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.
Hardcover. New York, Gallery Books, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 400 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. Iconic music and film legend Grace Jones gives an in-depth account of her stellar career, professional and personal life, and the signature look that catapulted her into the stardom stratosphere.
Hardcover. New York, Stringer & Townsend, 1st, 1851, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with gilt lettering, 226 pages. Previous owners bookplate on inside front cover. Some pages show minor foxing. Light rubbing to corners and at top and base of spine. Clean, unmarked text.
Softcover. Authors Choice Press, reprint, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, b&w illustrations, 216 pages. Originally published in 1973 and covers the early and essential years of her life and career. The story of a shy girl from Mississippi who became a world opra star told in a sympathetic light.
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. 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, HarperCollins Publishers, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 242 pages. Hardcover. INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR. Gilt title on spine. Color illustrations throughout. From the front flap: "In Red, Sammy tells the outrageous story of his tear through rock 'n' roll, detailing the backstage antics and nonstop touring hat have made his voice instantly recognizable. Beginning with his musical coming-of-age in blue-collar towns of California, Sammy traces his rough and determined rise to fame, working harder than anyone else out there and writing songs about the things he loved--fast cars, loud parties, and lots of good times."
Softcover. NY, Da Capo Press, reprint, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 301 pages, b&w photos. Sarah Vaughan possessed the most spectacular voice in jazz history. In Sassy, Leslie Gourse, the acclaimed biographer of Nat King Cole and Joe Williams, defines and celebrates Vaughan's vital musical legacy and offers a detailed portrait of the woman as well as the singer. Revealed here is "The Divine One" as only her closest friends and musical associates knew her. By her early twenties Sarah Vaughan was singining with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Billy Eckstine, helping them invent bebop. For forty-five years thereafter, she reigned supreme in both pop and jazz, with several million-selling hits (among them "Broken Hearted Melody," "Make Yourself Comfortable," and "Misty"). But life offstage was never smooth for Sarah Vaughan. Her voluptuous voice was matched by her exuberant appetite for excess: three failed marriages, financial difficulties through many changes in management, late-night jam sessions, liquor, and cocaine. Remainder line on bottom edge, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. NY, Scribner, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This intimate, revealing portrait of Frank Sinatra--from the man closest to the famous singer during the last decade of his life--features never-before-seen photos and new revelations about some of the most famous people of the past fifty years, including Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Sam Giancana, Madonna, and Bono.
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.
Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1st, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 612 pages, b&w photos. Excellent copy in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The memoir chronicles Davis Jr.'s rise to fame, overcoming the obstacles of racism and the loss of one eye, and ends shortly after his marriage to Swedish-born actress May Britt and the birth of their daughter Tracey.
 "Jazz Cleopatra - Josephine Baker in Her Timeby: Rose, Phyllis")
){kind=link}
){kind=link}