Discover the living legacy of Chicago Blues in this guide to the iconic clubs and musicians who made—and keep making—music history. During the Great Migration, African Americans left Mississippi for Chicago, and they brought their music traditions with them. The music took root in the city and developed its own distinctive sound. Today, Chicago Blues is heard all over the world, but there’s no better place to experience it than in the city where it was born. In Exploring Chicago Blues, Chicago music writer Rosalind Cummings-Yeates takes you inside historic blues clubs like the Checkerboard Lounge and Gerri's Palm Tavern, where folks like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon and Ma Rainey transformed Chicago into the blues mecca. She then takes you on an insider’s tour of the contemporary blues scene, introducing the best spots to hear the purest sounds of Sweet Home Chicago.

"A fresh new perspective that will be a true revolution to readers and will open new lines of discussion on . . . the importance of the city of New Orleans for generations to come." —Dr. Michael White, jazz clarinetist, composer, and Keller Endowed Chair at Xavier University of LA An untold authentic counter-narrative blues history and the first written by an African American blues artist All prior histories on the blues have alleged it originated on plantations in the Mississippi Delta. Not true, says author Chris Thomas King. In The Blues, King present facts to disprove such myths. This book is the first to argue the blues began as a cosmopolitan art form, not a rural one. As early as 1900, the sound of the blues was ubiquitous in New Orleans. The Mississippi Delta, meanwhile, was an unpopulated sportsman's paradise—the frontier was still in the process of being cleared and drained for cultivation.? Expecting these findings to be controversial in some circles, King has buttressed his conclusions with primary sources and years of extensive research, including a sojourn to West Africa and interviews with surviving folklorists and blues researchers from the 1960s folk-rediscovery epoch.? New Orleans, King states, was the only place in the Deep South where the sacred and profane could party together without fear of persecution, creating the blues.

Devil Barnett a CIA agent with a talent for eliminating special problems a talent he used for fifteen years. But when his father is killed in his own bar the Be-Bop, Devil leaves the Company to come home to run the Be-Bop and finds Harlem greatly changed from his boyhood home. Overrun with drugs, gangs, and self-serving politicians.

There is no magic to writing. Inspiration comes from whatever pisses you off at a given time. Its that cute twinkle in your baby boys eye when youve made him laugh. Its asking yourself What would I do if I had two minutes alone with Saddam Hussein in a locked room? and running with the idea. Thats all a writer does; thats all Ive ever done with the thirty stories in this collection. These troll through the terrors of nuclear war and the innocence of childhood; they amble through the American West with ole Wiley and rant against the frustrations of the day. Well trash the so-called holidays and cry Hail to the Chief, and end on a traditional jungle rompwith an A.C. Doyle twist. Read on.

In 1957, Duke Ellington released the influential album A Drum Is a Woman. This musical allegory revealed the implicit truth about the role of women in jazz discourse—jilted by the musician and replaced by the drum. Further, the album’s cover displays an image of a woman sitting atop a drum, depicting the way in which the drum literally obscures the female body, turning the subject into an object. This objectification of women leads to a critical reading of the role of women in jazz music: If the drum can take the place of a woman, then a woman can also take the place of a drum. The Drum Is a Wild Woman: Jazz and Gender in African Diaspora Literature challenges that image but also defines a counter-tradition within women’s writing that involves the reinvention and reclamation of a modern jazz discourse. Despite their alienation from bebop, women have found jazz music empowering and have demonstrated this power in various ways. The Drum Is a Wild Woman explores the complex relationship between women and jazz music in recent African diasporic literature. The book examines how women writers from the African diaspora have challenged and revised major tropes and concerns of jazz literature since the bebop era in the mid-1940s. Black women writers create dissonant sounds that broaden our understanding of jazz literature. By underscoring the extent to which gender is already embedded in jazz discourse, author Patricia G. Lespinasse responds to and corrects narratives that tell the story of jazz through a male-centered lens. She concentrates on how the Wild Woman, the female vocalist in classic blues, used blues and jazz to push the boundaries of Black womanhood outside of the confines of respectability. In texts that refer to jazz in form or content, the Wild Woman constitutes a figure of resistance who uses language, image, and improvisation to refashion herself from object to subject. This book breaks new ground by comparing the politics of resistance alongside moments of improvisation by examining recurring literary motifs—cry-and-response, the Wild Woman, and the jazz moment—in jazz novels, short stories, and poetry, comparing works by Ann Petry, Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Edwidge Danticat, and Maya Angelou with pieces by Albert Murray, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Ellington. Within an interdisciplinary and transnational context, Lespinasse foregrounds the vexed negotiations around gender and jazz discourse.

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.

When 17-year-old Paul Williams began publishing Crawdaddy! magazine in 1966, just as the American counterculture was poised to explode, the world was only beginning to take rock music as seriously as the intelligencia took folk and jazz. Preceding both Rolling Stone and Creem, Crawdaddy! has gone down in history as the pioneer of rock journalism, and was the training ground for many rock writers who would later become stars in their own right. Now, Paul Williams has gathered the best of Crawdaddy! into a revealing anthology that captures a fascinating historical moment when Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, the Grateful Dead and Buffalo Springfield were unknown and as yet unheard, and inspired writers were struggling to find the language with which to describe this new, vital music. Peter Guralnick, Ralph Gleason, Richard Farina, Jon Landau, Samuel R. Delany and Richard Meltzer are just a few of the later-day luminaries who cut their teeth writing for Crawdaddy! and who are showcased in this stunning collection. Featuring essays and notes by Williams and over 25 photos, The Crawdaddy! Book is a must for anyone who loves the spirit of Rock 'n' Roll. Paul Williams is the author of more than 25 books, of which the best-known are Outlaw Blues, Das Energi and Bob Dylan, Performing Artist, the acclaimed three-part series. He is a world-renowned scholar and leading authority on the works of musicians Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson and Neil Young, and science fiction writers Philip K. Dick and Theodore Sturgeon. His most recent book is The 20th Century's Greatest Hits (A "Top 40" List) (Forge/St. Martins, 2000). Williams currently lives in San Diego, California.

Due to the high demand of two of Andrew D. Gordon's blues piano/keyboard books, 100 Ultimate Blues Riffs and the 12 Bar Blues Bible, he has adapted examples from the two books along with new examples into a blues organ book and Ultimate Blues Organ Riffs is the result. There is an increased interest in playing the organ these days as many keyboard players are adding organ modules, organs, software etc., to their array of instruments. This book consists of 96 riffs, in many different keys, and covers a wide range of blues organ styles including Blues, Funk, Gospel, Jazz & Rock. The music notation consists of the right and left hand parts as well as a bass line. Although primarily written and recorded with the organ in mind, pianists and keyboard players will also find the material in this book very useful. All the 96 examples have been recorded twice, the first time with the organ right and left hand parts, guitar rhythm, bass and drums. The second time, has the rhythm guitar part, bass and drums so that the keyboard player can practice along with the rhythm tracks.

A comprehensive, chronological listing of the Top Ten albums in the U.S. and the U.K., from 1960 through the present day, includes monthly charts, accompanied by photographs, information on the albums, and artist trivia. Original. IP.