In 1971, French jazz critics Philippe Carles and Jean-Louis Comolli co-wrote Free Jazz/Black Power, a treatise on the racial and political implications of jazz and jazz criticism. It remains a testimo
In Roosevelt's Blues Guido van Rijn documents more than a hundred blues and gospel lyrics that contain direct political comment about FDR. Altogether, they convey the thought, spirit, and history of t
The life and early death of a South Side guitar genius, the greatest unheralded Chicago blues-maker Jimi Hendrix called Earl Hooker "the master of the wah-wah pedal." Buddy Guy slept with one of Hook
Samuel Charters has been studying and writing about New Orleans music for more than fifty years. A Trumpet around the Corner: The Story of New Orleans Jazz is the first book to tell the entire story o
I’m Just Dead, I’m Not Gone chronicles Jim Dickinson’s extraordinary life in the Memphis music scene of the fifties and sixties and how he went on to play with and produce a rich array of artists, inc
In The Gaithers and Southern Gospel, Ryan P. Harper examines songwriters Bill and Gloria Gaither’s Homecoming video and concert series—a gospel music franchise that, since its beginning in 1991, has o
Music history -- Blues -- R&B --> Elmore James, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Milton, and James Waller-all of these musical powerhouses furthered their recording careers at a little label on once-t
The Depression brought unprecedented changes for American workers and organized labor. As the economy plummeted, employers cut wages and laid off workers, while simultaneously attempting to wrest more
When Mississippi John Hurt (1892-1966) was "rediscovered" by blues revivalists in 1963, his musicianship and recordings transformed popular notions of prewar country blues. At seventy-one he moved to
Listen to This stands out as the first book exclusively dedicated to Davis's watershed 1969 album,Bitches Brew. Victor Svorinich traces its incarnations and inspirations for ten-plus years before its
Timothy E. Wise presents the first book to focus specifically on the musical content of yodeling in our culture. He shows that yodeling serves an aesthetic function in musical texts. A series of chron
Bars, Blues, and Booze lively bar tales from the intersection of black and white musical cultures in the South. Many of these stories do not seem dignified, decent, or filled with uplifting euphoria,
This biography tells the story of one of the most notorious figures in the history of popular music, Morris Levy (1927-1990). At age nineteen, he cofounded the nightclub Birdland in Hell's Kitchen, wh
