Showing titles in History & Criticism

In this collection of musical portraits, jazz pianist and radio host Marian McPartland pays sparkling tribute to such beloved and legendary figures as Benny Goodman, Bill Evans, Joe Morello, Paul Desmond, Alec Wilder, Mary Lou Williams, and others.

An incisive portrait of a culture unanchored and adrift. In these pieces, veteran MTV commentator and rock journalist Kurt Loder turns his jaundiced eye and trenchant wit on the nature of celebrity as embodied by rock musicians and other pop culture icons. Ride along as Mick Jagger sheds his bad-boy image to embrace the jet-setter lifestyle; ponder the puzzling dichotomy between Prince's racy lyrics and self-proclaimed spirituality; and much more.

Let the Music Play: How R&B Fell in Love with 80s Synths is the overlooked story of how R&B, disco, and funk were transformed by the explosion of music tech in the era of ghetto blasters and Ronald Reagan. It traces how pioneers like Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock inspired a new generation of black musicians and producers to reinvent music with a whole new set of rules.

Leafy St Albans is an unlikely starting point for one of the great psychedelic/acid house musicians of his generation, but, like so many others who brought radical change to the counterculture, Richard Norris' story starts in the suburbs. Strange Things Are Happening documents his journey from punk through the emerging DIY indie culture to producing the UK's first acid house album, Jack the Tab. This is an insider's tale of inspiration and collaboration, working with some of the most iconic artists in music and beyond.

Discover the soulful journey of 1960s and 70s soul music in Soul Music: The Heartbeat of the 60s and 70s and Its Lasting Echoes. This captivating book explores the rise of soul, its cultural significance, and its profound influence on modern music genres like hip-hop, R&B, and pop. From Motown’s polished hits to Stax’s gritty grooves, dive into the stories of legendary artists like Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and James Brown, whose anthems defined an era of civil rights and cultural revolution.

En estas páginas, la exploración de la música latinoamericana conduce hacia la historia más amplia de la conceptualización de la región. Tal como sostiene Palomino: "La música proporciona así un modelo para comprender ahora los mecanismos nacionales y transnacionales que siguen produciendo el lugar de América Latina en el marco de la cultura global conflictiva y fascinante que habitamos".

The Indiana Jones of rock history and founding curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum narrates the Hall's wild history and his quest to build its collection from scratch—from Ozzy Osbourne's country manor to Keith Moon’s childhood bedroom and Art Garfunkel’s personal archives—including stories about Debbie Harry, Mick Jagger, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and more.

Het "lied" is een zeer algemeen begrip dat vele soorten en vormen van liederen omvat. Wanneer we tegenwoordig het lied als kunstvorm beschouwen, bedoelen we in feite het lied met begeleiding van piano. Hoewel dat een ernstige beperking impliceert, behandelt Leo Samama in deze serie colleges toch overwegend dat klavierlied. Grofweg van Haydn en Mozart tot in onze tijd. Hij vertelt ook over de ontwikkeling van de spannende samenwerking tussen muziek en tekst. Begint de kracht van de muziek inderdaad waar die van de tekst ophoudt, of is de symbiose vele malen groter dan dat?

40-Foot Lemon: The Complete Story of U2's Pop & PopMart takes listeners into the studio and onto the stage during U2’s most experimental and ambitious era. It chronicles the difficult and expensive yearlong recording of Pop, where the band worked with five producers in multiple studios on two continents, striving to create a masterpiece. Instead, with tour dates already booked, U2 handed in an unfinished album.

Imagine a world without the music of Stevie Wonder. A world without hits like “I Was Made to Love Her” and “Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day.” That's the world we would live in had it not been for Sylvia Moy, a woman whose legacy has been carefully tucked away within the annals of music history—until now. It’s No Wonder examines the groundbreaking career of the pioneer who battled sexism and broke down barriers to become Motown’s first certified female in-house songwriter and producer.

In We Were Here: A History of Black People and Alternative Music, author, journalist, and musician Stephanie Phillips, the singer and guitarist of British post punk band Big Joanie, presents readers with a revised history of rock and roll and alternative music, repopulating it with the extraordinary Black artists and influential figures who truly steered its course. From the genre's earliest moments, Black musicians have consistently pushed musical boundaries that forever impacted the music that followed.

In Mark Kermode's Surround Sound the award-winning film critic, together with radio producer Jenny Nelson, embarks on a full-throttle trip down the glorious rabbit hole of film composition. Celebrating the emotional connection that audiences form with film music, exploring the evolution of film scoring from silent films to the present day, and examining how what we hear has an impact on what we see, Mark talks to some of his favourite composers and delves into the movie music he loves.

Elton John is not only "still standing," he is a living superlative, the ultimate record-breaking, award-winning survivor of the great era of pop and rock music that he helped to shape during his six decades in the music industry. Yet few of his numerous biographies and song guides take him as a historical subject worthy of scholarly study. In contrast, On Elton John approaches the artist seriously and analytically, while still couched in a highly accessible style.

Smith tells the joyful story of the musicians, the radio DJs, the record labels, and the live venues where jazz not only survived but thrived in the 1960s. In an era marked by turmoil and struggle, popular jazz offered a powerful outlet for joy, resilience, pride, and triumph.

The Story of Rock and Roll an epic tale with a cast of thousands (if you count the crowd at Woodstock), spanning more than a century. It’s also an American story (at least until the Beatles arrived) about music created by individuals clinging to the lowest rung of the social ladder who, nevertheless, invented a musical idea that engulfed the entire world, influencing all aspects of culture, and drawing every other kind of music into its orbit. It’s a story that has everything: scandal, betrayal, big money, murder, tragedy and triumph, long successful careers, and lives unexpectedly cut short.

Have you ever had a dream? Something you wanted so bad you just couldn’t let it go? For a group of kids in Harlem in the Eighties, their dreams would change pop music forever. Teddy Riley, Timmy Gatling, and Aaron Hall form a group called Guy that would fuse hip-hop and R&B and launch a new sound.

Audio Snaps is a series of 100-minute audio books, each featuring a dozen or so stories from each of my five books. Black Vinyl White Powder is a bit different from the other books in that it was written as a continuous narrative moving through story after story.

Tom Jobim mudou a história da música brasileira com a bossa nova e suas canções, que influenciaram pelo menos duas gerações de compositores. E levou essa música para o mundo. Mas disso os leitores provavelmente já sabem. O que Ruy Castro mostra em O ouvidor do Brasil é um Tom por vezes inesperado e desconhecido, que emerge sob diferentes ângulos em cada crônica. Em conjunto, os textos formam uma espécie de perfil biográfico fragmentado de um dos maiores artistas que o Brasil já teve.

This title offers a superb investigation of what is arguably Johnny Cash's greatest album, focusing on his enduring mythology. When Johnny Cash signed to Rick Rubin's record label in 1993, he was a country music legend who, like his fellow Highwaymen Willie, Waylon and Kris, remained a fondly regarded yet completely marginalized Nashville figure, unheard on the radio and unseen on the charts. Cash's odyssey from oldies act to folk hero pivots on his first American Recordings album, a document of almost unbearable solitude and directness.

Voodoo, D'Angelo's much-anticipated 2000 release, set the standard for the musical cycle ordained as "neo-soul," a label the singer and songwriter would reject more than a decade later. The album is a product of heightened emotions and fused sensibilities; an amalgam of soul, rock, jazz, gospel, hip-hop, and Afrobeats. D'Angelo put to music his own pleasures and insecurities as a man-child in the promised land. It was both a tribute to his musical heroes: Prince, Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye, J Dilla...and a deconstruction of rhythm and blues itself.