biography music

Hardcover. Lexington KY, University Press of Kentucky, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. An Armenian national raised in Russia, Rouben Mamoulian (1897--1987) studied in the influential Stanislavski studio, renowned as the source of the "method" acting technique. Shortly after immigrating to New York in 1926, he created a sensation with an all-black production of Porgy (1927). He then went on to direct the debut Broadway productions of three of the most popular shows in the history of American musical theater: Porgy and Bess (1935), Oklahoma! (1943), and Carousel (1945). Mamoulian began working in film just as the sound revolution was dramatically changing the technical capabilities of the medium, and he quickly established himself as an innovator. Not only did many of his unusual camera techniques become standard, but he also invented a device that eliminated the background noises created by cameras and dollies. Seen as a rebel earlier in his career, Mamoulian gradually gained respect in Hollywood, and the Directors Guild of America awarded him the prestigious D. W. Griffith Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1983. In this meticulously researched biography, David Luhrssen paints the influential director as a socially conscious artist who sought to successfully combine art and commercial entertainment. Luhrssen not only reveals the fascinating personal story of an important yet neglected figure, but he also offers a tantalizing glimpse into the extraordinarily vibrant American film and theater industries during the twenties, thirties, and forties.

Hardcover. New York, Gotham, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 453 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR. Illustrated endpages and flyleaves. Gilt titles on spine. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. Chicago, Chicago Review Press, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in bright, unclipped dust jacket. Maximum Volume offers a glimpse into the mind, the music, and the man behind the sound of the Beatles. The first book of two, Maximum Volume traces Martin's early years as a scratch pianist and his groundbreaking work as the head of Parlophone Records. It dramatically narrates the story of Martin's unlikely discovery of the Beatles and his painstaking efforts to prepare their newfangled sound for the British music marketplace. As the story unfolds, Martin and the band craft numerous number-one hits, progressing toward the landmark album Rubber Soul--all of which bear Martin's unmistakable musical signature.

Hardcover. New York, Viking Studio, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 175 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap, though part of shrink-wrap is slightly torn. A collection of photographs taken in Memphis brings to life the legends of blues, jazz, rock and roll, and soul, including W.C. Handy, B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Isaac Hayes, and others.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Panjandrum/Aris Books, 1st, April 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 251 pages plus index, b&w photographs. Light edge wear, rubbing to dust jacket. Else a clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Surrey UK, FAB Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 352 pages, b/w illustrations. The essential subterranean tract of 2005, Midnight Mavericks is a rollicking tour through the hearts and minds of today's most uncompromising artists from the lower depths of entertainment culture. Profiled are controversial underground icons, angry stand-up comedians, exploitation filmmakers, hardcore crime novelists and controversial cartoonists, including Abel Ferrara, John Waters, Andrew WK, Chris D, Mike Diana, Lydia Lunch and Jim Goad. Includes Sounds from the Underground, a bonus 70minute CD of interview excerpts and songs from the musicians featured in the book.

Hardcover. New Rochelle, Arlington House, 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 554 pages. Illustrated with black & white photographs. Moderate foxing to edges. An important reference book on this legend of the big band era. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. This is Brigit Brophy's original 1964 edition (she later revisited it in 1988) of her profoundly original and controversial psychoanalytic study of Mozart's five most famous operas. 328 pages, clean copy.

Softcover. San Diego, Harcourt Brace,, reprint, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 839 pages, contains two glossy black and white plates sections. This major work, the result of years of careful study and analysis, places Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's life and music in the context of the intellectual, political and artistic currents of eighteenth-century Europe. The result is a fresh interpretation of Mozart's genius, as Robert Gutman shows the great composer in a new light. With an informed and sensitive handling, Mozart emerges as an affectionate and generous man with family and friends, self-deprecating, witty, and winsome but also an austere moralist, incisive and purposeful. The major genres in which Mozart worked-chamber music, liturgical, theater and keyboard compositions, concertos, operas, symphonies, and oratorios-are unfolded to reveal a man of luminous intellect. Mozart is an extraordinary portrait of a man and his times and a brilliant distillation of musical thought.

Hardcover. Schirmer Reference, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 271 pages. The last decade of Mozart's short but amazingly prolific career counts as one of the most remarkable periods--truly golden years--in the history of Western music. Richly illustrated with contemporary paintings and engravings and authoritatively written, this book provides a vivid account of the composer's life in the European music capital, Vienna, from 1781 to 1791. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London , Jazz Book Club/ Andre Deutsch, reprint, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 242 pages, in a very good dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 970 pages illustrated with color, b&w illustrations. Barbra Streisand is by any account a living legend, a woman who in a career spanning six decades has excelled in every area of entertainment. She is among the handful of EGOT winners (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) and has one of the greatest and most recognizable voices in the history of popular music. She has been nominated for a Grammy 46 times, and with Yentl she became the first woman to write, produce, direct, and star in a major motion picture. In My Name Is Barbra, she tells her own story about her life and extraordinary career, from growing up in Brooklyn to her first star-making appearances in New York nightclubs to her breakout performance in Funny Girl on stage and winning the Oscar for that performance on film. Then came a long string of successes in every medium in the years that followed. The book is, like Barbra herself, frank, funny, opinionated, and charming. She recounts her early struggles to become an actress, eventually turning to singing to earn a living; the recording of some of her acclaimed albums; the years of effort involved in making Yentl; her direction of The Prince of Tides; her friendships with figures ranging from Marlon Brando to Madeleine Albright; her political advocacy; and the fulfillment she's found in her marriage to James Brolin. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, pbk proof, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 420 pages. Publishers uncorrected proof with flyer promoting the title laid in. The first major biography of the great jazz pianist and singer, written with the full cooperation of his family. When he died in 1965, at age forty-five, Nat King Cole was already a musical legend. As famous as Frank Sinatra, he had sold more records than anyone but Bing Crosby. Written with the narrative pacing of a novel, this absorbing biography traces Cole's rise to fame, from boy-wonder jazz genius to megastar in a racist society. Daniel Mark Epstein brings Cole and his times to vivid life: his precocious entrance onto the vibrant jazz scene of his hometown, Chicago; the creation of his trio and their rise to fame; the crossover success of such songs as "Straighten Up and Fly Right"; and his years as a pop singer and television star, the first African American to have his own show.Epstein examines Cole's insistence on changing society through his art rather than political activism, the romantic love story of Cole and Maria Ellington, and Cole's famous and influential image of calm, poise, and elegance, which concealed the personal turmoil and anxiety that undermined his health.

Hardcover. London, MQ Publications, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 383 pages. "Aline Kominsky Crumb was one of the pioneers of women's comics, a genre that emerged in California in the sixties & seventies. She became well known during that period for her autobiographical work, influencing many comic book artists after her. Need More Love draws on her remarkable body of comic strips over the past four decades, many featuring her self-effacing character Bunch. Need More Love is a unique blend of comics, art, photographs & memorabilia, & portrays the movers & shakers (and the jerks) of the art & music worlds from the sixties to the present. Aline promises the reader: "I am packing this book with sordid details from my real life. I don't have to make up anything! You'll get fabulous adventures, sex, humor and advice on behavior, lifestyle & aesthetic judgment."

Hardcover. NY, The Open Field, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Born in Cold War Czechoslovakia, Paulina Porizkova rose to prominence as a model, appearing on her first Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover in 1984. As the face of Estee Lauder in 1989, she was one of the highest-paid models in the world. When she was cast in the music video for the song "Drive" by The Cars, it was love at first sight for her and frontman Ric Ocasek. He was forty at the time, and Porizkova was nineteen. The decades to come would bring marriage, motherhood, a budding writing career; and later sadness, loneliness, isolation, and eventually divorce. Following her ex-husband's death--and the revelation of a deep betrayal--Porizkova stunned fans with her fierce vulnerability and disarming honesty as she let the whole world share in her experience of being a woman who must start over. Remainder dot to bottom edge otherwise like new,

Softcover. Lafayette, LA, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 224 pages, color illustrations. Over its three decades, this festival, since 1977 the music component of Lafayettes Festivals Acadiens, has been a proving ground for an evolution. Older masters, such as Dennis McGee, Nathan Abshire, Clifton Chenier, Bois-Sec Ardoin, Canray Fontenot, and Dewey Balfa himself, have passed on, but not without handing off the baton to younger musicians, from Michael Doucet and Zachary Richard to Wayne Toups and Steve Riley to Chris Stafford and Wilson Savoy. These subsequent generations continue to revitalize old songs and create new ones within the traditional context. This book tells the inside story of this experiment in cultural self-preservation, taking the reader onstage, backstage, and into the crowd with schedules, commentary, and photographs from each year, exposing the cultural mission of festival organizers. Mild shelf wear. SIGNED BY ALL FOUR AUTHORS AND INSCRIBED BY TWO on the front fly leaf.

Hardcover. London, Reaktion Books, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, b&w photos. Ornette Coleman's career encompassed the glory years of jazz and the American avant-garde. Born in segregated Fort Worth, Texas, during the Great Depression, the African-American composer and musician was zeitgeist incarnate. Steeped in the Texas blues tradition, he and jazz grew up together, as the brassy blare of big band swing gave way to bebop--a faster music for a faster, postwar world. At the luminous dawn of the Space Age and New York's 1960s counterculture, Coleman gave voice to the moment. Lauded by some, maligned by many, he forged a breakaway art sometimes called "the new thing" or "free jazz." Featuring previously unpublished photographs of Coleman and his contemporaries, this book tells the compelling story of one of America's most adventurous musicians and the sound of a changing world. Clean copy.

Hardcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 492 pages, b&w photos. In a lightly worn dust jacket, clean copy. Otto Klemperer was one of the great conductors of the century, best known in the last years of his life for his performances and recordings of the classical symphonic repertory from Mozart to Mahler. Volume 1 only.

Hardcover. New York, Harper & Row, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 217 pages. Hardcover with price-clipped dust jacket. Clean, tight copy. Scarce biography of Robeson by Hamilton, a noted African-American children's book author.

NY, Knopf, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Passionate and enormously talented, Paul Robeson lived one of the great lives of the twentieth century. Martin Duberman's classic biography is a monumental and powerfully affecting portrait of one of this century's most notable performers, political radicals, and champions of racial equality. Drawing on a vast archive of family papers and interviews with friends and relatives as well as FBI files, Paul Robeson charts the heroic and tragic course of Robeson's life: from his early days as the son of a former slave to his rise to unprecedented international acclaim as a stage actor and singer, and from his political awakening to his downfall as a victim of McCarthyism and the efforts of the U.S. government to destroy him. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York , W. W. Norton, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 237 pages. Numerous b&w illustrations, including portrait frontispiece, 14 color plates. Thomas Eakins, a native of Philadelphia, painted two worlds: one sure of its values - the surgeons, inventors, musicians and athletes of his time - and another that reflected his own struggles with depression and sexual identity. This book presents an account of Eakins' struggles, his genius, and the evocative melancholy of his portraits.

Hardcover. New York, W. W. Norton, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 237 pages, b&w illustrations, 16 color plates. A very clean, tight copy. Thomas Eakins, a native of Philadelphia, painted two worlds: one sure of its valuesthe surgeons, inventors, musicians, and athletes of his timeand another that reflected his own struggles with depression and sexual identity. In this evenhanded account of those struggles, William S. McFeely sheds new light on Eakins's genius and on the evocative melancholy of his portraits, particularly of women, which include many of his remarkable wife, Susan McDowell Eakins. Those deeply perceptive paintings may be the greatest expressions of his art.

Hardcover. New York , W. W. Norton, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 237 pages. Numerous B&W illustrations, including portrait frontispiece, 14 color plates. Thomas Eakins, a native of Philadelphia, painted two worlds: one sure of its values - the surgeons, inventors, musicians and athletes of his time - and another that reflected his own struggles with depression and sexual identity. This book presents an account of Eakins' struggles, his genius, and the evocative melancholy of his portraits.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Alongside more than 172 of his drawings, cartoons, and caricatures--and in prose as spirited and wickedly pointed as his artwork--Edward Sorel gives us an unforgettable self-portrait: his poor Depression-era childhood in the Bronx (surrounded by loving Romanian immigrant grandparents and a clan of mostly left-leaning aunts and uncles); his first stabs at drawing when pneumonia kept him out of school at age eight; his time as a student at New York's famed High School of Music and Art; the scrappy early days of Push Pin Studios, founded with fellow Cooper Union alums Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast, which became the hottest design group of the 1960s; his two marriages and four children; and his many friends in New York's art and literary circles.