Blues category: 910 books

The long-awaited memoir by one of the most influential and beloved musicians of our time In Herbie Hancock the legendary jazz musician and composer reflects on a life and a thriving career that has spanned seven decades. A true innovator, Hancock has had an enormous influence on both acoustic...

Best known for his 1970 polemic "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," Gil Scott-Heron was a musical icon who defied characterization. He tantalized audiences with his charismatic stage presence, and his biting, observant lyrics in such singles as "The Bottle" and "Johannesburg"...

This is the story of no ordinary life...Josephine Baker emerged from sordid poverty and racial intolorance in early 20th-century St Louis to delight audiences across the world becoming a genuine star of the stage.

John Coltrane left an indelible mark on the world, but what was the essence of his achievement that makes him so prized forty years after his death? What were the factors that helped Coltrane become who he was? And what would a John Coltrane look like now--or are we looking for the wrong signs? In...

Complete with never-before-revealed details about the sex, violence, and drugs in her life, this biography reveals the incredibly turbulent life of Motown artist Mary Wells. Based in part on four hours of previously unreleased and unpublicized deathbed interviews with Wells, this account delves deeply...

Django Reinhardt was arguably the greatest guitarist who ever lived, an important influence on Les Paul, Charlie Christian, B.B. King, Jerry Garcia, Chet Atkins, and many others. Yet there is no major biography of Reinhardt. Now, in Django, Michael Dregni offers a definitive portrait of this great...

The Singers Drummer chronicles the music and times of Harold Jones, a world class musician whose career spans the last five decades of jazz and big band swing music. This book highlights Jones career as he evolved into the drummer of choice for some of our most popular vocal legends. But it is about...

Of all the major jazz artists, Thelonious Monk was one of the most original musical thinkers--nonconformist, idiosyncratic, imaginative, eccentric--in a word, unique. In The Thelonious Monk Reader, Rob van der Bliek has brought together some of the most revealing pieces ever written on Monk, providing...

Charles Mingus was one of the most innovative jazz musicians of the 20th Century, and ranks with Ives and Ellington as one of America's greatest composers. By temperament, he was a high-strung and sensitive romantic, a towering figure whose tempestuous personal life found powerfully coherent expression...

Mit einem Gespür für besondere Momente in der Musik schreibt Karl Lippegaus in seinem Debütwerk von seinen Begegnungen mit großen Komponisten und Interpreten aller Sparten und collagiert - wie in seinen Radiosendungen - die Interviews mit persönlichen Erlebnissen und handverlesenen Zitaten über...

The first in-depth biography of The Black Eyed Peas explored their rise from back-street gangsta rap to globally famous group. Tells the full story from the backstreets of Los Angeles in the mid 1980s to the formation of the Black Eyed Peas and a record deal in the mid 1990s.

Rant & Dawdle is a fictional memoir comprising thirty-eight interwoven stories from the perspective of a grumpy old man living on a small island off the west coast of Canada and an expectant young boy born into the poverty of WW2 English working class. The old man dreaming in retrospect,...

Despite his importance and influence, jazz musician, educator, and community leader Horace Tapscott remains relatively unknown to most Americans. In Songs of the Unsung Tapscott shares his life story, recalling his childhood in Houston, moving with his family to Los Angeles in 1943, learning music,...

The Lombardo Story, Guy Lombardo and The Royal Canadians, the band's life and times, by Beverly Fink Cline, is an eBook re-issue of a 1979 book published by Musson Book Co., a division of General Publishing, Toronto, Canada. Featuring an introduction by Lebert Lombardo, the book is written with co-operation...