Blues category: 910 books
Soul Jazz
Jazz in the Black Community, 1945-1975
Language: English
Release Date: November 10, 2016
Soul Jazz is a history of jazz and its reception in the black community in the period from the end of World War II until the end of the Vietnam War. Previous histories reflect the perspective of an integrated America, yet the United States was a segregated country in 1945. The black audience had a very different take on the music and that is the perception explored in Soul Jazz.
Remembering Whitney
My Story of Love, Loss, and the Night the Music Stopped
Language: English
Release Date: January 29, 2013
The definitive account of Whitney Houston’s astonishing life, ground-breaking career, and tragic death — complete with never-before-seen photographs — from the only one who truly knows the story behind the headlines: her mother, Cissy Houston.
Cissy has said little publicly about Whitney’s...
Every Little Step
My Story
Language: English
Release Date: June 13, 2016
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
In Every Little Step, Brown will for the first time tell the full story of his life and set the record straight, particularly about his relationship with Whitney Houston.
Bobby Brown has been one of the most compelling American artists of the past thirty years,...
African Rhythms
The Autobiography of Randy Weston
Language: English
Release Date: October 5, 2010
African Rhythms is the autobiography of the important jazz pianist, composer and band leader Randy Weston. He tells of his childhood in Brooklyn, his six decades long musical career, his time living in Morocco, and his lifelong quest to learn about the musical and cultural traditions of Africa.
by John M. Brewer Jr.
Language: English
Release Date: June 20, 2007
Language: English
Release Date: June 20, 2007
Pittsburgh Jazz documents the almost forgotten magic created in the city of Pittsburgh by a host of artists, uptown inner city streets, and jazz joints that served patrons from a menu packed full of delightful music. The magical improvised songs, compositions, and unique styles of hundreds of those who...
Mitchell & Ruff
An American Profile in Jazz
Language: English
Release Date: October 27, 2015
"Highly recommended"—Library Journal
"In this account of the world adventures of two splendid jazz artists, Bill Zinsser has given us one of the most exciting books about America's original art form that I've ever read. It's a revelation."—Studs Terkel
Since...
Clawing at the Limits of Cool
Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever
Language: English
Release Date: October 22, 2013
When the renowned trumpeter and bandleader Miles Davis chose the members of his quintet in 1955, he passed over well-known, respected saxophonists such as Sonny Rollins to pick out the young, still untested John Coltrane. What might have seemed like a minor decision at the time would instead set the...
Sophisticated Giant
The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon
Language: English
Release Date: November 6, 2018
Sophisticated Giant presents the life and legacy of tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon (1923–1990), one of the major innovators of modern jazz. In a context of biography, history, and memoir, Maxine Gordon has completed the book that her late husband began, weaving his “solo” turns with her voice...
Soulless
The Case Against R. Kelly
Language: English
Release Date: June 4, 2019
The essential account of R. Kelly’s actions and their consequences, a reckoning two decades in the making
In November 2000, Chicago journalist and music critic Jim DeRogatis received an anonymous fax that alleged R. Kelly had a problem with “young girls.” Weeks later, DeRogatis broke the...
Monk!
Thelonious, Pannonica, and the Friendship Behind a Musical Revolution
Language: English
Release Date: September 25, 2018
"Read this invigorating graphic narrative, then—quickly, before the spell breaks!—play one of Monk's records." —Saul Williams
She is Kathleen Annie Pannonica de Koenigswarter, a free-spirited baroness of the Rothschild family. He is Thelonious Sphere Monk, a musical genius fighting...
Conversations in Jazz
The Ralph J. Gleason Interviews
Language: English
Release Date: May 28, 2016
During his nearly forty years as a music journalist, Ralph J. Gleason recorded many in-depth interviews with some of the greatest jazz musicians of all time. These informal sessions, conducted mostly in Gleason’s Berkeley, California, home, have never been transcribed and published in full until now....
by Tarell Alvin McCraney
Language: English
Release Date: January 11, 2016
Language: English
Release Date: January 11, 2016
"An exhilarating, multi-layered new play."-The Guardian
"Stirring and stylishly told . . . McCraney's crispest and most confident work."-Daily News
"Greatly affecting. . . . It takes a brave writer to set his language against the plaintive beauty of the hymns and spirituals . . . but...
2Fish
(a poetry book)
Language: English
Release Date: December 19, 2017
It includes 60 poems as well as 50 scanned pages from her original notebooks presenting her unedited journal entries in her own writing.
Jhené Aiko is a three-time Grammy nominated singer and songwriter
Jhené released her third solo album, "Trip" in October 2017, which debuted...
Sounding Like a No-No
Queer Sounds and Eccentric Acts in the Post-Soul Era
Language: English
Release Date: December 26, 2012
Sounding Like a No-No traces a rebellious spirit in post–civil rights black music by focusing on a range of offbeat, eccentric, queer, or slippery performances by leading musicians influenced by the cultural changes brought about by the civil rights, black nationalist, feminist, and LGBTQ movements,...