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.
Softcover. NY, Stein and Day, 2nd pr., 1974, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, laminated card wraps, 112 pages, b&w illustrations. Ex-library copy with light stamping and bookplate on inside front cover. On the African influences on blues and jazz.
Softcover. NY, Vintage Books, reprint, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pictorial wrappers, 264 pages, b&w illustrations. In this classic work of American music writing, renowned critic Albert Murray argues beautifully and authoritatively that the blues as such are synonymous with low spirits. Not only is its express purpose to make people feel good, which is to say in high spirits, but in the process of doing so it is actually expected to generate a disposition that is both elegantly playful and heroic in its nonchalance. In Stomping the Blues Murray explores its history, influences, development, and meaning as only he can. More than two hundred vintage photographs capture the ambiance Murray evokes in lyrical prose. Only the sounds are missing from this lyrical, sensual tribute to the blues. Originally published in 1976. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean with mild shelf wear.
Hardcover. Somerville MA, Candlewick, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 456 pages, SIGNED BY AUTHOR on the title page. In September 1941, Adolf Hitlers Wehrmacht surrounded Leningrad in what was to become one of the longest and most destructive sieges in Western history-almost three years of bombardment and starvation. Trapped between the Nazi invading force and the Soviet government itself was composer Dmitri Shostakovich, writing a symphony to rouse, rally, eulogize, and commemorate his fellow citizens: the Leningrad Symphony. This is the true story of a city under siege, the triumph of bravery and defiance in the face of terrifying odds. It is also a look at the power-and layered meaning-of music in beleaguered lives. Symphony for the City of the Dead is a masterwork thrillingly told and impeccably researched by National Book Award-winning author M. T. Anderson. Signed copy sticker on front cover, otherwise like new.
Hardcover. Germany, PPVMedien, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly worn dust jacket, 220 pages profusely illustrated in color. The story of Taylor Guitars from small San Diego company to a company producing over 70000 quality guitars a year. Showcases many rare guitars, including instruments made by Bob Taylor before the company's founding, standard production models and custom built instruments. 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. San Rafael CA, Insight Editions, 1st, 2014-10-14, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 296 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. James Joseph Marshall (1936 - 2010) was an American photographer, often of rock stars. He had extended access to numerous musicians through the 1960s and 1970s, including being backstage at The Beatles' final paid live concert in San Francisco's Candlestick Park, and was chief photographer at Woodstock. includes striking images of twentieth-century icons such as Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsburg, Grace Slick, and more.
Softcover. NY, Berkeley Boulevard Books, 1st thus, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 325 pages, b&w illustrations. Brimming with concert information, the histories of their songs, profiles of band members, tour highlights, Phish-filled anecdotes, articles by fans and editors, and more, this book is the ultimate guide to this popular band. Clean, bright copy. Like new.
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. 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.
Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 336 pages, b&w illustrations. Author Larry Hamberlin guides us through this large but oft-forgotten repertoire of operatic novelties, and brings to life the rich humor and keen social criticism of the era. In the early twentieth-century, when new social forces were undermining the view that our European heritage was intrinsically superior to our native vernacular culture, opera-that great inheritance from our European forebearers-functioned in popular discourse as a signifier for elite culture. Tin Pan Opera shows that these operatic novelty songs availed this connection to a humorous and critical end. Combining traditional, European operatic melodies with the new and American rhythmic verve of ragtime, these songs painted vivid images of immigrant Americans, liberated women, and upwardly striving African Americans, striking emblems of the profound transformations that shook the United States at the beginning of the American century. Clean copy.
Softcover. NY, Da Capo Press, reprint, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 245 pages, b&w photos. Sidney Bechet (1897-1959) was one of the most brilliant exponents of New Orleans jazz. A prodigy on the clarinet, he soloed with Bunk Johnson's orchestra at age eleven, was improvising cornet-clarinet duos with Buddy Petit at age fifteen. Leaving New Orleans in the 1920s, Bechet took his Creole sound and spirit to New York, where he adopted the soprano saxophone and soon developed the unique style that marked his special artistry.
Hardcover. Solana Beach, CA, Santa Monica Press LLC, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 336 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. A very clean, unmarked copy. Color and black & white photographs throughout.
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.
Hardcover. Milwaukee WI, Hal Leonard, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Oblong hardcover, 319 pages. Lavishly illustrated with over 700 faithful reproductions of sheet music covers in color. Pictorial boards, issued without a dust jacket.
Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 336 pages, 298 color and b&w photos. Buckland writes about the photographers, their influences, their relationships with their subjects, how they took the images, how they saw what they saw and captured what they captured: the spirit and essence of rock'. Superb collection including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley, Tina Turner, Madonna, Morrissey, Tupac Shakur, Grace Jones, Aretha Franklin, Kurt Cobain, Izzy Pop, David Bowie and many, many others.
Hardcover. NY, Ballantine Books , 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 368 pages illustrated in color. For thirty-five years, bestselling author and accomplished musician Jonathan Kellerman has been, as he puts it in his Introduction to this lavishly illustrated, endlessly fascinating volume, "chasing fabulous sound." The result of that quest is a world-class collection of guitars, mandolins, and other stringed instruments that number more than 120 . . . and counting. Whether writing about household names such as Fender, Gibson, Martin, and Dobro or about marques revered by aficionados-D'Angelico, Hauser, Stromberg, and Torres-Kellerman brings to bear the same sure storytelling instincts and keen attention to detail that characterize his bestselling fiction, making each entry a sparkling mini-essay as much to be savored as the sensual photographs that follow.
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.
 "The Haight: Love, Rock, and Revolutionby: Selvin, Joel and Jim Marshall")
 "The Story of Woodstock Live: 50 Years: Relive the Magic Artist by Artistby: Bitoun, Julien")
 "Visions of Music: Sheet Music in the Twentieth Century by: Walas, Tony")
