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Post by Admin on May 10, 2013 9:16:52 GMT -5
This deluxe edition features three parts. The first part is devoted to Charles Delaunay's charming and authoritative biography of Django. The second part is a completely revised and updated discography of all of Django's known recorded works. The final part is devoted to over 150 photographs and illustrations of the master guitarist, many of which have never been published before. This beautiful book is without a doubt the finest literary tribute ever made to the eternal genius of Django Reinhardt and is a must for jazz lovers and guitar enthusiasts alike. Charles Delaunay's book covers everything you'd ever want to know about gypsy guitar legend Django Reinhardt in a captivating, readable form. Included anecdotes make you feel like you really got to know Django from the perspective of friends and fellow musicians. Many of them are quite funny too. In addition to the exceptional story of Django and his music, Delaunay's book includes many pages full of rare Django Reinhardt photographs. Get this book now! You won't be sorry
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Post by Admin on May 10, 2013 9:24:13 GMT -5
Preachin' the Blues: The Life and Times of Son House Daniel Beaumont Product Details Hardcover: 224 pages Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (July 1, 2011) Language: English ISBN-10: 0195395573 ISBN-13: 978-0195395570 In June of 1964, three young, white blues fans set out from New York City in a Volkswagen, heading for the Mississippi Delta in search of a musical legend. So begins Preachin' the Blues, the biography of American blues signer and guitarist Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. (1902 - 1988). House pioneered an innovative style, incorporating strong repetitive rhythms with elements of southern gospel and spiritual vocals. A seminal figure in the history of the Delta blues, he was an important, direct influence on such figures as Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson. The landscape of Son House's life and the vicissitudes he endured make for an absorbing narrative, threaded through with a tension between House's religious beliefs and his spells of commitment to a lifestyle that implicitly rejected it. Drinking, womanizing, and singing the blues caused this tension that is palpable in his music, and becomes explicit in one of his finest performances, "Preachin' the Blues." Large parts of House's life are obscure, not least because his own accounts of them were inconsistent. Author Daniel Beaumont offers a chronology/topography of House's youth, taking into account evidence that conflicts sharply with the well-worn fable, and he illuminates the obscurity of House's two decades in Rochester, NY between his departure from Mississippi in the 1940s and his "rediscovery" by members of the Folk Revival Movement in 1964. Beaumont gives a detailed and perceptive account of House's primary musical legacy: his recordings for Paramount in 1930 and for the Library of Congress in 1941-42. In the course of his research Beaumont has unearthed not only connections among the many scattered facts and fictions but new information about a rumoured murder in Mississippi, and a charge of manslaughter on Long Island - incidents which bring tragic light upon House's lifelong struggles and self-imposed disappearance, and give trenchant meaning to the moving music of this early blues legend.
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Post by AlanB on May 10, 2013 10:44:13 GMT -5
Preachin' the Blues: The Life and Times of Son House Daniel Beaumont Product Details Hardcover: 224 pages Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (July 1, 2011) Language: English ISBN-10: 0195395573 ISBN-13: 978-0195395570 Here's a review. There have been many since the book was first published. One reviewer used the expression "warts and all" biography. It includes the stabbing of Willie Patterson House perpetuated at Cutchogue Labor Camp, Oct. 8 1955 and ran off (pps 122-125). The original three page police report is shown in an appendix. Twenty seven years earlier he'd perpetuated a similar offence. inabluemood.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/son-houses-life-subject-of-excellent.html
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Post by Admin on May 16, 2013 8:13:38 GMT -5
Just discovered this one due out in August 2013. Product Details Hardcover: 144 pages Publisher: University Press of Mississippi (August 1, 2013) Language: English ISBN-10: 1617038164 ISBN-13: 978-1617038167 "Mississippi Hill Country Blues 1967 reminds me of fond memories I have of George and me roaming the Mississippi Delta looking for blues singers in the early 1960s. Anybody who has any interest in blues at all should love this book. For me it felt like reading a grand and compassionate adventure. This is an important work the way it preserves the thoughts and music of some wonderful individuals. You feel you come to know them through their thoughts and beautiful music. I always know a great read by the way it stays with you long after you've finished and that's the way this book is. You'll love and appreciate it." --Charlie Musselwhite, Mississippi bluesman These photographs document George Mitchell's trip to Mississippi, where he searched for then unrecorded blues musicians including R. L. Burnside, Jessie Mae Hemphill, and Othar Turner. This journey yielded recordings of music now on cherished and touted albums and CDs. From Mitchell's fieldwork many others discovered the region and its distinctive style of blues. Some of the musicians Mitchell recorded had their lives transformed following his visit. The historic photographs in George Mitchell's Mississippi Hill Country Blues 1967 capture a vibrant blues tradition at the moment of its discovery. Intimate, without posturing or pandering, these photographs provide a raw, authentic look at African American blues musicians, their families, and their stomping grounds in the Mississippi Hill Country at a time when blues music remained a lively, though waning, part of their community and blues musicians were viewed with respect and pride. Blues musicians brought pleasure and release to people wrestling with severe poverty and pervasive discrismination. Mitchell's ability to connect with his subjects is evident in his arresting images. The musicians-- and their families and friends--welcomed him in their homes and at rent parties and fife and drum picnics. They posed for portraits. They let him hang around with his camera while they cooked supper or danced up a storm. The book includes Mitchell's interviews, conducted at the time he took the photos, with four of the musicians, who talk about their music, their lives, and the times in which they live. Running throughout is the author's recounting of his experience of the seminal musicological odyssey.
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Post by Admin on May 18, 2013 9:18:34 GMT -5
The Story Of The Blues Paul Oliver Product Details Paperback: 212 pages Publisher: Northeastern (April 30, 1998) Language: English ISBN-10: 155553354X ISBN-13: 978-1555533540 Review Here
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Post by AlanB on May 18, 2013 9:59:38 GMT -5
The Story Of The Blues Paul Oliver First published in 31st July 1969 and never been out of print. Has been translated into 8 different languages.
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Post by Admin on May 18, 2013 10:01:39 GMT -5
Well worth purchasing just for the photos.
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Post by Admin on May 18, 2013 10:05:47 GMT -5
Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell by Michael Gray FROM THE GUARDIAN: The invisible bluesman, found at last Michael Gray's Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes uncovers a legendary bluesman, says Sean O'Hagan Sean O'Hagan The Observer Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell by Michael Gray Bloomsbury £25, pp432 In the sleeve notes to his album of blues and folk covers, World Gone Wrong, released in 1993, Bob Dylan called Blind Willie McTell's 'Broke Down Engine' a masterpiece. 'It's about trains, mystery on the rails ...' wrote Dylan. 'It's about variations of human longing - the low hum in metres and syllables.' Dylan had already eulogised McTell in song, recording his brooding early-Eighties masterpiece, 'Blind Willie McTell', which finally surfaced on the first volume of the Bootlegs Series. 'There's a chain gang on the highway/I can hear them rebels yell,' sang Dylan, 'and I know no one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell.' The song was slow and stately, infused with the same 'low hum in metres and syllables' that Dylan had absorbed from the songs of the almost vanished America mapped out in the pre-war blues, country and folk traditions. As Michael Gray points out, this was the America that Blind Willie McTell lived and worked in, wrote and sang about, but, in some strange way, did not really belong to. Or, somehow, through his skills of self-preservation and musical adeptness, transcended. In his preface to this assiduous work of reclamation, Gray, a Dylan scholar of repute, writes: 'McTell explodes every archetype about the blues musician. He is no roaring primitive, no Robert Johnson-esque devil-dealing womaniser. He didn't lose his sight in a juke-joint brawl, or hopping a freight train. He didn't escape into music from behind a mule plough in the Delta. He didn't die violently or young.' There is one archetype of the blues musician that McTell did conform to, though: he passed away in obscurity, aged 58, poor and unsung, in 1959. That same year, one of his songs, 'Statesboro Blues', became a mainstay of the mainly white American folk and blues revival. In the early Seventies the song was rediscovered again, this time as a bestselling stadium-rock anthem by the Allman Brothers, who, though they hailed from McTell's home state, Georgia, and considered him a hero, possessed none of his economy of style or lightness of expression. Like many legendary bluesmen, but in an altogether different way, McTell was an enigma. He possessed a clear and almost sweet-sounding voice that has wrong-footed many a listener more used to the gravel-throated tones of Robert Johnson or the more beseeching style of Blind Lemon Jefferson, singers whose unearthly presence is palpable even through a fog of hiss and static. On initial listenings, indeed, McTell can sound almost jaunty, though his expressive voice always possesses a wry stoicism that speaks of hard-earned wisdom, doggedness, buried suffering - the ever-present low hum of the blues. Compare, for instance, his world-weary but defiant, 'Lay Some Flowers on My Grave' - 'When I bid you this last goodbye/Don't none of you womens cry' - to Jefferson's 'See That My Grave Is Kept Clean', which is plaintive to the point of heartbreaking, not least in its suggestion that there will, in fact, be no one around to tend his resting place after he has gone. Alongside the more mischievous but no less powerful Mississippi John Hurt, McTell deals in a folk-blues style honed on the streets of Georgia, where he walked from town to town, busking for a living between gigs in juke joints, churches and gospel halls. In that still segregated state, McTell played to black and white folks alike, covering long distances on foot, his guitar slung over his shoulder, his blindness seemingly no impediment. He was as legendary for his almost mystical knowledge of the local landscape as for his singing and playing. He seemed an unsettling figure, too, perhaps because he refused to wear dark glasses, his blindness only apparent when he came up close to those he passed on his daily treks across the state. Gray's wonderful book, part travelogue, part musical journey, part social history, is painstakingly researched and frequently illuminating. It brings to light not just an elusive artist but a lost world, one in which even a musician as gifted and unsettling as McTell could pass for invisible to the white world as long as he played out his assigned role of the blind, black entertainer. 'When he sat out on the front porch of the Jaeckel Hotel in Statesboro, resting between numbers played for the tobacco salesmen,' writes Gray, 'they might talk unguardedly as they never would among others. They forgot he was there - he didn't count. He wasn't any kind of threat.' Unseeing and invisible, McTell haunted the streets, bars and trains of Georgia, and crafted the handful of songs that so impressed Dylan, and continue today to occupy a unique place in 20th-century American popular music. Finally, we have a life to go with the legend
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Post by Admin on May 21, 2013 10:19:09 GMT -5
I find this very informative. Gives a lot of insight into the influences to the British Blues of the 60's and 70's Inside the Blues, 1942-1982 (Updated) Inside the Blues, 1942-1982 - Updated Edition: Four Decades of the Greatest Electric Blues Guitarists by David Rubin Product Details Paperback: 176 pages Publisher: Hal Leonard; 1 edition (January 1, 1995) Language: English ISBN-10: 0793536111 ISBN-13: 978-0793536115
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Post by Admin on May 22, 2013 8:56:46 GMT -5
JazzHerman Leonard Since the 1950s, Herman Leonard's photographs of jazz musicians have been crucial in shaping the image of the music and the world in which it was created. Leonard's friendships with jazz greats such as Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis gave him rare access to the innovators who made modern jazz and the places in which they made it. Leonard took his camera into the smoky clubs and after-hours sessions, to backstage parties and musicians' apartments, to build an incomparable visual record of one of the twentieth century's most significant art forms. His luminous images of Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and many others, both in performance and "off duty," are at once supreme examples of the photographer's art and a unique record of a musical revolution. For this definitive collection of his work, Leonard has retrieved scores of previously unseen photographs, published here for the first time, alongside his most famous and widely recognized images. Accompanied by an essay exploring the stories behind the pictures, and an interview with Leonard revealing his techniques, Jazz captures and preserves the glory days of the music that has been called "the sound of surprise." Product Details Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (October 26, 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 1608193330 ISBN-13: 978-1608193332 Photos
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Post by Admin on May 25, 2013 11:42:39 GMT -5
In trying to find a good book about the life and music of Blind Willie McTell, who some believes is more related to Delta Blues than the Piedmont where he is from, proves to be a daunting task. This one is the best I have found (actually the only one that delves into his life). Perhaps someone knows of another, better one?
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Post by AlanB on May 26, 2013 10:02:37 GMT -5
In trying to find a good book about the life and music of Blind Willie McTell, who some believes is more related to Delta Blues than the Piedmont where he is from, proves to be a daunting task. This one is the best I have found (actually the only one that delves into his life). Perhaps someone knows of another, better one? I'm afraid that's the only one. Here's a couple of reviews www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/jul/29/biography.musicwww.document-records.com/show_news.asp?articleID=364That said in 2002 Larry Cohn announced a Definitive Limited Edition Luxury Box Set which would include a booklet that would contain many of the interviews conducted by David Evans with Kate McTell (and family) from 1976. These were first published in two issues of Blues Unlimited the following year. This project was still born and if you scroll down to 2007 in Stefan's McTell discography you'll see the proposed artwork for box and list of contents. www.wirz.de/music/mctelfrm.htm
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Post by Admin on May 26, 2013 10:49:58 GMT -5
Thanks Alan.
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Post by Admin on May 30, 2013 19:41:59 GMT -5
White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s by Joe Boyd Paperback: 288 pages Publisher: Serpent's Tail (December 21, 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 1852424893 ISBN-13: 978-1852424893 “This is the best book about music I’ve read in years, and a gripping piece of social history.”—Brian Eno When Muddy Waters came to London at the start of the 1960s, a kid from Boston called Joe Boyd was his tour manager; when Dylan went electric at the Newport Festival, Joe Boyd was plugging in his guitar; when the summer of love got going, Joe Boyd was running UFO, the coolest club in London; when a bunch of club regulars called Pink Floyd recorded their first single, Joe Boyd was the producer; when a young songwriter named Nick Drake wanted to give his demo tape to someone, he chose Joe Boyd. More than any previous sixties music autobiography, Joe Boyd’s White Bicycles offers the real story of what it was like to be there at the time. As well as the sixties heavy-hitters, this book also offers wonderfully vivid portraits of a whole host of other musicians: everyone from the great jazzman Coleman Hawkins to the folk diva Sandy Denny, Lonnie Johnson to Eric Clapton, Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Fairport Convention. Record and film producer Joe Boyd was born in Boston in 1942 and graduated from Harvard in 1964. He went on to produce Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, R.E.M., and many others. He produced the documentary Jimi Hendrix and the film Scandal. In 1980 he started Hannibal Records and ran it for twenty years. He lives in London.(less)
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Post by AlanB on May 30, 2013 23:46:49 GMT -5
White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s by Joe Boyd Paperback: 288 pages Publisher: Serpent's Tail (December 21, 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 1852424893 ISBN-13: 978-1852424893 “This is the best book about music I’ve read in years, and a gripping piece of social history.”—Brian Eno This got rooting through my 1960s Jazz mags for the following letter from Joe Boyd in Jazz Journal, January 1965. Make of it what you will! Dear Sir, One of the questions which the recent interest in country blues has evoked regards the effect which rediscovery has upon the older and long retired singers. In various functions, including that of road manager to last year's Blues and Gospel Caravan in England, I have had occasion to know and talk to numerous blues singers That concerts and club engagements increase their incomes is certainly true, and the thrill of performing for thousands of appreciative white people is certainly an experience which most of the singers will treasure above almost anything else in their lives After we had listened to a relatively obscure rediscovery talk earnestly about how much money he was going to make and all the hit records his manager had promised him, a friend of mine and I for the first time began to consider the possibility that the disappointment which will eventually come when the craze dies down might out weigh the benefits. I hope this is untrue, but it is nevertheless interesting to consider, and leads in to the unhappy news which I may or may not be the first to convey to you. I was in London in October when the Folk Blues Festival was in town and I saw the show at Croydon. I agree with Mr. Stewart-Baxter's review, excepting his ecstasy. over the performance of John Henry Barbee. He certainly played the guitar far better than one would expect of someone who seemed as decrepit as he, but he was out of his depth next to artists such as Lightnin' and Sleepy John. I returned to the US soon thereafter and when boarding the airplane at London Airport, I saw Mr. Barbee among the passengers. We chatted on the way back and I saw that he got safely to his connecting flight in New York. He was full of optimism about coming back to Europe soon and he planned to buy a car with the money he had made on this trip. He was disappointed because a back ailment had kept him out the last few days of the tour. Soon after my return, I heard that his back ailment was in actuality, cancer. Last weekend, while in Chicago, I hailed a cab on South Michigan. I opened one door as the other door was simultaneously seized by Clifton James, the drummer. We were surprised by the coincidence, and agreed to share the ride since we were both headed south. In the cab he related this story, which was substantiated later by Don Kent and Muddy Waters. John Henry did buy a car. A week later he ran over a man and killed him. (It was the first car he had ever owned, I believe.) Thrown in jail and unable to post bond, or contact his benefactors, he died of cancer in jail. Which is best? For him to have lived out his life in peace, not bothered by fame, travel and money? Or to have his brief fling at glory and then be led by his 'fortune' into a series of events which brought about his death? Let those of the Anglo-Saxon intelligentsia who take such an interest in the music of the Negro people of America never forget the responsibility they have for the changes they have wrought in those lives. Never toy lightly with the life of anyone else. To thrust success on someone suddenly after years of failure is easily as traumatic as the sudden failure of a long time success.
JOE BOYD 50 Central Park West, New York, U.S.A.
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