biography music

Hardcover. NY, Viking Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY RUFF on the front fly leaf. Ruff traces his odyssey from the hills of north Alabama to the halls of Yale University with stops along the way with some the jazz greats. B&w illustrations. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Hachette, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 513 pages. Veteran music journalist Robert Hilburn presents the definitive portrait of an American legend. Hilburn has known Newman since his club debut at the Troubadour in 1970, and the two have maintained a connection in the decades since, conversing over the course of times good and bad. Though Newman has long refused to talk with potential biographers, he now gives Hilburn unprecedented access not only to himself but also to his archives, as well as his family, friends, and collaborators. Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, John Williams, Linda Ronstadt, Don Henley, Bonnie Raitt, Chuck D, James Taylor, and New York Times' Pulitzer-winning columnists, Thomas Friedman and Wesley Morris, among others, contributed to the book. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 531 pages, b&w illustrations. Larry Hart and Richard Rodgers wrote approximately thirty Broadway musicals and dozens of songs for Hollywood films. At least four of their musicals--On Your Toes, Babes in Arms, The Boys from Syracuse, and Pal Joey-- have become classics. But despite their prodigious collaboration, Rodgers and Hart were an odd couple. Rodgers was precise, punctual, heterosexual, handsome, and eager to be accepted by Society. Hart was barely five feet tall, alcoholic, homosexual, and more comfortable in a bar or restaurant than anywhere else. Terrified of solitude, he invariably threw the party and picked up the check. His lyrics are all the more remarkable considering that he never sustained a romantic relationship, living his entire life with his mother, who died only months before he died at age forty-eight. Remainder mark to top edge otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Bloomsbury USA, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 320 pages. More than thirty years have passed since Al Capp's death, and he may no longer be a household name. But at the height of his career, his groundbreaking comic strip, Li'l Abner, reached ninety million readers. The strip ran for forty-three years, spawned two movies and a Broadway musical, and originated such expressions as "hogwash" and "double-whammy." Capp himself was a familiar personality on TV and radio; as a satirist, he was frequently compared to Mark Twain. Though Li'l Abner brought millions joy, the man behind the strip was a complicated and often unpleasant person. A childhood accident cost him a leg-leading him to art as a means of distinguishing himself. His apprenticeship with Ham Fisher, creator of Joe Palooka, started a twenty-year feud that ended in Fisher's suicide. Capp enjoyed outsized publicity for a cartoonist, but his status abetted sexual misconduct and protected him from the severest repercussions. Late in life, his politics became extremely conservative; he counted Richard Nixon as a friend, and his gift for satire was redirected at targets like John Lennon, Joan Baez, and anti-war protesters on campuses across the country. With unprecedented access to Capp's archives and a wealth of new material, Michael Schumacher and Denis Kitchen have written a probing biography. Capp's story is one of incredible highs and lows, of popularity and villainy, of success and failure-told here with authority and heart.

Hardcover. NY, Da Capo Press, 1st, 2017, Hardcover, 352 pages. As well-known as Robert Frank the photographer is, few can say they really know Robert Frank the man. Born and raised in wartime Switzerland, Frank discovered the power and allure of photography at an early age and quickly learned that the art meant significantly more to him than the money, success, or fame. The art was all, and he intended to spend a lifetime pursuing it.American Witness is the first comprehensive look at the life of a man who's as mysterious and evasive as he is prolific and gifted. Leaving his rigid Switzerland for the more fluid United States in 1947, Frank found himself at the red-hot social center of bohemian New York in the '50s and '60s, becoming friends with everyone from Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Peter Orlovsky to photographer Walker Evans, actor Zero Mostel, painter Willem de Kooning, filmmaker Jonas Mekas, Bob Dylan, writer Rudy Wirlitzer, jazz musicians Ornette Coleman and Charles Mingus, and more. Frank roamed the country with his young family, taking roughly 27,000 photographs and collecting 83 of them into what is still his most famous work: The Americans. His was an America nobody had seen before, and if it was harshly criticized upon publication for its portrait of a divided country, the collection gradually grew to be recognized as a transformative American vision.

Hardcover. NY, Da Capo Press, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 352 pages. As well-known as Robert Frank the photographer is, few can say they really know Robert Frank the man. Born and raised in wartime Switzerland, Frank discovered the power and allure of photography at an early age and quickly learned that the art meant significantly more to him than the money, success, or fame. The art was all, and he intended to spend a lifetime pursuing it. American Witness is the first comprehensive look at the life of a man who's as mysterious and evasive as he is prolific and gifted. Leaving his rigid Switzerland for the more fluid United States in 1947, Frank found himself at the red-hot social center of bohemian New York in the '50s and '60s, becoming friends with everyone from Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Peter Orlovsky to photographer Walker Evans, actor Zero Mostel, painter Willem de Kooning, filmmaker Jonas Mekas, Bob Dylan, writer Rudy Wirlitzer, jazz musicians Ornette Coleman and Charles Mingus, and more. Frank roamed the country with his young family, taking roughly 27,000 photographs and collecting 83 of them into what is still his most famous work: The Americans. His was an America nobody had seen before, and if it was harshly criticized upon publication for its portrait of a divided country, the collection gradually grew to be recognized as a transformative American vision.

Hardcover. NY, Bantam, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 518 pages, b&w illustrations. Appetite for America is the incredible real-life story of Fred Harvey--told in depth for the first time ever--as well as the story of this country's expansion into the Wild West of Bat Masterson and Billy the Kid, of the great days of the railroad, of a time when a deal could still be made with a handshake and the United States was still uniting. As a young immigrant, Fred Harvey worked his way up from dishwasher to household name: He was Ray Kroc before McDonald's, J. Willard Marriott before Marriott Hotels, Howard Schultz before Starbucks. His eating houses and hotels along the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad (including historic lodges still in use at the Grand Canyon) were patronized by princes, presidents, and countless ordinary travelers looking for the best cup of coffee in the country. Harvey's staff of carefully screened single young women--the celebrated Harvey Girls--were the country's first female workforce and became genuine Americana, even inspiring an MGM musical starring Judy Garland. Clean copy.

Hardcover. East Sussex, Ammonite Press, 1sr, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 286 pages, color photographs throughout. No dust jacket as issued. Large, heavy folio. Black cloth with cover label photo. "Arrested" is the biography of idiosyncratic London-based photographer and film director Jim Lee. Lee established a portfolio photographing bands such as the Kinks and the Who and later became in demand as a fashion photographer, notably working with "Vogue" editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. Lee's earlier photographic work is included in a permanent collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Born in 1945 to parents who were both MI5 operatives, Lee's life has followed anything but a conventional route. Dyslexia and an independent spirit saw Lee at the age of just seventeen emigrate to Australia where his passion for photography was kindled. Rescued from fighting in the Vietnam war by his parents' intervention, Lee returned to the UK and began to establish a portfolio photographing bands. As his reputation grew, Lee became in demand as a fashion photographer for magazines during the late sixties and seventies. He collaborated with some of the most influential fashion designers, including Yves St Laurent and Gianni Versace, and his work appeared in "Elle", "The Sunday Times Magazine", "Harpers & Queen" and "The New York Times".

Hardcover. East Sussex, Ammonite Press, 1sr, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 286 pages, color photographs throughout. No dust jacket as issued. Large, heavy folio. Black cloth with cover label photo. "Arrested" is the biography of idiosyncratic London-based photographer and film director Jim Lee. Lee established a portfolio photographing bands such as the Kinks and the Who and later became in demand as a fashion photographer, notably working with "Vogue" editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. Lee's earlier photographic work is included in a permanent collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Born in 1945 to parents who were both MI5 operatives, Lee's life has followed anything but a conventional route. Dyslexia and an independent spirit saw Lee at the age of just seventeen emigrate to Australia where his passion for photography was kindled. Rescued from fighting in the Vietnam war by his parents' intervention, Lee returned to the UK and began to establish a portfolio photographing bands. As his reputation grew, Lee became in demand as a fashion photographer for magazines during the late sixties and seventies. He collaborated with some of the most influential fashion designers, including Yves St Laurent and Gianni Versace, and his work appeared in "Elle", "The Sunday Times Magazine", "Harpers & Queen" and "The New York Times".

Hardcover. NY, Thomas Dunne Books, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 270 pages, b&w illustrations. Augustus Owsley Stanley III, better known by his nickname, Bear, was one of the most iconic figures in the cultural revolution that changed both America and the world during the 1960s.Owsley's high-octane rocket fuel enabled Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters to put on the Acid Tests. It also powered much of what happened on stage at Monterey Pop. Owsley turned on Pete Townshend of The Who and Jimi Hendrix. The shipment of LSD that Owsley sent John Lennon resulted in The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour album and film.Convinced that the Grateful Dead were destined to become the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band, Owsley provided the money that kept them going during their early days. As their longtime soundman, he then faithfully recorded many of the Dead's greatest live performances and designed the massive space-age system that came to be known as the Wall of Sound.Award-winning author and biographer Robert Greenfield's definitive biography of this Grateful Dead legend masterfully takes us through Owsley's incredible life and times to bring us a full picture of this fascinating man for the first time. The definitive biography of the reclusive and mysterious Grateful Dead benefactor and renowned LSD chemist without whom the counterculture would never have been born. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly rubbed dust jacket, 560 pages, b&w illustrations. In this first major biography since Fitzgerald's death, music historian Judith Tick draws on deep archival research, family interviews and newly available recordings and concert footage to show how Fitzgerald fused a Black vocal aesthetic with mainstream popular repertoire to revolutionise American music. From Fitzgerald's first audition at the Apollo Theatre to swing-era success at the Savoy, Tick shows how this 'girl singer' broke new ground: as a female bandleader, as a ground-breaking bebop improviser and as the arbiter of the American canon with her Song Book recordings. Yet even as she electrified concert halls and sold millions of records, jazz critics belittled her as 'naive'. Tick reveals instead an ambitious risk-taker with a stunningly diverse repertoire, whose exceptional musical spontaneity (often radically different on stage than in the studio) made her a transformational artist. Remainder dot to top edge otherwise a clean copy.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 232 pages. "Professor DeNora's achievement in placing Beethoven, and the reception of Beethoven's music, in social context is all the more impressive because it goes so much against the grain of conventional habits of thought. In illuminating how changing social institutions created opportunities for Beethoven to gain contemporary and posthumous recognition, and, in so doing, created new forms for thinking and talking about musical achievement-the author at once provides fresh insights into the institutional origins of 'classical' music and offers an exemplary contribution to the sociological study of the arts." Clean copy.

Hardcover. Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1st, May 30, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 271 pages, several b&w photographs and illustrations. Small stain on bottom edge. Else a very clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. New York , Belwin Mills Publishing , 1st U.S., 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 260 pages. Black cloth cover, very little wear. Dust jacket is worn on edges and corners. Many b&w photographs, and reproductions of documents, throughout.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 375 pages. B&W photographs and illustrations. Pictorial dust jacket. Green cloth with gilt title to spine. Erratum laid-in. Overall, a clean, tight copy. ohn Betjeman was by far the most popular poet of the twentieth century; his collected poems sold more than two million copies. As poet laureate of England, he became a national icon, but behind the public man were doubts and demons. The poet best known for writing hymns of praise to athletic middle-class girls on the tennis courts led a tempestuous emotional life. For much of his fifty-year marriage to Penelope Chetwode, the daughter of a field marshal, Betjeman had a relationship with Elizabeth Cavendish, the daughter of the Duke of Devonshire and lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret. Betjeman, a devout Anglican, was tormented by guilt about the storms this emotional triangle caused. Betjeman, published to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of the poet's birth, is the first to use fully the vast archive of personal material relating to his private life, including literally hundreds of letters written by his wife about their life together and apart. Here too are chronicled his many friendships, ranging from "Bosie" Douglas to the young satirists of Private Eye, from the Mitford sisters to the Crazy Gang. This is a celebration of a much-loved poet, a brave campaigner for architecture at risk, and a highly popular public performer. Betjeman was the classic example of the melancholy clown, whose sadness found its perfect mood music in the hymns of a poignant Anglicanism. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 479 pages, b&w illustrations. A comprehensive biography of one of the century's premier musicians focuses on his accomplishments as a composer rather than his popularity as a bandleader.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 390 pages, b&w illustrations. Growing up in Greenwich Village, Sean Wilentz discov-ered the music of Bob Dylan as a young teenager; almost half a century later, he revisits Dylan's work with the skills of an eminent American historian as well as the passion of a fan. Drawn in part from Wilentz's essays as "historian in residence" of Dylan's official website, Bob Dylan in America is a unique blend of fact, interpretation, and affinity--a book that, much like its subject, shifts gears and changes shape as the occasion warrants. Beginning with his explosion onto the scene in 1961, this book follows Dylan as he continues to develop a body of musical and literary work unique in our cultural history. Wilentz's approach places Dylan's music in the context of its time, including the early influences of Popular Front ideology and Beat aesthetics, and offers a larger critical appreciation of Dylan as both a song-writer and performer down to the present. Remainder dot on bottom edge otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York , E. P. Dutton, 2nd Printing, 1943, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 428 pages, illustrated by the author. Scarce in this edition. Dark gray cloth with gilt titles, no dust jacket. Light fade to spine, else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 487 pages. First full-length biography of Walter in English. Black boards, gray cloth spine with silver titles, illustrated dust jacket, 32 pages of b&w photographic plates on glossy paper. Slight rubbing to dust jacket, clean boards, pages crisp and unmarked; a very clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1st pbk, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 376 pages, b&w illustrations. The personal history of Barney Josephson, proprietor of the legendary interracial New York City night clubs Cafe Society Downtown and Cafe Society Uptown and their successor, The Cookery. Famously known as 'the wrong place for the Right people', Cafe Society featured the cream of jazz and blues performers--among whom were Billie Holiday, Big Joe Turner, Lester Young, Buck Clayton, Big Sid Catlett, and Mary Lou Williams--as well as comedy stars Imogene Coca, Zero Mostel, and Jack Gilford, the boogie-woogie pianists, and legendary gospel and folk artists. Spanning half a century from the 1930s to the 1980s, Josephson's narrative depicts both the business and the artistic sides of Cafe Society while exposing the tensions between the club's own progressive interracial openness and the more restrictive social and political climate in which it evolved. Publisher's stamp on bottom edge otherwise clean.

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. NY, Hachette, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 415 pages, b&w illustrations. In Chuck Berry, biographer RJ Smith crafts a comprehensive portrait of one of the great American entertainers, guitarists, and lyricists of the 20th century, bringing Chuck Berry to life in vivid detail. Based on interviews, archival research, legal documents, and a deep understanding of Berry's St. Louis (his birthplace, and the place where he died in March 2017), Smith sheds new light on a man few have ever really understood. By placing his life within the context of the American culture he made and eventually withdrew from, we understand how Berry became such a groundbreaking figure in music, erasing racial boundaries, crafting subtle political commentary, and paying a great price for his success. While celebrating his accomplishments, the book also does not shy away from troubling aspects of his public and private life, asking profound questions about how and why we separate the art from the artist. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Harmony Books, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 346 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy. Black and white pictures throughout.

Hardcover. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1st US, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 423 pages, SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Very clean and tight copy. With "humanism, generosity, and a passionate, beating heart" (The Times, London), Janice Galloway's Clara reignites, from between the lines of history, the great love of Robert and Clara Schumann. In her lifetime, Clara was a celebrated concert pianist and composer, editor and teacher, friend of Brahms -- as well as mother of the eight Schumann children and caretaker of her husband through a series of crippling mental illnesses. In its luminous integrity the novel brings Clara Schumann to life as a woman of genius. Galloway is at once a meticulous researcher of her subjects' remarkable and highly dramatic artistic careers and a virtuoso storyteller whose imagination and empathy lead her to that place off limits to history and biography -- inside the human mind. Distilling the memories, poetry, and musical notes therein, she examines the ways artists divine patterns out of life's chaos. "Passion," writes Galloway of Clara's performance philosophy, "one might take for granted -- its control is the mechanism through which all else flows." Though music may have bent to Clara's will, love served her far more tragically. Dismissing the cliches of Great Art and rejecting the romantic conflation of Madness and Creativity, Clara boldly ventures that in a life marred by alienation and isolation, "Work alone endures."