Music & Movies

It would be no exaggeration to call Charles Mingus the greatest bass player in the history of jazz; indeed, some might even regard it as understatement, for the hurricane power of his work as a composer, teacher, band leader, and iconoclast reached far...

This invaluable biography of trumpeter and jazz-bebop-fusion innovator Miles Davis (1926-1991) includes a substantial new introduction that for the first time details Davis's turbulent last decade; the drawing and painting that became an additional...

Gathering the 30 most vital Miles Davis interviews--on his music, his life, and his philosophy--this collection reveals the jazz icon as a complex and contradictory man, secretive at times but extraordinarily revealing at others. Miles was not only a...

It was 1969, and Miles Davis, prince of cool, was on the edge of being left behind by a dynamic generation of young musicians, an important handful of whom had been in his band. Rock music was flying off in every direction, just as America itself seemed...

Soon to be a major motion picture from the producers of Fences and The Hurricane Brilliant, poetic, provocative, Quincy Troupe's Miles & Me reveals the man behind the dark glasses and legend.--Ishmael Reed Poet, activist, and journalist Quincy Troupe's...

Dangerous is Michael Jackson's coming of age album. Granted, that's a bold claim to make given that many think his best work lay behind him by the time this record was made. It offers Jackson on a threshold, at long last embracing adulthood-politically...

Memphis gave birth to music that changed the world -- Memphis Mayhem is a fascinating history of how music and culture collided to change the state of music forever "Music writer Less presents a fascinating history of the music of his native Memphis .....

WINNER OF THE PENDERYN MUSIC BOOK PRIZE 2018In the 1950s and 1960s, Memphis, Tennessee, was the launch pad of musical pioneers such as Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Al Green and Isaac Hayes, and by 1968 was a city synonymous with soul...

The beautiful and entertaining arrangements in the Dan Coates Popular Piano Library collections are a welcome addition to any pianist's pop repertoire. Medleys for Christmas is a collection of favorite irreplaceable songs from throughout the years. Why...

The Matachines dance is a ritual drama performed on certain saint's days in Pueblo Indian and Mexicano/Hispano communities along the upper Río Grande valley in New Mexico and elsewhere in the American Southwest. It derives from a genre of medieval...

Back in the early 1940s, late at night in the clubs of Harlem, a handful of jazz musicians began to experiment with a style that no one had ever heard before. The music was fast, complicated, impossible to play for many of the older musicians -- but it...

(Mandolin). Travel back in time as acclaimed mandolinist Rich DelGrosso, author of the best-selling Hal Leonard Mandolin Method (00695102), traces the history and music of America's rich blues tradition through the eyes of the mandolinist. Follow the...

A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award Billy Strayhorn (1915-67) was one of the greatest composers in the history of American music, the creator of a body of work that includes such standards as Take the 'A' Train. Yet all his life...

As trumpet player and singer, Louis Armstrong is the single most important figure in jazz history, and one of the most influential musicians--in any category--in this century. He was also, as this book relates, a wonderful character: actor, clown,...

Though you may not know the man, you probably know his music. Arkansas-born Louis Jordan's songs like Baby, It's Cold Outside," "Caldonia" and "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens" can still be heard today, decades since Jordan ruled the charts. In his five

Louis Armstrong was the founding father of jazz and one of this century's towering cultural figures, yet the full story of his extravagant life has never been told. Born in 1901 to the sixteen-year-old daughter of a slave, he came of age among the...