Completely revamped from the first edition, this book contains listings and up-to-date market values for over 2,000 artists and tens of thousands of records. This is the only country & western price guide on the market that lists every record individually, with extensive listings for 78s from the 1920s to the 1950s, plus thousands of 45s and LPs from the 1940s to today! From "The Prisoner's Song" to "I Hope You Dance", Hank to Haggard, Waylon to Willie, Merle Travis to Randy Travis, Leon Payne to Shania Twain, almost every hit country artist and song issued on wax in the U.S. is listed inside.
Here is the definitive biography of Harry Chapin, one of the most beloved performers in music history, a spokesman of the people and poet laureate to cabdrivers, housewives, and so many others so often overlooked. People may best recall this heroic singer for his "Story Songs", a genre calling for enthusiastic audience participation and best exemplified by the hugely popular "Taxi". But Chapin was much more than a singer; he was a social activist who tirelessly championed and lobbied for many causes, especially an end to world hunger. He died prematurely and tragically in an auto accident in 1981. Since then, his legend has continued to grow, and fans everywhere remember him with enormous love and respect. According to David Marsh of 'Rolling Stone', Harry Chapin "reached out and touched lives in a permanent and irrevocable way." This book explains why.
You watched her on Lizzie McGuire, you know her songs by heart, you saw all of her awesome movies--but do you know the real history?
Spend a day in the life of Hilary! Learn how to get her super-stylish looks! And be the first to see loads of totally exclusive, never0before-seen photos!
In HIGHER GROUND, one of our most insightful music writers brilliantly reinterprets the lives of three pop geniuses and the soul revolution they launched.
HIP-HOP, INC. reveals the strategies of success that can be applied to virtually any other business. It tells the stories of the most successful of the rap elite and, through extensive interviews, lets the advice flow from the millionaires themselves.
Some of the moguls featured in the book include Russell Simmons, Sean "P Diddy" Combs, Percy "Master P" Miller, Marion "Suge" Knight, Damon Dash, Jay Z, and Dr. Dre.
There is a well-developed vocabulary for discussing classical music, but when it comes to popular music, how do we analyze its effects and its meaning? David Brackett draws from the disciplines of cultural studies and music theory to demonstrate how listeners form opinions about popular songs and how they come to attribute a rich variety of meanings to them. Exploring several genres of popular music through recordings made by Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby, Hank Williams, James Brown, and Elvis Costello, Brackett develops a set of tools for looking at both the formal and the cultural dimensions of popular music of all kinds.
Boost your blues I.Q. with this lively, comprehensive introduction to the world of blues guitar--from the origins of the blues in the rural South and early masters like Charley Patton and Blind Lemon Jefferson to the guitars and techniques used by acoustic blues players, then and now.
An anthology of romantic verse from the brightest stars in pop music, including: Olivia Newton-John, The Partridge Family, Sheena Easton, Barry White, Air Supply, REO Speedwagon, Bon Jovi, and many, many more!
Written by Kelley Lovelace, one of country music's most successful new songwriters, IF YOU'VE GOT A DREAM, I'VE GOT A PLAN, will arm aspiring songwriters with the information they need to enter a highly competitive world--a world that is potentially rewarding both financially and artistically. It tells what to do, and maybe more importantly, what not to do.
HOW TO DJ is the ultimate guide to becoming a professional DJ. Written by two industry insiders who DJ and produce hit records throughout the world, this is the concise, how-to sourcebook that comes straight from real DJs and musicians. They explain and demonstrate everything you need to know--from the basics of what DJs do to how they got their careers off of the ground to the worldwide phenomenon of DJ/producers who work with the biggest names in the business and make the music in the charts today.
For generations Jamaica has been seen as the home of reggae music, spawning international icons from Bob Marley to the modern day voice-of-the-people, Burning Spear--artists whose defiant, soulful music has a direct link to the struggles of their ancestors. Steeped in Jamaica's slave history, the island's society and its culture, reggae is part of a centuries-long tradition from the isolated Blue Mountains to the hedonistic beaches of Negril.
Robert Gordon begins where most chroniclers of the music world end and spins a magical tale people with Delta bluesman, a peanut vendor, a matinee cowboy, a professional wrestler, and a manic deejay. IT CAME FROM MEMPHIS doesn't focus on Elvis, Al Green, or the Sun/Stax studios. Instead it creeps into the shadows cast by those institutions, concentrating on artists like Jim Dickinson and Alex Chilton, and bands like the Mar-Keys and Big Star. Gordon limns, with respect and the fascination born of true devotion, the story of white teenagers caught in the middle of an extraordinary confluence of music, entrepreneurship, and eccentricity, breaking through the walls of racism and helping to usher in an exciting new musical form. The result is a thoroughly informative and completely engrossing history of rock 'n' roll and Memphis--its alma mater.
Buddy Collette has been a key figure in American jazz since the early 1940s. He is particularly noted as a principal participant in the Central Avenue jazz scene of Los Angeles, which rivals Harlem and New Orleans in its influence on the development of jazz. Collette worked closely with Charles Mingus and Eric Dolphy and went on to join the Chico Hamilton Quintet. He has led his own bands for thirty years as well as writing, arranging and playing on film soundtracks. In this fascinating autobiography, he illuminates the world of the studio musician and charts the developing jazz and social scene on the West Coast from the 1930s, through the Watts upheavals in the 1960s, to the present. He offers moving, first-hand portraits of his friends Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, and Chico Hamilton, as well as personal accounts of Frank Sinatra, Paul Robeson, and Charlie Parker. The book concludes with a fascinating review of Collette's recent activities as a teacher and performer.
An accessible combination of serious study and exciting pop reference, THE LATIN BEAT explains each of the wildly varied Latin Musical forms--bossa nova, cumbia, merengue, tango, ranchera, rumba, son, salsa--in the context of the countries in which they arose (Cuba, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Domincan Republic, Mexico). Morales then traces each of these forms as they migrated north, and explains how they were absorbed into the American mix. He travels from the Latin ballad to the cocktail-lounge bossa nova to Latin jazz, chronicles the development of the samba in Brazil and salsa in New York, explores the connection between the mambo craze of the '40s and '50s with the Cuban craze of today, and uncovers the hidden history of Latinos in '80s and '90s rock and hip hop. THE LATIN BEAT explores where the music has come from, and celebrates all of the directions it is going.
Features:
-Interviews with musicians, producers, and industry executives
-Color maps highlighting London's hottest live music venues
In WAKING UP IN LONDON, Robert Ashton tours the capital's musical hotspots, occasionally slipping backstage or behind the doors of record labels to chat to the musicians, producers, DJs, and executives who are producing the sounds that create such a rich and vibrant musical landscape. In this series of illuminating and colorful interviews, he explores London, its musical culture, heritage, and what makes its music heart tick. This travelogue is the perfect companion for tourists and pop fans searching for the source of London's music scene.
Featuring original contributions from today's leading music critics, MAROONED is a revealing snapshot of the current state of pop music criticism. A follow-up and homage to Greil Marcus's rock 'n' roll classic, STRANDED, MAROONED asks the same question of a new generation: what album would you bring to a desert island, and why?
The Manic Street Preachers' story is one of the most dramatic and unusual in recent rock history and EVERYTHING is its definitive telling.
Simon Price has followed the band at close quarters since their inception, and here recounts their extraordinary tale. Using first-hand recollections and anecdotes from the band, their friends, colleagues, fans and fellow musicians, EVERYTHING traces the Manics' career from their childhoods in the politicised, strike-torn mining valleys of South Wales, through the outrage violence and mutilation which surrounded the self-styled Generation Terrorists' early days as 'enfants terribles' of rock, the tragic and mysterious vanishing of iconic songwriter Richey Edwards, their triumphant comeback with 'A Design for Life' and their unlikely status as Number One-selling, Brit Award-winning darlings of the music industry, bringing the story bang up to date with the multi-platinum album 'This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours.'
Shortly after Puerto Ricans were granted U.S. citizenship in 1917, they began moving into the uptown Manhattan neighborhood that would become known as Spanish Harlem. By 1930, Afro-Cuban music had gained a firm foothold in the city, setting the stage for the mambo, pachanga, boogaloo, and salsa scenes that followed. In this collection of profiles and essays, Max Salazar tells the story of the music and the musicians who made it happen, including Rafael Hernandez, Miguelito Valdes, Noro Morales, Tito Puente, Tito Rodriguez, Charlie Palmieri, Joe Cuba, Hector Lavoe, and many others.
The story of the Memphis sound is a gritty one, born out of the social friction of segregation and poverty, yet peppered with fascinating people and one-of-a-kind places. Home of Sun and Stax, Ike and Elvis, the city on the Mississippi bluffs played a pivotal role in the development of rock 'n' roll. But what is it about Memphis that caused it to be the wellspring of so much good music?
In WAKING UP IN MEMPHIS, the city's musical and cultural history unwinds through interviews with those who have lived it, set against a breathtaking backdrop of the Mississippi Delta and the North Mississippi hill country. Complemented with superb photography of the people and places uncovered within, together with vital information on travel, accommodation and places to visit, WAKING UP MEMPHIS, is the only guide you'll need to discover the birthplace of the blues.
NEIL FINN ONCE REMOVED is a collection of things seen, but not touched, on his first solo tour--the speed, the landscapes, venues and travel. It is also the vehicle for Neil's unashamedly intimate, often amusing, but always honest thoughts on music, relationship, his fans, family and the future.
Country music might have started its life in the untamed Appalachians, but it was Nashville that rook the raw sound and dirt-farm imagery and turned it into the glossy, glitzy, glamorous pageant it is today. Now the city has become synonymous with showmanship and spectacle and is truly the heart, soul and home of country music.
In WAKING UP IN NASHVILLE, seasoned traveler Stephen Foehr explores the city that spawned such musical giants as Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, and Garth Brooks, plunging hip-deep into its musical culture and sampling its unique heritage. Featuring colorful interviews with everyday people in the business as well as the stars, WAKING UP IN NASHVILLE is the ideal travel guide for tourists and music fans alike.
MOVING UP IN THE MUSIC BUSINESS offers a surefire plan for gaining more power, more responsibility, more control, and more security in this exciting field. Whether you dream of producing your own record label, being a roadie for your favorite band, or climbing the corporate ladder to become the top A&E executive for a mega-music company, you can learn how to exploit the myriad possibilities for career growth and change. Weaving savvy tips and tactics from her own expertise among interviews with top industry executives, music business insider Jodi Summers reveals what it takes to succeed in every area of the business.
Independent author Bruce Pegg has located Barry's friends, lawyers, business associates, and fellow musicians to fully uncover this complicated life story. While sympathetic and admiring of Berry, Pegg does not paint an entirely rosy picture, placing Berry's life both within the larger African American cultural context and the world of mid-century American popular music. In doing so, he offers the definitive portrait of one of the greatest stars in rock and roll.
In the sixties, as the nation anticipated the conquest of space, the defeat of poverty, and an end to injustice at home ad abroad, no gal seemed beyond America's reach. And then came the seventies.
In the eight years since their first release, Belle and Sebastian have grown from a secretive cult group into one of the most beloved and revered pop 'n' roll bands in the world. Intelligent and sensitive, witty and original, beautiful and bold, their music inspires the kind of devotion not seen since The Smiths, and their continuing desire to push the boundaries of their vision has resulted in some of the most essential and idiosyncratic records of recent times.
In this, the first biography of Belle and Sebastian, Paul Whitelaw traces the group's unpredictable personal and creative journey. With all original interviews and personal photos from the band, BELLE AND SEBASTIAN: JUST A MODERN ROCK STORY is the definitive account of the clandestine world and continuing rise of the unique and fascinating music phenomenon that is Belle and Sebastian.
'Fatboy Slim: Funk Soul Brother' is the story of a remarkable artist, the hardest working man in dance music, spanning his extraordinary career from his earliest band to Normstock 2, taking in the breakdowns and the bust-ups, the chemical highs and lows, DJ domination and the breakbeat generation along the way. Celebrity husband and big-beat entrepreneur, Norman Cook is Fatboy Slim.
New York Times bestselling author Marc Shapiro sheds new light on this paradoxical rocker, whose reputation for unusual religious practices and drug abuse often rivaled his musical renown.
