This fascinating account of how the racial and cultural dynamics of American cities created the music, life, and business that was jazz is the first comprehensive analysis of the role of jazz in its formative years. .

Blues People: Negro Music in White America

The path the slave took to 'citizenship' is what I want to look at. If the negro represents, or is symbolic of, something in and about the nature of American culture, this certainly should be revealed by his characteristic music. So says amiri baraka in the introduction to Blues People, his classic work on the place of jazz and blues in American social, musical, economic, and cultural history.

In tracing the music, he brilliantly illuminates the influence of African Americans on American culture and history. From the music of african slaves in the united states through the music scene of the 1960's, Baraka traces the influence of what he calls "negro music" on white America -- not only in the context of music and pop culture but also in terms of the values and perspectives passed on through the music.

. And i make my analogy through the slave citizen's music -- through the music that is most closely associated with him: blues and a later, but parallel development, jazz.

Why Jazz Happened

Used book in Good Condition. Rich with the voices of musicians, producers, and others on the scene during the decades following World War II, promoters, changes in the law, this book views jazz’s evolution through the prism of technological advances, economic trends, social transformations, and much more.

Why jazz happened is the first comprehensive social history of jazz. This groundbreaking book deepens our appreciation of this music by identifying many of the developments outside of jazz itself that contributed most to its texture, complexity, and growth. It provides an intimate and compelling look at the many forces that shaped this most American of art forms and the many influences that gave rise to jazz’s post-war styles.

In an absorbing narrative enlivened by the commentary of key personalities, among them, changes in radio and concert-promotion, the Civil Rights movement, the American Federation of Musicians strike in the early 1940s, the suburbanization of Los Angeles, Marc Myers describes the myriad of events and trends that affected the music's evolution, the introduction of the long-playing record, the “British invasion” and the rise of electronic instruments.

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On Highway 61: Music, Race, and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom

Handybessie smithma raineycharlie PattonLouis ArmstrongBuddy BoldenJelly Roll MortonSidney BechetMamie SmithKing OliverBillie HolidayW. E. B. The blues would combine with syncopation and improvisation and create jazz. On highway 61 explores the historical context of the significant social dissent that was central to the cultural genesis of the sixties.

Even popular white genres like the country music of Jimmy Rodgers and the Carter Family reflected significant black influence. The book is going to search for the deeper roots of american cultural and musical evolution for the past 150 years by studying what the Western European culture learned from African American culture in a historical progression that reaches from the minstrel era to Bob Dylan.

The book begins with america’s first great social critic, Henry David Thoreau, and his fundamental source of social philosophy:-his profound commitment to freedom, to abolitionism and to African-American culture. Ragtime introduced syncopation and become the cutting edge of the modern 20th century with popular dances.

Continuing with mark twain, which he embraced, through whom we can observe the rise of minstrelsy, and his subversive satirical masterpiece Huckleberry Finn. This biracial fusion achieved an apotheosis in the early work of Bob Dylan, born and raised at the northern end of the same Mississippi River and Highway 61 that had been the birthplace of much of the black music he would study.

As the book reveals, absorbed the culture of those at the absolute bottom of the power structure, at first individuals, and then larger portions of society, the connection that began with Thoreau and continued for over 100 years was a cultural evolution where, the slaves and their descendants, and realized that they themselves were not free.

Musicians mentioned in the book are as follows:Henry David ThoreauMark TwainMinstrel ShowsUncle Tom's CabinFisk Jubilee SingersScott JoplinW.

Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song

Strange fruit not only chronicles the civil rights movement from the '30s on, including performers Lena Horne, it examines the lives of the beleaguered Billie Holiday and Abel Meeropol, unknown and famous, the white Jewish schoolteacher and communist sympathizer who wrote the song that would have an impact on generations of fans, black and white, Eartha Kitt, and Sting.

Used book in Good Condition. Recorded by jazz legend billie holiday in 1939, "Strange Fruit" is considered to be the first significant song of the civil rights movement and the first direct musical assault upon racial lynchings in the South. Originally sung in new york's cafe Society, these revolutionary lyrics take on a life of their own in this revealing account of the song and the struggle it personified.

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Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta

Palmer tells the story of the blues through the lives of its greatest practitioners: robert johnson, who electrified Delta blues and gave the music its rock beat; Robert Lockwood and Sonny Boy Williamson, who sang of being pursued by the hounds of hell; Muddy Waters, who launched the King Biscuit Time radio show and brought blues to the airwaves; and John Lee Hooker, Ike Turner, B.

Penguin Books. In this extraordinary musical and social history, to international popularity, recognition, Robert Palmer traces the odyssey of the blues from its rural beginnings, to the steamy bars of Chicago’s South Side, and imitation. A lucid. Entrancing study" -- greil Marcus "Palmer has a powerful understanding of the music and an intense involvement in the culture.

The nation Used book in Good Condition. King, and many others. Blues is the cornerstone of American popular music, the bedrock of rock and roll. B.

Swing Changes: Big-Band Jazz in New Deal America

Used book in Good Condition. Penguin Books. Drawing on memoirs, photographs, and films, stowe looks at new deal america through its music and shows us how the contradictions and tensions within swing―over race, oral histories, magazines, newspapers, recordings, literature, its own cultural status, politics, the role of women―mirrored those played out in the larger society.

Used book in Good Condition.

Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music Cultural Studies of the United States

Used book in Good Condition. Penguin Books. In the process, filene argues, they shaped mainstream audiences' understanding of what was "authentic" roots music. Filene moves beyond the usual boundaries of folk music to consider a wide range of performers who drew on or were drawn into the canon of American roots music--from Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie, to Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon, to Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan.

In american music, the notion of "roots" has been a powerful refrain, but just what constitutes our true musical traditions has often been a matter of debate. These cultural brokers "discovered" folk musicians, recorded them, and promoted them. As benjamin filene reveals, a number of competing visions of America's musical past have vied for influence over the public imagination in this century.

Filene builds his story around a fascinating group of characters--folklorists, record company executives, producers, radio programmers, and publicists--who acted as middlemen between folk and popular culture. Used book in Good Condition. Challenging traditional accounts that would confine folk music revivalism to the 1930s and 1960s, he argues instead that the desire to preserve and popularize America's musical heritage is a powerful current that has run throughout this century's culture and continues to flow today.

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Really the Blues New York Review Books Classics

He moved from chicago to new orleans to new york, working in brothels and bars, Bix Beiderbecke, producing records, and playing with the greats, among them Louis Armstrong, getting hooked, bootlegging, dealing drugs, doing time, and Fats Waller. The saga of a guy who wanted to make friends in a jungle where everyone was too busy making money.

Used book in Good Condition. New york Review of Books. Penguin Books. Really the blues, and a portrait of a man who moved freely across racial boundaries when few could or did, and with the help of, the jive-talking memoir that Mezzrow wrote at the insistence of, the novelist Bernard Wolfe, is the story of an unusual and unusually American life, “the odyssey of an individualist .

Mezz mezzrow was a boy from chicago who learned to play the sax in reform school and pursued a life in music and a life of crime. Used book in Good Condition.

Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Cafe Society, And An Early Cry For Civil Rights

The song's powerful, evocative lyrics-written by a Jewish communist schoolteacher who, late in life, adopted the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg-portray the lynching of a black man in the South. Holiday's performances sparked conflict and controversy wherever she went, and the song has since been covered by Lena Horne, Tori Amos, Sting, and countless others.

From four-time pulitzer prize nominee david margolick, STRANGE FRUIT explores the story of the memorable civil rights ballad made famous by Billie Holiday in the late 1930s. New york Review of Books. Margolick's careful reconstruction of the story behind the song, portions of which have appeared in Vanity Fair, includes a discography of "Strange Fruit" recordings as well as newly uncovered photographs that capture Holiday in performance at Greenwich Village's Café Society.

Used book in Good Condition. Used book in Good Condition. A must for jazz aficionados. Used book in Good Condition. Penguin Books.

Don't Get above Your Raisin': Country Music and the Southern Working Class Music in American Life

Used book in Good Condition. Combining the history of country music's roots with portraits of its primary performers, nurtured its development, this text examines the relationship between 'America's truest music' and the working-class culture that has constituted its principal source, and provided its most dedicated supporters.

Penguin Books. Used book in Good Condition. Used book in Good Condition. New york Review of Books.