Offers a fresh, inclusive, at times provocative way of listening to country music--one that champions innovation and tradition even as it challenges many of the genre's prevailing assumptions.

(Guitar Chord Songbook). A compact collection of chords and lyrics for 80 country standards, including: Abilene * Always on My Mind * Amazed * Blue * Blue Bayou * Boot Scootin' Boogie * Breathe * Chains * Could I Have This Dance * Crazy * Elvira * Folsom Prison Blues * Friends in Low Places * He Stopped Loving Her Today * Hey, Good Lookin' * I Feel Lucky * I Hope You Dance * Jambalaya (On the Bayou) * Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys * Okie from Muskogee * Ring of Fire * Rocky Top * Sixteen Tons * You Are My Sunshine * Your Cheatin' Heart * and more.

In Lockhart, Texas, a rural working-class town just south of Austin, country music is a way of life. Conversation slips easily into song, and the songs are full of conversation. Anthropologist and musician Aaron A. Fox spent years in Lockhart making research notes, music, and friends. In Real Country, he provides an intimate, in-depth ethnography of the community and its music. Showing that country music is deeply embedded in the textures of working-class life, Fox argues that it is the cultural and intellectual property of working-class people and not only of the Nashville-based music industry or the stars whose lives figure so prominently in popular and scholarly writing about the genre. Fox spent hundreds of hours observing, recording, and participating in talk and music-making in homes, beer joints, and garage jam sessions. He renders the everyday life of Lockhart’s working-class community in detail, right down to the ice cold beer, the battered guitars, and the technical skills of such local musical legends as Randy Meyer and Larry “Hoppy” Hopkins. Throughout, Fox focuses on the human voice. His analyses of conversations, interviews, songs, and vocal techniques show how feeling and experience are expressed, and how local understandings of place, memory, musical aesthetics, working-class social history, race, and gender are shared. In Real Country, working-class Texans re-imagine their past and give voice to the struggles and satisfactions of their lives in the present through music.

(Guitar Collection). 30 all-time country favorites arranged for fingerpicking and flatpicking guitar: Always on My Mind * Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain * Born to Lose * Crazy * Folsom Prison Blues * I Walk the Line * If You've Got the Money (I've Got the Time) * King of the Road * Mama Tried * Rocky Top * Your Cheatin' Heart * and more. Includes the stories behind these timeless standards.

Contained in this book are the lyrics to over 200 of the greatest songs of the 80's. Contents are an easy layout containing the Artist and their songs for easy searching. Grab a copy and I guarantee it will bring back the memories.

(Book). This entertaining book presents the U.S. and U.K. Top 20 charts side by side, month by month showing how rock and pop developed on each side of the Atlantic. Fully updated, it lists the hits from 1954 through 2003. Alongside every song listing, readers will find important facts such as the artist's name and nationality, current and previous month's chart position, record label, weeks on the chart, and simultaneous position on the other side of the pond. Includes an alphabetical listing of song titles with artists, and an alphabetical listing of artists with song titles and chart-entry dates, enabling easy cross-referencing to help you track down any Top 20 record since 1954.

The interviews included in this fascinating collection of discussions with popular songwriters focus on the craft itself—and as such, they are of interest to both music fans and to budding songwriters. What inspires songwriters? Where do their songs come from? What is their process? What do they do when they get stuck? In this book, readers will hear from a vast range of well-known, successful songwriters, many of them performers as well, revealing the nuances of their skill: how they write their songs, from conception to finished work. The book discusses both song history and style. The songs discussed have defined eras and culture. Full of trivia, wisdom, and fascinating revelations from such figures as Tori Amos, Burt Bacharach, David Bowie, Sarah McLachlan, Billy Joel, and John Mayer, In Their Own Words shines a light on what is often and inherently lonely craft. It gives readers a glimpse into a mysterious process and offes rising songwriters a wealth of advice from those who have spent decades successfully sharing their work with the public.

This intimate biography of the pioneering Texas governor is “required reading for political junkies—and for women considering a life in politics” (Booklist). When Ann Richards delivered the keynote of the 1988 Democratic National Convention and mocked President Bush—“Poor George, he can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth”—she became an instant celebrity and triggered a rivalry that would alter the course of history. In 1990, she won the governorship of Texas, becoming the first ardent feminist elected to high office in America. Richards opened pathways for greater diversity in public service, and her achievements created a legacy that transcends her tenure in office. In Let the People In, Jan Reid offers an intimate portrait of Ann Richards’s remarkable rise to power as a liberal Democrat in a deeply conservative state. Reid draws on his long friendship with Richards, as well as interviews with family, personal correspondence, and extensive research to tell the story of Richards’s life, from her youth in Waco, through marriage and motherhood, her struggle with alcoholism, and her shocking encounters with Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter. Reid shares the inside story of Richards’s rise from county office to the governorship, as well as her score-settling loss of the governorship to George W. Bush. Reid also describes Richards’s final years as a mentor to a new generation of public servants, including Hillary Clinton.

(Fake Book). The latest edition of this fake book is truly the Best Ever! It contains more than 1,000 huge hits, and icludes the melody lines, lyrics and chords for: Against All Odds * Amazed * At the Hop * Autumn Leaves * The Birth of the Blues * Bohemian Rhapsody * Cabaret * California Girls * Candle in the Wind * Centerfold * Chariots of Fire * Colors of the Wind * Crazy * Dust in the Wind * Earth Angel * Eleanor Rigby * Fever * Fire and Rain * From a Distance * Hello, Dolly! * Hey Jude * I Am Woman * Imagine * Joy to the World * Kansas City * The Keeper of the Stars * La Bamba * Lady in Red * Linus and Lucy * Longer * Me and Bobby McGee * Mickey Mouse March * Misty * More * More Than Words * Oye Como Va * Peggy Sue * The Rainbow Connection * Respect * Route 66 * Shout * Spanish Eyes * Stormy Weather * Take Five * Thriller * Time in a Bottle * Unchained Melody * Wave * The Way We Were * Y.M.C.A. * You've Got a Friend * and hundreds more!

A well-known radio personality surveys popular-music history from 1955 to 1976, calling attention to leading artists and their greatest hits and including annual charts of the top fifty songs.