A fitting tribute to the troubled genius who revolutionized electric bass playing and bridged the gaps between jazz R&B rock and funk. From his early days in R&B club bands through his international stardom with fusion group Weather Report and on to his solo career and tragic death at age 35 this book portrays the life and music of Jaco Pastorius the self-proclaimed world's greatest bass player. This special anniversary edition features new interviews with Jaco's childhood friends promine...
From Jazz to Swing (Jazz History, Culture & Criticism S.) (Jazz History, Culture & Criticism)
by Thomas Hennessey
In the 1920s, many black regional jazz bands were recorded and became products of the entertainment industry, which was altering the face of America from the handmade, homemade, homemade society of the ninteenth century to the mass-produced, mass-consumed technological culture of the twentieth century.Making use of the files of African American newspapers, such as the Chicago Defender, as well as published and archival oral history interviews, Hennessey explores the contradictions that musicians...
Professional Chord Changes and Substitutions for 100 Tunes Every Musician Should Know
by Dick Hyman
Billie Holiday singing at the New Orleans Swing Club. Dexter Gordon hanging out at Bop City. Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane all swinging through for gigs. Was this slice of jazz history in New York or perhaps New Orleans? No, this was San Francisco's Fillmore District in its heyday. The Fillmore in the 1940's and 1950's was an eclectic, integrated and hopping neighborhood of streets full of restaurants, pool halls, theaters and stores - many minority-owned - and b...
Nothing defines the songs of the Great American Songbook more centrally than their urban sensibility. During the first half of the twentieth century, songwriters such as Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, Dorothy Fields, George and IraGershwin, and Thomas "Fats" Waller flourished in New York City, the home of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Harlem. Through their songs, these artists described America -- not its geography or politics, but its heart -- to Americansand to the world at large. In City Song...
Thirty years after she first heard his voice singing to her from a jukebox at her local drive-in, Barbara began her love affair with Frank Sinatra. After a tempestuous courtship, she finally heard him say the wedding vows that began his fourth, final, and most enduring marriage; one that would last more than two decades until the end of his life. Generous and jealous, witty and wicked, Frank comes alive in this poignant inside story of the highs and lows of marriage to one of the world's most fa...
