Music

Softcover. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University , Revised Ed., 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 105 pages. Interviews with the jazz drummer, known for his wild style of drumming, who recounts his life and adventures playing with some of the best known jazz musicians and bands of his time. Includes additional reading and selected recordings. 6 leaves of b&w photo plates. Bright and clean, but with the light odor of a smoker-owned book.

Hardcover. Milwaukee WI, Backbeat Books, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards with spiral binding, 304 pages. The Fiddle Handbook is a treasure trove of information spanning the whole range of fiddle playing. It looks in detail at the most commonly played styles among today's fiddlers. From America, there's old time, bluegrass, Cajun, Western swing, country, blues, rock, klezmer, and jazz, while from the British Isles there's Irish, Scottish, and English. There is also a quick romp through Eastern Europe and beyond, from the spike fiddles of Africa and Asia to the Chinese Erhu, the fabulous Indian Sarangi, and the mysterious Norwegian Hardingfele. A wealth of musical examples - ornaments, bowing patterns, scales, modes, exercises and complete tunes - are faithfully reproduced on the accompanying CDs, to give you a taste of each style. Clean copy.

Softcover. MPL Communications/Random House, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 293 pages. Musical scores for 80 songs. Mild shelfwear, no markings.

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

Hardcover. NY, Simon and Schuster, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 608 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. Black and white photographs throughout. Music legend Clive Davis recounts an extraordinary five-decade career in the music business, while also telling a remarkable personal story of encounters with some of the greatest musical artists of our time, including Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Simon & Garfunkel, Barry Manilow, the Grateful Dead, Patti Smith, Whitney Houston, Carlos Santana, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, and Alicia Keys.

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. Camden NJ, RCA Records, 1st, circa 1939, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 44 pages staple bound wraps. 9 1/4 tall x 6 3/4 ". Edited by John Reid. Illustrated with B&W photos. Lists by musicians and bands with descriptions and reviews of specific records. Lists of personel and recording dates. A bit of wear and soiling to cover. Panassie was an important writer about Jazz of the 1930's and he gives interesting reviews of the music of the great of the period who mostly recorded with RCA.

Hardcover. Guilford CT, Applause, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 200 pages, b&w illustrations. Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, and . . . Dorothy Fields. These are the giants of the golden age of musical theater. Although she may not be as well known as her male counterparts, Dorothy Fields was America's most brilliant and successful female lyricist, who for five decades kept up with the greats. As the only woman among the boys' club of popular song, Fields was welcomed by her fellow male artists, who considered her as both an equal and a beloved colleague. Working with thirteen different composers, Fields wrote the lyrics and/or librettos for unforgettable masterpieces, such as Annie Get Your Gun, Redhead, and Sweet Charity. Her more than four hundred songs include the standards "On the Sunny Side of the Street," "Pick Yourself Up," and "The Way You Look Tonight," among other classic tunes.

Softcover. San Francisco, Miller Freeman Books, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 263 pages, b&w illustrations. This story of a musician hailed as a genius and dismissed as a madman will appeal to anyone intrigued by the fine line between creative inspiration and insanity. the author looks deep inside the life and music of this talented but tormented bass player who revolutionized his instrument and became one of the most potent forces in modern music. "Like his heroes Charlie Parker and Jimi Hendrix, Jaco didn't make it to age 40. But by the time he died at 35, the music world was indebted to him. Jaco had reinvented the role of the electric bass. Includes is the CD, "Jaco Pastorius: The Birthday Concert" in a pocket in the back of the book and is in excellent condition.

Hardcover. NY, Gotham Books, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 455 pages, b&w photos. The definitive biography of James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, with fascinating findings on his life as a Civil Rights activist, an entrepreneur, and the most innovative musician of our time. Playing 350 shows a year at his peak, with more than forty Billboard hits, James Brown was a dazzling showman who transformed American music. His life offstage was just as vibrant, and until now no biographer has delivered a complete profile. The One draws on interviews with more than 100 people who knew Brown personally or played with him professionally. Using these sources, award-winning writer RJ Smith draws a portrait of a man whose twisted and amazing life helps us to understand the music he made. The One delves deeply into the story of a man who was raised in abject-almost medieval-poverty in the segregated South but grew up to earn (and lose) several fortunes. Covering everything from Brown's unconventional childhood (his aunt ran a bordello), to his role in the Black Power movement, which used "Say It Loud (I'm Black and Proud)" as its anthem, to his high-profile friendships, to his complicated family life, Smith's meticulous research and sparkling prose blend biography with a cultural history of a pivotal era. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st pbk, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 398 pages. Alex Stewart's excellent book tackles a subject which has been hidden in plain sight: the central importance of the big band, not as dead artifact of the Swing Era, but as a seminal and nurturing force through the entire history of jazz down to our own time. Through an attractive blend of ethnographic participant-observation, historiography, and formal analysis, Stewart puts the big band at the center of jazz, arguing for its indispensability as a locus of instrumental training and rehearsal, composition, legitimation, and professional networking. Informed and enriched by his own experience as a performer in those worlds. Light crease to front cover, clean copy.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Chilton Book Co, 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 176 pages, profusely illustrated in b&w. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Lake Oswego OR, Metamorphous Press, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, b&w illustrations, 104 pages. A veteran piano tuner presents a non-technical, literary view of the quixotic tuning system used on keyboard instruments for hundreds of years. Focuses on the "comma", which is the pitch difference by which (9/8)^12 > (2/1), discusses its history, its importance in piano tuning, and philosophically what it all means. Winner of the Western States Book Award for creative nonfiction in 1986.

Hardcover. New York, Ktav Pub Inc, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 226 pages, INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on title page, with photographs throughout. Minor dust jacket edge wear, otherwise, very clean and tight.

Hardcover. New York, W.W Norton Co, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 270 Pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy with only marginal wear to edges.

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, Random House, 1st, 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pale blue boards with dark blue spine, 266 pages. A very large selection of 142 lullabies and songs from around the world. Bright and clean, lacks dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Canongate , 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dustjacket, 694 pages. Destined to become a classic on the subject alongside Legs McNeil's Please Kill Me , Babylon's Burning is a groundbreaking, definitive account of punk rock, one of the most influential and lasting music movements in history--a movement that ironically was built on self-annihilation. Acclaimed critic Clinton Heylin seamlessly weaves together the lives of disparate artists who had in common not the music (there was no distribution) but the pictures, words, and fashions depicted in magazines like Creem and NME . It was a sound that eschewed conventional lyrics, promoted a gutteral musicality but yet contained a keen pop sensibility. Whether exploring the work of early progenitors like Suicide, The New York Dolls, and Patti Smith or charting the progress of the bands who legitimately took up the mantle in the eighties and nineties, Clinton Heylin brings to life the strands of a global artform. From the Sex Pistols's clarion call of a record, "Never Mind the Bollocks," to Kurt Cobain's songs of an alienated youth, Babylon's Burning is the brilliant, exhaustively researched story that once and for all defines what Punk is and is not.

Hardcover. NY, Little, Brown and Company, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 763 pages, b&w illustrations. From the author of the critically acclaimed Elvis Presley biography: Last Train to Memphis brings us the life of Sam Phillips, the visionary genius who singlehandily steered the revolutionary path of Sun Records. The music that he shaped in his tiny Memphis studio with artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, Ike Turner, Howlin' Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash, introduced a sound that had never been heard before. He brought forth a singular mix of black and white voices passionately proclaiming the vitality of the American vernacular tradition while at the same time declaring, once and for all, a new, integrated musical day. With extensive interviews and firsthand personal observations extending over a 25-year period with Phillips, along with wide-ranging interviews with nearly all the legendary Sun Records artists, Guralnick gives us an ardent, unrestrained portrait of an American original as compelling in his own right as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, or Thomas Edison.

Hardcover. NY, William Morrow, 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket with light chipping, 180 pages. Ortiz Montaigne Walton was the first African-American member of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and a prominent figure in African-American studies. He performed in Buffalo for three seasons, before moving on to become the first African-American member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Walton later was principal contrabassist with the Cairo Symphony Orchestra in Egypt and performed a number of acclaimed solo recitals. Dust jacket art is a photo-montage by Romare Bearden.

Hardcover. Boston, The Boston Music Co., 1st, 1913, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brown woven cloth with publisher's printed paper labels on spine and front cover. 247 pages, b&w photographs. Biography of an American composer with a strong family life. MOSTLY TOLD BY Nevin and his wife throughout. Nevin, 1862-1901, born in Edgewerth Pennsylvania; debut as pianist, Pittsburgh (Dec. 10, 1886); excelled in lyrical music, composing 70 songs, published in Sketch Book (1888), Water Scenes (1891), In Arcady (1892), May in Tuscany (1896), A Day in Venice (1898). INSCRIBED BY HIS WIFE on the title page with her calling card laid in. Clean, bight copy.

Softcover. NY, Bloomsbury, reprint, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 454 pages. Via writings by philosophers, cultural theorists, and composers, Audio Culture explores the interconnections among such forms as minimalism, indeterminacy, musique concrete, free improvisation, experimental music, avant-rock, dub reggae, Ambient music, HipHop, and Techno. Instead of focusing on the putative "crossover" between "high art" and "popular culture," Audio Culture takes all of these musics as experimental practices on par with, and linked to, one another. While cultural studies has tended to look at music (primarily popular music) from a sociological perspective, the concern here is philosophical, musical, and historical. Audio Culture includes writing by some of the most important musical thinkers of the past half-century, among them John Cage, Brian Eno, Glenn Gould, Umberto Eco, Ornette Coleman, Jacques Attali, Simon Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros, Paul D. Miller, David Toop, John Zorn, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and many others. The book is divided into nine thematically-organized sections, each with its own introduction. Section headings include topics such as "Modes of Listening," "Minimalisms," and "DJ Culture." In addition, each essay has its own short introduction, helping the reader to place the essay within musical, historical, and conceptual contexts. The book concludes with a glossary, a timeline, and an extensive discography. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Advance Music, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 534 pages. The understanding of the musical techniques of composition cannot be reduced to a handbook of simplified rules. Music is complex and ever changing. It is the purpose of this book to trace the path of musical growth from the late Romantic period to the serial techniques of the contemporary composer. Through the detailed analysis of the musical characteristics that dominate a specific style of writing, a graduated plan is organized and presented here in the form of explanations and exercises. A new analytical method substitutes for the diatonic figured bass and makes exercises and the analysis of non-diatonic literature more manageable. The explanations describing each technique are thorough. They are designed to help the teacher and the student see the many extenuating circumstances that affect a particular analytical decision. More important than a dogmatic decision on a particular key center or a root tone, for example, is the understanding of why such an underdeterminate condition may exist. Minor wear to covers, clean copy.

Hardcover. Woodstock NY, The Overlook Press, 1st US, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 136 pages. A comprehensive and well researched account of the evolution of instruments and the role of the musician through the ages by first describing and illustrating those instruments bequeathed to us by the civilizations of Greece and Rome. Then, through the dark ages and on to the successive stages which shows the gradual changes to the instruments, how they were played and the music of he era. Clean copy.

Softcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 6th pr., 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 231 pages, b&w illustrations. 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. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. London, Robert Hale, 1st , 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 240 pages, b&w photographs. Light edge wear to dust jacket. Spine slightly cocked. Else a very clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. London, George Redway, 1st, 1898, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 292 pages, b&w illustrations. Green cloth wrappers w/ gilt lettering. Top edge gilt. Rough-cut pages. Edge wear, rubbing, soiling to covers; spine yellowed. Else a clean, tight copy.

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. NY, Skira Rizzoli, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 224 pages. Illustrated in color and b&w. The most comprehensive book on the artist to date, offering an insightful look into the legendary musician and his enormous impact on the development of jazz. Miles Davis explores the life and art of one of the greatest visionaries in jazz history--through photographs, handwritten musical scores, album covers, posters, and more--cementing his reputation as the embodiment of cool, both on- and offstage. To examine his extraordinary career is also to examine the history of jazz from the mid-1940s through the early 1990s, as Davis was crucial in almost every important innovation and stylistic development during that time. His genius paved the way for these changes, both with his own performances and recordings, and by choosing collaborators with whom he forged new directions. Miles Davis--trumpeter, bandleader, and composer--was one of the most important figures in jazz history. He was born in a well-to-do family in St. Louis in 1926 and died in a Los Angeles hospital in 1991. He was at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including cool jazz, hard bop, free jazz, and fusion. Davis worked with many of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, including Ron Carter, John Coltrane, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, Charlie Parker, and Max Roach, among numerous others.

Hardcover. NY, Dey St., 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 376 pages, b&w illustrations. This book is divided into five main parts, with a total of 24 chapters. In the Introduction, Grohl describes an epiphany he had when he realized how he wanted to age: "I would celebrate the ensuing years by embracing the toll they'd take on me." He also explains that his memory is triggered by sound, and his recollections of the events in his life are mostly centered around songs, albums, and bands that he was apart of. Clean, like-new copy.

Softcover. Kila MT, Kessinger, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, blue pictorial wrappers. This is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1895, originally published by Swan Sonnenschein & Co., London, 13 illustrations, 2 maps. Clean copy.

Softcover. Camden,NJ, Victor Talking Machine Company, 1st, 1918, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 28 pages, illustrated, small stapled booklet. Wrappers with light wear, minor soil.

Hardcover. NY, The Viking Press, reprint, 1956, Book: Very Good, Hardcover, tan cloth covers with brown lettering, 187/189 pages. Lyrics with music and a preface of the songs. Two volumes in one. No dust jacket. Inscription on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Broadway Books, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 289 pagesGreen turns his expert hand to the artistic qualities that make an extraordinary musician. He culls advice from dozens of interviews with legends including Joshua Bell, Dave Brubeck, Jeffrey Kahane, Bobby McFerrin, Christopher Parkening, Doc Severinsen, Frederica von Stade, the Harlem Boys Choir, and the Turtle Island String Quartet. Green organizes the ineffable virtuoso quality that the greats possess into ten characteristics, such as confidence, passion, discipline, creativity, and relaxed concentration, and discusses specific ways in which all musicians, composers, and conductors can take their skills to higher levels. Foreword by Mike Stryker.

Softcover. NY, Limelight Editions, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 255 pages. A "fakebook" is a collection of melodies with the chord changes that allows jazz musicians to read the tunes instead of playing solely by ear and memory. It is, then, a place to start, a structure upon which jazz improvisation, "faking," builds. As a young man, the author, a jazz saxophone player, tried to make a living at what he loved most. He failed, gave up jazz and became a college English professor. Today he is playing his saxophone again, at weekend gigs, rediscovering the unending challenge and the fulfillment that jazz brings him. This journey of self-discovery demonstrates the power of both jazz and superbly crafted writing. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Ventura CA, Pathfinder Publishing, 1st, 1990, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 214 pages, b&w illustrations. The story of the career, music, and life of the man who made drums a solo instrument, symbolized the swing era, and is still internationally recognized as "the world's greatest drummer." Book was once owned by a smoker and has odor.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. It started with the searing sound of a slide careening up the neck of an electric guitar. In 1970, twenty-three-year-old Bruce Iglauer walked into Florence's Lounge, in the heart of Chicago's South Side, and was overwhelmed by the joyous, raw Chicago blues of Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers. A year later, Iglauer produced Hound Dog's debut album in eight hours and pressed a thousand copies, the most he could afford. From that one album grew Alligator Records, the largest independent blues record label in the world. Bitten by the Blues is Iglauer's memoir of a life immersed in the blues--and the business of the blues. No one person was present at the creation of more great contemporary blues music than Iglauer: he produced albums by Koko Taylor, Albert Collins, Professor Longhair, Johnny Winter, Lonnie Mack, Son Seals, Roy Buchanan, Shemekia Copeland, and many other major figures. In this book, Iglauer takes us behind the scenes, offering unforgettable stories of those charismatic musicians and classic sessions, delivering an intimate and unvarnished look at what it's like to work with the greats of the blues. It's a vivid portrait of some of the extraordinary musicians and larger-than-life personalities who brought America's music to life in the clubs of Chicago's South and West Sides. Bitten by the Blues is also an expansive history of half a century of blues in Chicago and around the world, tracing the blues recording business through massive transitions, as a genre of music originally created by and for black southerners adapted to an influx of white fans and musicians and found a worldwide audience.

Hardcover. NY, Billboard Books, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 154 pages, b&w illustrations. Carmen McRae is well known as one of jazz music's most masterful improvisers, and is ranked among the greatest jazz singers of all time. She grew up during the swing era in Harlem, and participated in the transition from swing to bebop--the New Thing--playing with all the important musicians and in all the major clubs. Her struggle to fame was long and hard, finally paying off when she was thirty-four years old and began to perform with Tony Scott's band. It was Scott who convinced her to stand up at the microphone and leave the piano bench behind. By 1955 she had signed with Decca records and achieved national recognition. The rise to fame had begun. By the end of her life Carmen had performed all over the world, recorded over sixty albums, and been recognized with numerous awards and honors. Carmen McRae died on November 10, 1994.

Hardcover. Rochester, Goodenough, 1st, 1931, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 506 pages. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR ON TITLE PAGE. Clean, tight copy.