenty-nine years later began life anew as a gay man.
Download or read book Pearl Harbor Jazz written by Peter Townsend and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2009-03-02 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of a crucial period in the life of American jazz and popular music. Pearl Harbor Jazz analyses the changes in the world of the professional musician brought about both by the outbreak of World War II and by long-term changes in the music business, in popular taste and in American society itself. It describes how the infrastructure of American music, the interdependent fields of recording, touring, live engagements, radio and the movies, was experiencing change in the conditions of wartime, and how this impacted upon musical styles, and hence upon the later history of popular music. Successive chapters of the book examine the impact of these changed conditions upon the songwriting and music publishing industries, upon the world of the touring big bands, and upon changing conceptions of the role of jazz and popular music. Not only the economic conditions but also ideas were changing; the book traces a movement among writers and critics which created new definitions of 'jazz' and other terms that had a permanent influence on the way musical styles were thought of for the rest of the century. The book deals in some depth with the work of a number of important artists in these various fields, including, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Johnny Mercer and Frank Sinatra, looks at the growing presence of bebop, the rise of country music, and the contemporary musical scenes in such locations as New York and Los Angeles. The book combines detail of the day-to-day working lives of musicians with challenging views of the long-term development of musical style in jazz and popular music.
Download or read book A Hound Dog Tale written by Ben Wynne and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2024-02-07 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The release of the song “Hound Dog” in 1953 marked a turning point in American popular culture, and throughout its history, the hit ballad bridged divides of race, gender, and generational conflict. Ben Wynne’s A Hound Dog Tale discusses the stars who made this rock ’n’ roll standard famous, from Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton to Elvis Presley, along with an eclectic cast of characters, including singers, songwriters, musicians, record producers and managers, famous television hosts, several lawyers, and even a gangster or two. Wynne’s examination of this American classic reveals how “Hound Dog” reflected the values and issues of 1950s American society, and sheds light on the lesser-known elements of the song’s creation and legacy. A Hound Dog Tale will capture the imagination of anyone who has ever tapped a foot to the growl of a blues riff or the bark of a rock ’n’ roll guitar.
Download or read book Cultural Moves written by Herman Gray and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005-02-14 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Examines the importance of culture in the push for black political power and social recognition and argues the key black cultural practices have been notable in reconfiguring the shape and texture of social and cultural life in the U.S. Drawing on examples from jazz, television, and academia, Gray highlights cultural strategies for inclusion in the dominant culture as well as cultural tactics that move beyond the quest for mere recognition by challenging, disrupting, and unsettling dominant cultural representations and institutions. In the end, Gray challenges the conventional wisdom about the centrality of representation and politics in black cultural production"--Provided by publisher.
