William Studwell has struck gold again! Providing a heterogenous mixture of songs that mirrors the diversity of the United States and its culture, The Americana Song Reader is an entertaining and informative collection of over 130 historical essays on various American and foreign songs that have had a significant impact on U.S. popular culture. The essays give you basic historical data on the work, refer to any related or affiliated works, and touch upon the cultural context of its creation and popular usage in the United States. Presented in an offbeat, somewhat irreverent, yet scholarly style, the author has once again compiled a reference book that is fun to read. In addition to presenting information useful for reference, The Americana Song Reader contains anecdotes, ironic sidelights, poetry, and allusions to parodies. For ease of use, the book is divided into several sections. These sections, with some representative songs listed, include: Dancing Songs: “After the Ball,” “The Hokey Pokey,” “Sleeping Beauty Waltz” Marching Songs: “March of the Toys,” “When the Saints Go Marching In” Rural and Western Songs: “The Big Rock Candy Mountain,” “Jessie James,” “The Streets of Laredo” Songs That Excite or Amuse: “An American in Paris,” “1812 Overture,” “The Sidewalks of New York” Songs That Soothe or Bring Tears: “Beautiful Dreamer,” “I'm Always Chasing Rainbows,” “My Wild Irish Rose” Children's Songs: “Hansel and Gretel,” “Pop Goes the Weasel,” “Sing a Song of Sixpence” Circus Songs: “Barnum and Bailey's Favorite,” “Be a Clown,” “The Flying Trapeze” Drinking Songs: “Auld Lange Syne,” “Little Brown Jug,” “Ninety Nine Bottles of Beer” College Songs: “Iowa Corn Song,” “Notre Dame Victory Song,” “The Whiffenpoof Song” Song title index and author/group index Whether the music comes from New York City, remote rural areas of the South or West, or from Vienna or Paris, all music having some sort of impact on the lives of everyday Americans is in a very true way part of Americana. In The Americana Song Reader, you'll see the songs both as small pieces of the American culture puzzle and, collectively, as a large segment of the music of the country. This newest addition to William Studwell's collection of song readers will delight the general public, musicians, and librarians.

With roots in Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, New Orleans, the Piedmont, Memphis, and the prairies of Texas and the American West, the musical genre called Americana can prove difficult to define. Nevertheless, this burgeoning trend in American popular music continues to expand and develop, winning new audiences and engendering fresh, innovative artists at an exponential rate. As Lee Zimmerman illustrates in Americana Music: Voices, Visionaries, and Pioneers of an Honest Sound, “Americana” covers a gamut of sounds and styles. In its strictest sense, it is a blanket term for bluegrass, country, mountain music, rockabilly, and the blues. By a broader definition, it can encompass roots rock, country rock, singer/songwriters, R&B, and their various combinations. Bob Dylan, Hank Williams, Carl Perkins, and Tom Petty can all lay valid claims as purveyors of Americana, but so can Elvis Costello, Solomon Burke, and Jason Isbell. Americana is new and old, classic and contemporary, trendy and traditional. Mining the firsthand insights of those whose stories help shape the sound—people such as Ralph Stanley, John McEuen (Nitty Gritty Dirt Band), Chris Hillman (Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers), Paul Cotton and Rusty Young (Poco), Shawn Colvin, Kinky Friedman, David Bromberg, the Avett Brothers, Amanda Shires, Ruthie Foster, and many more—Americana Music provides a history of how Americana originated, how it reached a broader audience in the ’60s and ’70s with the merging of rock and country, and how it evolved its overwhelmingly populist appeal as it entered the new millennium.

Giving music-making women the serious attention they deserve but rarely receive, Right by Her Roots is an especially important and engaging account.

When you read Full Circle: Spiritual Therapy for the Elderly, you’ll discover a brand new therapeutic approachspiritual therapyto treating elderly patients with cognitive disorders. This handy guide will assist you in starting your own renowned spiritually therapeutic program for dementia patients. Full Circle is a how-to book that will prove you can trigger emotional responses in an individual or group therapy session using the right spiritual cues. In the first ten pages of Full Circle, you’ll learn about the Spiritual Therapy Program and find the answers to general questions about how and where to establish the program. The remainder of Full Circle contains 80 thematic lesson plans for use in both group and individual sessions. The lessons are flexible and organized into lists to help you formulate the right agenda for individual dementia patients. Full Circle divides 70 themes into these easily accessible categories: Feelings: depression, anger, and shame Life Review: aging, children, and change Sensory: hearing, smell, and touch Special Occasions: Easter, Thanksgiving, and memories of Christmas Spiritual: forgiveness, heaven, and peace In addition, Full Circle has expanded units for higher-achieving seniors. You may also want to use the special notes, poetry, and quotations that are pinpointed within the appropriate specific theme for even more startling results. Full Circle's sophisticated approach to therapy will help you cater to the needs of the cognitively impaired elderly to trigger emotional responses and enhance overall quality of life.

State Songs of the United States: An Annotated Anthology is essential for musicians, historians, or librarians interested in the words, lyrics, and historical background of the songs that symbolize our individual states. This easy-to-use reference includes many famous state songs that were written by such well-known songwriters and musicians as Stephen Foster, Andy Razaf, Lucky Roberts, Hoagy Carmichael, Al Piantadosi, and Guy Miller. Full of information on the official and unofficial songs of the 50 states, State Songs of the United States includes: historical annotations for 69 official and unofficial state songs, including ”Yankee Doodle,” ”Georgia on My Mind,” and the ”Tennessee Waltz” lyrics and music for 48 of the songs listed, such as ”Yellow Rose of Texas” and ”Home on the Range” more than one official song for 46 of the states, including Arkansas, California, Indiana, New Hampshire, and Montana As part of the historical background, State Songs of the United States informs you as to when a song was written, who wrote it, and what musician composed the music for it. The only anthology of American song presented from an academic point of view, this reference also covers when and why official songs became adopted by their respective states. After reading this anthology, you will discover how the lyrics of our state songs reflect the period in which they were written and why many lyrics have been changed since, for reasons such as racial or gender prejudice. State Songs of the United States offers you a unique look at music, America's past, and the pride of our 50 states.

Go, team, go! Rah, rah, rah! Boomalacka, boomalacka! Sis-boom-bah! Get your pennants and varsity colors and head for the stadium because College Fight Songs will make you an expert on the musical history of university athletic themes and anthems before the second-half kickoff. Here, in one anthology, you’ll find a unique collection of musical and historical information that hasn’t been compiled and updated since the days of Knute Rockne and the Galloping Ghost. This smart and spirited collection will give you plenty to rise and shout about, bringing together the complete lyrics, brief historical annotations, and musical scores for the songs of over 100 of the country’s most recognized colleges and universities. If you’re a researcher, librarian, musical enthusiast, band leader, musical historian, old-timer from way back when, or a young underclassmen interested in preserving a few cherished notes of your school’s history, College Fight Songs is the book for you. You’ll find plenty of hard-to-find facts about the songs and the people who inspired them, and you’ll get specific information in these areas: complete musical scores of college fight songs full lyrics of college fight songs basic historical background concerning the songs and their institutions information regarding the song creators and the college nicknames So, swing on the Rambling Wreck from Georgia Tech, rally around the bonfire and give a holler for the Buckeyes, the Wildcats, the Sooners, the Boilermakers, and the Tigers! The Gipper, the Bear, and Johnny U await you in this fabulous compendium of nostalgia and musical scores. Even after a few pages, College Fight Songs will have you hailing your alma mater and jumping in the car to head for the hop.

This text serves as a unique anthology of American college fight songs with short historical annotations.

Circus Songs: An Annotated Anthology provides musicians and librarians with the scores of 100 circus songs along with brief historical annotations. You will also discover the history of American circus music as well as some background on circus musicians that will delight and enchant even the most avid music buff. Circus Songs provides you with an appreciation of the role of circus music in American culture and preserves these songs for future generations to enjoy.

The Poetics of American Song Lyrics is the first collection of academic essays that regards songs as literature and that identifies intersections between the literary histories of poems and songs. The essays by well-known poets and scholars including Pulitzer Prize winner Claudia Emerson, Peter Guralnick, Adam Bradley, David Kirby, Kevin Young, and many others, locate points of synthesis and separation so as to better understand both genres and their crafts. The essayists share a desire to write on lyrics in a way that moves beyond sociological, historical, and autobiographical approaches and explicates songs in relation to poetics. Unique to this volume, the essays focus not on a single genre but on folk, rap, hip hop, country, rock, indie, soul, and blues. The first section of the book provides a variety of perspectives on the poetic history and techniques within songs and poems, and the second section focuses on a few prominent American songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Michael Stipe. Through conversational yet in-depth analyses of songs, the essays discuss sonnet forms, dramatic monologues, Modernism, ballads, blues poems, confessionalism, Language poetry, Keatsian odes, unreliable narrators, personas, poetic sequences, rhythm, rhyme, transcription methods, the writing process, and more. While the strategies of explication differ from essay to essay, the nexus of each piece is an unveiling of the poetic history and poetic techniques within songs.

An entertaining trivia compendium flush with fun facts about all things music. From boogie-woogie to Beethoven, from Prince to Pavarotti, from the bards of Broadway to the rebels of rock ’n’ roll—it’s all here. Uncle John has created this harmonious collection of tuneful tales for music lovers everywhere. Uncle John has proven once again that he is in tune with our legion of loyal readers. This 516-page musical masterpiece dedicated to all things noteworthy ranges from silly one-hit wonders to culture-changing musical milestones. You’ll get a glimpse into the future of music and go back to the days when prehistoric man first started communicating in song. So, plug in your amp, turn the dial up to eleven, and have a blast reading about: · The origins of nearly every genre and style of music—including rock, country, jazz, the blues, rhythm-and-blues, hip hop, punk, folk, polka, opera, Muzak, disco, and even marching bands · Musical legends, from “outsiders” like the Shaggs and the Carter family, to giants like the Beatles, Elvis, and Weird Al Yankovic · The stories of legendary music venues like the Grand Ole Opry, the Apollo, and the Fillmore · How a computer glitch led to Right Said Fred’s 1991 hit “I’m Too Sexy” · Why waltzing was considered as scandalous in its early days as rock was in its early days · The birth of the banjo, the electric guitar, karaoke, and the Stradivarius violin · How John Williams struck a universal chord with his score for Star Wars · Go underground to play the world’s largest natural musical instrument · What happened at Woodstock and other weird concert mishaps And much, much more