(Guitar Educational). A comprehensive source designed to help guitarists develop both lead and rhythm playing. Covers: Texas, Delta, R&B, early rock and roll, gospel, blues/rock and more. Includes 21 complete solos; chord progressions and riffs; turnarounds; moveable scales and more. The audio features leads and full band backing.

This little book transcends geographical, social, and economic boundaries to search the heart and soul of the blues, looking for rules to live by, hope for the downtrodden, cautionary tales for the good times, and truths that "hurt so good". Sometimes, you just gotta be blue. But, as this book goes to show, that's okay--because you're never alone.

With her smart and playful writing, debut author Metra Farrari cleverly blends chick-lit with a dash of Greek mythology—the product a winning combination of smart-alecky wit, dreamy escapism, and a quirky yet lovable heroine. Ryan Bell is your typical millennial: surviving on a diet of wine and Netflix, woefully single enough to qualify for cat-lady membership, and renting from a seventy-something Tinder-swiping landlord-turned-bestie. But underneath her chipped-off manicure lies a green thumb that has created miraculous flowers capable of saving mankind from cataclysmic climate change. There's one problem: Only Ryan can grow them. An unusual audience comes to an unorthodox conclusion: Ryan is the heir of the Greek god Artemis. Although Ryan thinks these strange, toga-wearing folks are one kalamata olive short of a Greek salad, she reluctantly enters a hidden world where the Olympians are real and magic flows freely (plus a generous serving of Greek hunks). Talk about one epic identity crisis. Magical demigod or not, the fate of civilization—both mortal and godly—now rests on Ryan's shoulders.

Jazz, Rags & Blues, Book 1 contains original solos for late elementary to early intermediate-level pianists that reflect the various styles of the jazz idiom. An excellent way to introduce your students to this distinctive American contribution to 20th century music.

Charts the history of the blues from its rural roots in the American South, focusing on the key musicians and singers who brought it recognition worldwide.

Blues Book of the Year —Living Blues Association of Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence Best Historical Research in Recorded Blues, Gospel, Soul, or R&B–Certificate of Merit (2018) 2023 Blues Hall of Fame Inductee - Classic of Blues Literature category With this volume, Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff complete their groundbreaking trilogy on the development of African American popular music. Fortified by decades of research, the authors bring to life the performers, entrepreneurs, critics, venues, and institutions that were most crucial to the emergence of the blues in black southern vaudeville theaters; the shadowy prehistory and early development of the blues is illuminated, detailed, and given substance. At the end of the nineteenth century, vaudeville began to replace minstrelsy as America’s favorite form of stage entertainment. Segregation necessitated the creation of discrete African American vaudeville theaters. When these venues first gained popularity, ragtime coon songs were the standard fare. Insular black southern theaters provided a safe haven, where coon songs underwent rehabilitation and blues songs suitable for the professional stage were formulated. The process was energized by dynamic interaction between the performers and their racially-exclusive audience. The first blues star of black vaudeville was Butler “String Beans” May, a blackface comedian from Montgomery, Alabama. Before his bizarre, senseless death in 1917, String Beans was recognized as the “blues master piano player of the world.” His musical legacy, elusive and previously unacknowledged, is preserved in the repertoire of country blues singer-guitarists and pianists of the race recording era. While male blues singers remained tethered to the role of blackface comedian, female “coon shouters” acquired a more dignified aura in the emergent persona of the “blues queen.” Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and most of their contemporaries came through this portal; while others, such as forgotten blues heroine Ora Criswell and her protégé Trixie Smith, ingeniously reconfigured the blackface mask for their own subversive purposes. In 1921 black vaudeville activity was effectively nationalized by the Theater Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A.). In collaboration with the emergent race record industry, T.O.B.A. theaters featured touring companies headed by blues queens with records to sell. By this time the blues had moved beyond the confines of entertainment for an exclusively black audience. Small-time black vaudeville became something it had never been before—a gateway to big-time white vaudeville circuits, burlesque wheels, and fancy metropolitan cabarets. While the 1920s was the most glamorous and remunerative period of vaudeville blues, the prior decade was arguably even more creative, having witnessed the emergence, popularization, and early development of the original blues on the African American vaudeville stage.

The Essence of the Blues by Jim Snidero provides beginners and moderately advanced musicians with an introduction to the language of the blues. In 10 etudes focusing on various types of the blues, the musician learns to master the essential basics step by step. Each piece comes with an in-depth analysis of blues styles and music theory, appropriate scale exercises, tips for studying and practicing, suggestions for improvising, recommended listening, and specific techniques used by some of the all-time best jazz/blues musicians, including Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, B.B. King, Stanley Turrentine, and others. The accompanying play-along CD features world famous New York recording artists including Eric Alexander, Jeremy Pelt, Jim Snidero, Steve Davis, Mike LeDonne, Peter Washington, and others. Recorded at a world-class studio, these play alongs are deeply authentic, giving the musician a real-life playing experience to learn and enjoy the blues.

How do you love and not like the same thing at the same time? This was the riddle that met Mississippi writer B. Brian Foster when he returned to his home state to learn about Black culture and found himself hearing about the blues. One moment, Black Mississippians would say they knew and appreciated the blues. The next, they would say they didn't like it. For five years, Foster listened and asked: "How?" "Why not?" "Will it ever change?" This is the story of the answers to his questions. In this illuminating work, Foster takes us where not many blues writers and scholars have gone: into the homes, memories, speculative visions, and lifeworlds of Black folks in contemporary Mississippi to hear what they have to say about the blues and all that has come about since their forebears first sang them. In so doing, Foster urges us to think differently about race, place, and community development and models a different way of hearing the sounds of Black life, a method that he calls listening for the backbeat.

"... Ahmad has created a novel that looks at race and culture and the changing face of America. It's a story that's easy to devour but hard to forget... " - Richmond Times-DispatchRanjit Singh, a former Indian Army Captain trying to escape a shameful past, lives with his family among the migrant workers of Martha's Vineyard, working as a caretaker of the vacation homes of the rich and powerful. Needing a place to stay, Ranjit moves his family into an empty Senator's home. Happily, but illegally ensconced in the house, he tries to forget his brief affair with Anna, the wife of an African-American senator, and focus on providing for his family. But one night, their idyll is shattered when mysterious armed men break into the house, looking for an antique porcelain doll. Forced to flee, Ranjit is pursued and hunted by unknown forces, and becomes drawn into the Senator's shadowy world. To save his family and solve the mystery of the doll, he must join forces with Anna, who has her own dark secrets. As the past and present collide, Ranjit must finally confront the hidden event that destroyed his Army career and forced him to leave India.Tightly plotted, action-packed, smart and surprisingly moving, The Caretaker takes us from the desperate world of migrant workers to the elite African-American community of Martha's Vineyard, and a secret high-altitude war between India and Pakistan.

Hailed as an “American counter-culture classic,” this “funny” and candid musical memoir offers a delicious glimpse into the 1930s jazz scene (The Wall Street Journal) Mezz Mezzrow was a boy from Chicago who learned to play the sax in reform school and pursued a life in music and a life of crime. He moved from Chicago to New Orleans to New York, working in brothels and bars, bootlegging, dealing drugs, getting hooked, doing time, producing records, and playing with the greats, among them Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, and Fats Waller. Really the Blues—the jive-talking memoir that Mezzrow wrote at the insistence of, and with the help of, the novelist Bernard Wolfe—is the story of an unusual and unusually American life, and a portrait of a man who moved freely across racial boundaries when few could or did, “the odyssey of an individualist . . . the saga of a guy who wanted to make friends in a jungle where everyone was too busy making money.”