Bob Fosse (19271987), the director and choreographer of Chicago and Sweet Charity, has never been more popular than he is right now. Here is the less-publicized side of his story-his surprising ascent from the world of sleazy Chicago strip joints to the glitter of Broadway. A legend's memory is preserved in this eloquent biography.

The authoritative and endlessly revealing biography of renowned dancer, choreographer, screenwriter, and director Bob Fosse, written by a bestselling pop culture historian.

The most highly-acclaimed jazz theory book ever published! Over 500 pages of comprehensive, but easy to understand text covering every aspect of how jazz is constructed---chord construction, II-V-I progressions, scale theory, chord/scale relationships, the blues, reharmonization, and much more. A required text in universities world-wide, translated into five languages, endorsed by Jamey Aebersold, James Moody, Dave Liebman, etc.

The Beautiful Music All Around Us presents the extraordinarily rich backstories of thirteen performances captured on Library of Congress field recordings between 1934 and 1942 in locations reaching from Southern Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta and the Great Plains. Including the children's play song "Shortenin' Bread," the fiddle tune "Bonaparte's Retreat," the blues "Another Man Done Gone," and the spiritual "Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down," these performances were recorded in kitchens and churches, on porches and in prisons, in hotel rooms and school auditoriums. Documented during the golden age of the Library of Congress recordings, they capture not only the words and tunes of traditional songs but also the sounds of life in which the performances were embedded: children laugh, neighbors comment, trucks pass by. Musician and researcher Stephen Wade sought out the performers on these recordings, their families, fellow musicians, and others who remembered them. He reconstructs the sights and sounds of the recording sessions themselves and how the music worked in all their lives. Some of these performers developed musical reputations beyond these field recordings, but for many, these tracks represent their only appearances on record: prisoners at the Arkansas State Penitentiary jumping on "the Library's recording machine" in a rendering of "Rock Island Line"; Ora Dell Graham being called away from the schoolyard to sing the jump-rope rhyme "Pullin' the Skiff"; Luther Strong shaking off a hungover night in jail and borrowing a fiddle to rip into "Glory in the Meetinghouse." Alongside loving and expert profiles of these performers and their locales and communities, Wade also untangles the histories of these iconic songs and tunes, tracing them through slave songs and spirituals, British and homegrown ballads, fiddle contests, gospel quartets, and labor laments. By exploring how these singers and instrumentalists exerted their own creativity on inherited forms, "amplifying tradition's gifts," Wade shows how a single artist can make a difference within a democracy. Reflecting decades of research and detective work, the profiles and abundant photos in The Beautiful Music All Around Us bring to life largely unheralded individuals--domestics, farm laborers, state prisoners, schoolchildren, cowboys, housewives and mothers, loggers and miners--whose music has become part of the wider American musical soundscape. The hardcover edition also includes an accompanying CD that presents these thirteen performances, songs and sounds of America in the 1930s and '40s.

In 1975, the Broadway musical Chicago brought together a host of memes and myths, the gleefully subversive character of American musical comedy, the reckless glamour of the big-city newspaper, the mad decade of the 1920s, the work of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon. The tale of a young woman who murders her departing lover and then tricks the jury into letting her off, Chicago seemed too blunt and cynical at first. Everyone agreed it was show biz at its best, yet the public still preferred 'A Chorus Line', with its cast of innocents and sentimental feeling. Nevertheless, the 1996 Chicago revival is now the longest-running American musical in history, and the movie version won the Best Picture Oscar. As this text looks back at Chicago's various moving parts, we see how the American theatre serves as a kind of alternative news medium.

In this marvelous oral history, the words of such legends as Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, and Billy Holiday trace the birth, growth, and changes in jazz over the years.

From the hidden, smoky clubs of New York to the wild, sweltering streets of New Orleans, jazz broke all the rules--and some of its followers broke all the laws. This anthology of all-new stories includes mysteries by Michael Connelly, Peter Robinson, Max Allan Collins, and Ed Gorman. Original.

Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Boomtown Chicago, 1920s—a world of gangsters, musicians, and clubs. Young Benny Lehrman, born into a Jewish hat-making family, is expected to take over his father’s business, but his true passion is piano—especially jazz. After dark, he sneaks down to the South Side to hear the bands play. One night he is asked to sit in with a group. His playing is first-rate. The trumpeter, a black man named Napoleon, becomes Benny’s friend and musical collaborator. They are asked to play at a saloon Napoleon has christened The Jazz Palace. But Napoleon’s main gig is at a mob establishment, which doesn’t take kindly to their musicians freelancing . As Benny and Napoleon navigate the highs and the lows of the Jazz Age, a bond is forged between them that is as memorable as it is lasting. Morris brilliantly captures the dynamic atmosphere and dazzling music of an exceptional era.

One of the Best Books of the Year: NPR, GQ, Billboard, JazzTimes In jazz parlance, “playing changes” refers to an improviser’s resourceful path through a chord progression. In this definitive guide to the jazz of our time, leading critic Nate Chinen boldly expands on that idea, taking us through the key changes, concepts, events, and people that have shaped jazz since the turn of the century—from Wayne Shorter and Henry Threadgill to Kamasi Washington and Esperanza Spalding; from the phrase “America’s classical music” to an explosion of new ideas and approaches; from claims of jazz’s demise to the living, breathing scene that exerts influence on mass culture, hip-hop, and R&B. Grounded in authority and brimming with style, packed with essential album lists and listening recommendations, Playing Changes takes the measure of this exhilarating moment—and the shimmering possibilities to come.

It's been called America's classical music. The infinite art. The heart and soul of all popular music. But whatever the label, jazz has played an immense cultural role worldwide, opening up vast vistas of musical creativity, generating unforgettable performances, and giving us such iconic artists as Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington. Jazz: The First Century marks the passage of the music's first hundred years by bringing together text and art in a rich, illustrated chronicle that opens up the vibrant world of jazz to everyone. Jazz: The First Century is edited by John Edward Hasse, Curator of American Music at the Smithsonian Institution, leading a writing team of today's finest and most widely respected jazz authorities. Their compelling essays are complemented by an engrossing and sophisticated design packed with more than 300 images, including vintage photographs, sheet music covers, rare album jackets, posters, and more. From the beginning, jazz offered a new kind of musical expression perfectly suited to the innovation and rapid pace of life in the twentieth century. Jazz: The First Century vividly illuminates the circumstances of the music's birth, examines the contributions of its most consequential musicians, and brings to life its many pleasures, from the emotionalism of early blues and the infectious syncopation of ragtime to the exhilaration of 1930s big-band swing and the awesome musical flights of bebop-from the understated sophistication of cool jazz and the boundless expressiveness of free improvisation to the electrifying power of fusion and the potent grooves of jazz-rap and hip-hop. In addition, seventy concise sidebars focus on important songs, key landmarks and personalities, and conventions of jazz performance and composition. They also examine the confluence of jazz with radio and television and with such art forms as film, painting, literature, poetry, classical music, and dance. Here also are hundreds of recommended recordings-selections based on opinions gathered in an international survey of historians, educators, critics, musicians, and broadcasters. For newcomers and aficionados alike, Jazz: The First Century offers a wealth of enlightening information. It's an essential and comprehensive overview of the music Tony Bennett calls "Amrica's greatest contribution to the world...a celebration of life itself."