Stormy Monday

The most significant factor in the career of Aaron “T-Bone” Walker was his ability to bridge the worlds of blues and jazz. The guitar artistry of this early exponent of urban blues was not only admired by blues musicians like B.B. King, Gatemouth Brown, Albert King, and Albert Collins, and rock guitarists such as Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Duane Allman, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, but by such jazz greats as Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Young, and many others with whom he recorded. Stormy Monday is the first biography of T-Bone Walker to be published. Using dozens of interviews with Walker, as well as with members of his family, close friends, fellow musicians, and business associates, the book offers a remarkable frank insider’s account of the life of a blues musician and compulsive gambler, from the wild living and hard drinking on the road to a solid and contented family life at home. “In a very real sense the modern blues is largely his creation.” blues authority Pete Welding has written about T-Bone Walker. “The blues was different before he came on the scene, and it hasn’t been the same since, and few men can lay claim to that kind of distinction. No one has contributed as much, as long, or as variously to the blues.”

At long last, the first serious biography of entertainment legend Lena Horne -- the celebrated star of film, stage, and music who became one of the first African-American icons. At the 2001 Academy Awards, Halle Berry thanked Lena Horne for paving the way for her to become the first black recipient of a Best Actress Oscar. Though limited, mostly to guest singing appearances in splashy Hollywood musicals, "the beautiful Lena Horne," as she was often called, became a pioneering star for African Americans in the 1940s and fifties. Now James Gavin, author of Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker, draws on a wealth of unmined material and hundreds of interviews -- one of them with Horne herself -- to give us the defining portrait of an American icon. Gavin has gotten closer than any other writer to the celebrity who has lived in reclusion since 1998. Incorporating insights from the likes of Ruby Dee, Tony Bennett, Diahann Carroll, Arthur Laurents, and several of Horne's fellow chorines from Harlem's Cotton Club, Stormy Weather offers a fascinating portrait of a complex, even tragic Horne -- a stunning talent who inspired such giants of showbiz as Barbra Streisand, Eartha Kitt, and Aretha Franklin, but whose frustrations with racism, and with tumultuous, root-less childhood, left wounds too deep to heal. The woman who emerged was as angry as she was luminous. From the Cotton Club's glory days and the back lots of Hollywood's biggest studios to the glitzy but bigoted hotels of Las Vegas's heyday, this behind-the-scenes look at an American icon is as much a story of the limits of the American dream as it is a masterful, ground-breaking biography.

Traces the impact of women on the development of jazz and profiles the careers of influential female jazz musicians and singers

LAPD detective Charlotte Justice takes on the murder case of aging film director Maynard Duncan.

Some voices you will hear in The Voice of the Blues: "I sing blues for some money and I sing because I love 'em. They tried to put me over in another bag but I just don't fit no other bag. Exactly I fits one shoe, and that is the blues."-Muddy Waters "I never did name one of my records 'the blues' . . . Everybody else called my sounds what I made 'the blues.' But I always just felt good behind 'em; I didn't feel like I was playin' no blues. I felt like it sound just as good to the spiritual people as it would to somebody in a bar. . ."-Jimmy Reed "The Voice of the Blues" brings together lengthy interviews with pioneering blues performers including Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Jimmy Reed, B. B. King, and many others. Each interview captures the "voice" of the blues performer, reflecting life experiences, musical influences, and achievements. Illustrations include rare archival photographs and documents. A must for fans of the blues-both traditional and electric.

"Waters transformed such songs as "Dinah," "Am I Blue?," "Stormy Weather," and Irving Berlin's "Heat Wave" into classics and inspired the next generation of black female vocalists. She gave sophistication and class to the blues and American popular song, influencing countless singers, including Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra. Tough, uncompromising, courageous, and ambitious, Waters became one of the first African American women to be given equal billing with white stars on Broadway. In 1943, the film version of her Broadway success Cabin in the Sky established her as Hollywood's first black leading lady. In such plays as Mamba's Daughters and films as The Member of the Wedding, she shattered the myth that black women could perform only as singers. For her work in Pinky, she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, the second African American to be so honored.".

A must for improvising guitarists who play all styles, from rock to jazz. This is a thorough and unique approach to learning and applying the scales and modes to improvisation on the guitar. Each book includes: exercises and licks in standard music notation and tablature, examples in a variety of styles, easy-to-read scale diagrams, lessons that teach you to solo freely throughout the range of the fingerboard, chord progressions, and basic theory lessons written clearly and simply.

From John Philip Sousa to Green Day, from Scott Joplin to Kanye West, from Stephen Foster to Coldplay, The Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, Volumes 1 and 2 covers the vast scope of its subject with virtually unprecedented breadth and depth. Approximately 1,000 key song recordings from 1889 to the present are explored in full, unveiling the stories behind the songs, the recordings, the performers, and the songwriters. Beginning the journey in the era of Victorian parlor balladry, brass bands, and ragtime with the advent of the record industry, readers witness the birth of the blues and the dawn of jazz in the 1910s and the emergence of country music on record and the shift from acoustic to electrical recording in the 1920s. The odyssey continues through the Swing Era of the 1930s; rhythm & blues, bluegrass, and bebop in the 1940s; the rock & roll revolution of the 1950s; modern soul, the British invasion, and the folk-rock movement of the 1960s; and finally into the modern era through the musical streams of disco, punk, grunge, hip-hop, and contemporary dance-pop. Sullivan, however, also takes critical detours by extending the coverage to genres neglected in pop music histories, from ethnic and world music, the gospel recording of both black and white artists, and lesser-known traditional folk tunes that reach back hundreds of years. This book is ideal for anyone who truly loves popular music in all of its glorious variety, and anyone wishing to learn more about the roots of virtually all the music we hear today. Popular music fans, as well as scholars of recording history and technology and students of the intersections between music and cultural history will all find this book to be informative and interesting.

Throughout life we experience a myriad of paths that encompass some of our greatest victories and our innermost private failures. Stormy Monday is a book of poetry that will surely evoke emotions and challenge you to stretch your faith, showing that no matter who you are, everybody will and should accept that at some point a Stormy Monday will show up. From pieces such as The Conversation to Elevator Muzik, this poignant, practical, powerful and perfectly timed book will let us know, Tuesday is already looking better.

Charles Keil examines the expressive role of blues bands and performers and stresses the intense interaction between performer and audience. Profiling bluesmen Bobby Bland and B. B. King, Keil argues that they are symbols for the black community, embodying important attitudes and roles—success, strong egos, and close ties to the community. While writing Urban Blues in the mid-1960s, Keil optimistically saw this cultural expression as contributing to the rising tide of raised political consciousness in Afro-America. His new Afterword examines black music in the context of capitalism and black culture in the context of worldwide trends toward diversification. "Enlightening. . . . [Keil] has given a provocative indication of the role of the blues singer as a focal point of ghetto community expression."—John S. Wilson, New York Times Book Review"A terribly valuable book and a powerful one. . . . Keil is an original thinker and . . . has offered us a major breakthrough."—Studs Terkel, Chicago Tribune "[Urban Blues] expresses authentic concern for people who are coming to realize that their past was . . . the source of meaningful cultural values."—Atlantic "An achievement of the first magnitude. . . . He opens our eyes and introduces a world of amazingly complex musical happening."—Robert Farris Thompson, Ethnomusicology "[Keil's] vigorous, aggressive scholarship, lucid style and sparkling analysis stimulate the challenge. Valuable insights come from treating urban blues as artistic communication."—James A. Bonar, Boston Herald