Music

Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. pages. From scouring flea markets and eBay to maxing out their credit cards, record collectors will do just about anything to score a long-sought-after album. In Vinyl Freak, music writer, curator, and collector John Corbett burrows deep inside the record fiend's mind, documenting and reflecting on his decades-long love affair with vinyl. Discussing more than 200 rare and out-of-print LPs, Vinyl Freak is composed in part of Corbett's long-running DownBeat magazine column of the same name, which was devoted to records that had not appeared on CD. In other essays where he combines memoir and criticism, Corbett considers the current vinyl boom, explains why vinyl is his preferred medium, profiles collector subcultures, and recounts his adventures assembling the Alton Abraham Sun Ra Archive, an event so all-consuming that he claims it cured his record-collecting addiction. Like new in publisher's shrinkwrap.

Softcover. Kansas City, Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1st pbk, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 120 pages, profusely illustrated. The Kansas City Jazz Museum traces the evolution of jazz music in America, from the early 1920s to the present day, focusing on the contributions of such Kansas City-based musicians as Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Lester Young, and other jazz greats. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Pomegranate, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 164 pages. Hardcover. Black & white photographs by Jazz musician Milt Hinton. Dust jacket with light wear. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Burlington VT, Ashgate, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 245 pages, in a bright. unclipped dust jacket. Fado, often described as 'urban folk music', emerged from the streets of Lisbon in the mid-nineteenth century and went on to become Portugal's 'national' music during the twentieth. It is known for its strong emphasis on loss, memory and nostalgia within its song texts, which often refer to absent people and places. One of the main lyrical themes of fado is the city itself. Fado music has played a significant role in the interlacing of mythology, history, memory and regionalism in Portugal in the second half of the twentieth century. Richard Elliott considers the ways in which fado songs bear witness to the city of Lisbon, in relation to the construction and maintenance of the local. Elliott explores the ways in which fado acts as a cultural product reaffirming local identity via recourse to social memory and an imagined community, while also providing a distinctive cultural export for the dissemination of a 'remembered Portugal' on the global stage.

Hardcover. New York, Da Capo Press, 2nd pr., 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 258 pages, illustrated in b&w. Recorded during the blazing summer of 1971 at Villa Nellcote, Keith Richards' seaside mansion in the south of France, Exile on Main St. has been hailed as one of the Rolling Stones' best albums-and one of the greatest rock records of all time. Yet its improbable creation was difficult, torturous...and at times nothing short of dangerous.In self-imposed exile, the Stones-along with wives, girlfriends, and a crew of hangers-on unrivaled in the history of rock-spent their days smoking, snorting, and drinking whatever they could get their hands on. At night, the band descended like miners into the villa's dank basement to lay down tracks. Out of those grueling sessions came the familiar riffs and rhythms of "Rocks Off," "Tumbling Dice," "Happy," and "Sweet Virginia."All the while, a variety of celebrities-John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Gram Parsons among them-stumbled through the villa's neverending party, as did the local drug dealers, known to one and all as "les cowboys." Villa Nellcote became the crucible in which creative strife, outsize egos, and all the usual byproducts of the Stones' legendary hedonistic excess fused into something potent, volatile, and enduring.Here, for the first time, is the season in hell that produced Exile on Main St.

Hardcover. NY, George Braziller, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 250 pages. Black cloth covers, laminate black dust jacket with orange and green titles. Previous owner's inscription to top corner of front endpaper, slight rubbing to dust jacket, clean covers, pages crisp and unmarked, tight binding.

Hardcover. Chicago, University Of Chicago Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 320 pages. Light marking to several pages in margins, otherwise clean. In Blue Chicago, David Grazian takes us inside the world of contemporary urban blues clubs to uncover how such images are manufactured and sold to music fans and audiences. Drawing on countless nights in dozens of blues clubs throughout Chicago, Grazian shows how this quest for authenticity has transformed the very shape of the blues experience. He explores the ways in which professional and amateur musicians, club owners, and city boosters define authenticity and dish it out to tourists and bar regulars. He also tracks the changing relations between race and the blues over the past several decades, including the increased frustrations of black musicians forced to slog through the same set of overplayed blues standards for mainly white audiences night after night. In the end, Grazian finds that authenticity lies in the eye of the beholder: a nocturnal fantasy to some, an essential way of life to others, and a frustrating burden to the rest.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on the front fly leaf. "During its first two centuries, opera was dominated by sopranos. There were male sopranos, or castrati, whose supercharged voices (female vocal cords powered by male lungs) were capable of feats of vocalism that are hard to imagine today. And there were female sopranos, or prime donne, whose long battle for social acceptance and top billing was crowned in the early nineteenth century when the castrati disappeared from the opera stage and left them supreme.", "Whether they were male or female, these singers wre amazing vertuosi, perhaps the greatest singers there have ever been - "angels." Unfortunately, some of them (and often the most famous) were also capable of behaving extremely badly, both on and off stage - "monsters." This book tells their colorful stories." Clean copy.

Softcover. Middletown CT, Wesleyan University Press, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 237 pages. From its beginnings in hip hop culture, the dense rhythms and aggressive lyrics of rap music have made it a provocative fixture on the American cultural landscape. In Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, Tricia Rose, described by the New York Times as a "hip hop theorist," takes a comprehensive look at the lyrics, music, cultures, themes, and styles of this highly rhythmic, rhymed storytelling and grapples with the most salient issues and debates that surround it. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Middletown CT, Wesleyan University Press, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 204 pages. Composer John Luther Adams makes his home in the boreal forest near Fairbanks, Alaska, where he has created a unique musical world grounded in the elemental landscapes and indigenous cultures of the North. Winter Music, a collection of Adams's essays, journal entries, and other writings is poetic and inspirational and delves into the environmental and cultural awareness that creates his reflective, almost spiritual, approach to music. The accompanying audio CD includes two previously unrecorded works by Adams. Adams's music explores natural phenomena from the songs of birds, to the complex nature of chaos, fractal geometry, and elemental noise. Similarly, his writings explore "that region between place and culture, between environment and imagination," reflecting a philosophy of deep awareness that makes him one of the most original composers working today. Clean copy.

Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 2nd pr., 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 342 pages. In Extended Play, one of the country's most innovative music writers conducts a wide-ranging tour through the outer limits of contemporary music. Over the course of more than twenty-five portraits, interviews, and essays, John Corbett engages artists from lands as distant as Sweden, Siberia, and Saturn. With a special emphasis on African American and European improvisers, the book explores the famous and the little known, from John Cage and George Clinton to Anthony Braxton and Sun Ra. Employing approaches as diverse as the music he celebrates, Corbett illuminates the sound and theory of funk and rap, blues and jazz, contemporary classical, free improvisation, rock, and reggae. Using cultural critique and textual theory, Corbett addresses a broad spectrum of issues, such as the status of recorded music in postmodern culture, the politics of self-censorship, experimentation, and alternativism in the music industry, and the use of metaphors of space and madness in the work of African American musicians. He follows these more theoretically oriented essays with a series of extensive profiles and in-depth interviews that offer contrasting and complementary perspectives on some of the world's most creative musicians and their work. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Pathfinder Press , Revised Ed., 1998, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 500 pages, b&w photos. Coltrane's role in spearheading the last major innovative development in jazz, and how the 1960s jazz revolution reflected an intense cultural, political, and ideological ferment -- marked especially by the rise of resistance to racial discrimination. Also contains the best-known interview with John Coltrane -- recorded in 1966, a year before his death. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Methuen & Co., 1st, 1928, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray boards with a white label on front cover, blue cloth spine, 92 pages, b&w illustrations by Ernest Shepard. . The verses and pictures in this book first appeared in 'Punch' magazine. Edge wear, rubbing, light soiling to boards. Previous owner's inscription on front fly leaf and bookplate inside front cover. Else a clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Santa Fe Springs CA, Hathaway and Bowers, 1st, 1970-71, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Nine softcover catalogs from the foremost dealer in antique music makers: Organs, pianinos, automatic harps, music boxes, etc. Catalogues No. 9 through 17, 1969-1971. All with b&w illustrations. Pages vary, 60-100. From a museum library with light stamping, small stickers on covers. Otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York , Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 176 pages, illustrated throughout in b&w. Dust jacket price clipped with slight rubbing, wear, sunning to edges and spine. Internally very good.

Softcover. New York , Princeton Architectural Press, 2nd printing, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Illustrated throughout in color. Light edgewear to wrappers, else a clean, tight copy. 45 RPM: A Visual History of the Seven-Inch Record celebrates a often overlooked, yet vital form of art, that of the seven inch sleeve. Not only are there more than 200 pictures display in this book, but an excellent history detailing the rise and fall of this format. There are basically five main chapters starting with the 50's all the way to the 90's. Each chapter is preceded by a written piece authored by different individuals, ranging from a record collector, renown sleeve artists, a music journalist and a music critic. Each provides thoughful, authorative, and interesting insights into the period of time they are introducing. The real meat is the pictures, and there are a lot of them.

Hardcover. Neptune NJ, Paganiniana Publications, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 176 pages, maroon cloth covers with gilt lettering, design. Scarce book by a master teacher. INSCRIBED BY BRONSTEIN on rear end paper upside-down. No dust jacket issued.

Hardcover. London, Cassell, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 239 pages illustrated in color. Issued w/o a dust jacket. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Portland OR, Amadeus Press, 1st US, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 504 pages. Essays about Purcell by scholars and performers, edited by Burden. -- Illustrated. Includes bibliography. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, powerHouse Books, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Hardcover in pictorial boards. Back in 1961 it was still possible to know a few of America's original country musicians from the '20s and '30s. Renowned and celebrated musician and artist John Cohen came of age at the confluence of Old Time and early Bluegrass music, the historic intersection of traditional and folk music. Cohen travelled the country playing music, recording, and documenting what was to be a generation of musicians who would influence American music and culture for decades to come. Travelling between the Union Grove Fiddlers' Convention to the Grand Old Opry to a Coal Celebration in Hazard, Kentucky, Cohen made historic photographs of performers like Bill Monroe and Doc Watson, the country's very first all bluegrass show, and a bluegrass bar in Baltimore, among much more. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. Los Angeles, Reed Books, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 275 pages, color and b&w photos. An early biography of the Country & Western singer Dolly Parton. Clean copy.

Softcover. Chicago, Chicago Review Press, reprint, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 430 pages, b&w photos. This first major biography of the most romanticized icon in jazz thrillingly recounts his wild ride. From his emergence in the 1950s--when an uncannily beautiful young man from Oklahoma appeared on the West Coast to become, seemingly overnight, the prince of "cool" jazz--until his violent, drug-related death in Amsterdam in 1988, Chet Baker lived a life that has become an American myth. Here, drawing on hundreds of interviews and previously untapped sources, James Gavin gives a hair-raising account of the trumpeter's dark journey. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 366 pages illustrated in color. The widespread presence of jazz and blues in African American visual art has long been overlooked. The Hearing Eye makes the case for recognizing the music's importance, both as formal template and as explicit subject matter. Moving on from the use of iconic musical figures and motifs in Harlem Renaissance art, this groundbreaking collection explores the more allusive - and elusive - references to jazz and blues in a wide range of mostly contemporary visual artists. There are scholarly essays on the painters Rose Piper (Graham Lock), Norman Lewis (Sara Wood), Bob Thompson (Richard H. King), Romare Bearden (Robert G. O'Meally, Johannes Volz) and Jean-Michel Basquiat (Robert Farris Thompson), as well an account of early blues advertising art (Paul Oliver) and a discussion of the photographs of Roy DeCarava (Richard Ings). These essays are interspersed with a series of in-depth interviews by Graham Lock, who talks to quilter Michael Cummings and painters Sam Middleton, Wadsworth Jarrell, Joe Overstreet and Ellen Banks about their musical inspirations, and also looks at art's reciprocal effect on music in conversation with saxophonists Marty Ehrlich and Jane Ira Bloom. Clean, bright copy

Softcover. Boston, Back Bay Books, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 246 pages, b&w illustrations. Documents the history of swing music and dancing, covering the important artists, style and fashion, albums, and dance moves of swing. A bright, clean copy that has a light smoker's odor.

Softcover. Wochester MA, Simplex Player Action Company, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover booklet, undated, but appears to be a reprint from about 1940. Instructions for a device that used to help tune and repair pianos. 40 pages, b&w illustrations. Light wear to wrapper otherwise clean.

Softcover. Lincoln NE, University Of Nebraska Press , 1st pbk, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 432 pages. Collects letters and essays that are published during the 1850s and 1860s. This title highlights the notorious 1850 article "Judaism in Music". It includes prose pieces such as "On the Performing of Tannhauser"; "On Musical Criticism"; and, "Music of the Future". It offers suggestions for the reform of opera houses in Vienna, Paris, and Zurich. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Musicdata, Inc., Reprint, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, orange cloth covers, 464 pages. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 272 pages, b&w photos. Dust jacket with light edgewear, short tears,

Softcover. Lark Books, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 416 pages, illustrated in color. Feast your eyes on more than 300 of today's most creative, imaginative, and gorgeous hand-made guitars--all illustrated in full color and featuring information about the innovative artisans who created them. Meet guitar-making legends, such as C.F. Martin, Les Paul, and Leo Fender, who revolutionized the instrument's design. Discover why the past 25 years have seen an explosion of craftspeople who build guitars by hand, employing an attention to detail factories can't afford and using higher quality materials and more technical skill than in any previous era. Explore the various guitar styles used in a range of musical traditions, from blues to classical. Detailed information about each guitar's specifications, plus personal statements and anecdotes from the artisans about their work and techniques complete each entry.

Hardcover. London, Oxford for the International African Institute,, 1st, 1948, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover, orange cloth boards with gilt titles, in a worn, chipped dust jacket, 180 pages. Index, folding map and chart; 22 plates and diagrams. An account of the Chopi of Portuguese East Africa whose xylophone orchestras have long been celebrated throughout the continent. He tells how the instruments are made and played and analyses their compositions. Front blank leaf gone with minor wear at gutter. Otherwise very good, clean.

Softcover. London, Castle Communications/Penguin, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pictorial wraps, Fantastic collection of color & black & white photos with lots of info about the band. Contains color reproductions of psychedelic posters for The Doors concerts. Discography. Light chipping to paper spine, otherwise clean, very good.

Hardcover. Hampton, VA, Hampton Institute Press, 1st, 1927, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Poor, Hardcover, dark blue cloth with gilt lettering on front cover and spine, 236 pages plus appendix. A scarce collection of traditional hymns, gospel, folk songs and "Songs of Tribulation" of the American Negro. An historical document of African-American culture and the history of slavery. Songs in musical score with lyrics. A tight, generally unmarked and clean volume with nice cloth and clear gilt, In a poor dust jacket with chipping and tape repairs. Name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Softcover. Lanham MD, Scarecrow Press, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 331 pages, b&w illustrations. Like most ground-breaking art forms, contemporary creative music is rarely understood or accepted in its own time, and for those reasons, can largely go unheard. Music and the Creative Spirit: Innovators in Jazz, Improvisation, and the Avant Garde aims to give today's brightest music innovators due recognition and respect, celebrating their work and creativity. Through personal interviews, artists such as Pat Metheny, Regina Carter, Joshua Redman, Fred Anderson, Dave Holland, Bill Frisell, David Murray, and John Zorn-to name just a few-offer clear, frank discussions about music, creativity, work, society, culture, current events, and more. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. NY, Basic Books, reprint, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 359 pages. Stanley Crouch-MacArthur "genius" award recipient, co-founder of Jazz at Lincoln Center, National Book Award nominee, and perennial bull in the china shop of black intelligentsia- has been writing about jazz and jazz artists for over thirty years. His reputation for controversy is exceeded only by a universal respect for his intellect and passion. As Gary Giddons notes: "Stanley may be the only jazz writer out there with the kind of rhinoceros hide necessary to provoke and outrage and then withstand the fulminations that come back." Now, in a long-awaited collection, Crouch collects fifteen of his most influential, and most controversial pieces (published in Jazz Times, The New Yorker, the Village Voice, and elsewhere), and includes two new essays as well. The pieces range from the introspective "Jazz Criticism and its Effect on the Art Form" to a rollicking debate with Amiri Baraka, to vivid, intimate portraits of the legendary performers Crouch has known. The first, autobiographical essay reflects on his life in jazz as a drummer, a promoter, a critic, and most of all a lover of this quintessentially American art form. And the closing essay, about a young Italian saxophonist, expresses undaunted optimism for the worldwide vibrancy of jazz.Throughout, Crouch's work reminds us not only of why he is one of the world's most important living jazz critics, but also of why jazz itself remains, against all odds, an elemental component of our cultural identity. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Tubingen GR, Advance Music, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 98 pages plus publisher's ads. This book/CD set addresses the development of improvisation in all its forms, individual and collective, textural and structural, and is designed to open up the mind to all the players in any jazz situation. 11 recordings on the CD. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, W.W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 430 pages. During America's Swing Era, no musician was more successful or controversial than Artie Shaw: the charismatic and opinionated clarinetist-bandleader whose dozens of hits became anthems for "the greatest generation." But some of his most beautiful recordings were not issued until decades after he'd left the scene. He broke racial barriers by hiring African-American musicians. His frequent "retirements" earned him a reputation as the Hamlet of jazz. And he quit playing for good at the height of his powers. The handsome Shaw had seven wives (including Lana Turner and Ava Gardner). Inveterate reader and author of three books, he befriended the best-known writers of his time. Tom Nolan, who interviewed Shaw between 1990 and his death in 2004 and spoke with one hundred of his colleagues and contemporaries, captures Shaw and his era with candour and sympathy, bringing the master to vivid life and restoring him to his rightful place in jazz history. Clean, bright copy.