Machers and Rockers

Machers and Rockers

Author: Rich Cohen

Publisher: W. W. Norton

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13:

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Cohen tells the engrossing story of how Leonard Chess made rock and roll into a multibillion-dollar business--aggressively acquiring artists, hard-selling distributors, and riding the crest of a wave that would crash over a whole generation.


The Record Men: The Chess Brothers and the Birth of Rock & Roll (Enterprise)

The Record Men: The Chess Brothers and the Birth of Rock & Roll (Enterprise)

Author: Rich Cohen

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2005-10-17

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 0393352501

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"Brilliant; the best book I have ever read about the recording industry; a classic."--Larry King On the south side of Chicago in the late 1940s, two immigrants; one a Jew born in Russia, the other a black blues singer from Mississippi; met and changed the course of musical history. Muddy Waters electrified the blues, and Leonard Chess recorded it. Soon Bo Diddly and Chuck Berry added a dose of pulsating rhythm, and Chess Records captured that, too. Rock & roll had arrived, and an industry was born. In a book as vibrantly and exuberantly written as the music and people it portrays, Rich Cohen tells the engrossing story of how Leonard Chess, with the other record men, made this new sound into a multi-billion-dollar business; aggressively acquiring artists, hard-selling distributors, riding the crest of a wave that would crash over a whole generation. Originally published in hardcover as Machers and Rockers. About the series: Enterprise pairs distinguished writers with stories of the economic forces that have shaped the modern worlds; the institutions, the entrepreneurs, the ideas. Enterprise introduces a new genre; the business book as literature.


Crossroads

Crossroads

Author: John Milward

Publisher: UPNE

Published: 2013-06-11

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 1555537448

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The blues revival rescued the creators of America's most influential music from dusty obscurity, put them onstage in front of a vast new audience, and created rock 'n' roll


Jews and Jazz

Jews and Jazz

Author: Charles B Hersch

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-10-14

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 131727038X

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Jews and Jazz: Improvising Ethnicity explores the meaning of Jewish involvement in the world of American jazz. It focuses on the ways prominent jazz musicians like Stan Getz, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Lee Konitz, Dave Liebman, Michael Brecker, and Red Rodney have engaged with jazz in order to explore and construct ethnic identities. The author looks at Jewish identity through jazz in the context of the surrounding American culture, believing that American Jews have used jazz to construct three kinds of identities: to become more American, to emphasize their minority outsider status, and to become more Jewish. From the beginning, Jewish musicians have used jazz for all three of these purposes, but the emphasis has shifted over time. In the 1920s and 1930s, when Jews were seen as foreign, Jews used jazz to make a more inclusive America, for themselves and for blacks, establishing their American identity. Beginning in the 1940s, as Jews became more accepted into the mainstream, they used jazz to "re-minoritize" and avoid over-assimilation through identification with African Americans. Finally, starting in the 1960s as ethnic assertion became more predominant in America, Jews have used jazz to explore and advance their identities as Jews in a multicultural society.


Music Wars

Music Wars

Author: John C. Hajduk

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-10-15

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1498575889

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In the mid-twentieth century, certain elements of the American popular music industry (publishers, recording companies, and broadcasters) began to redefine their product as something more than mere entertainment. This became evident in the arguments made by competing sides in a series of clashes that unfolded during that period, starting with the ASCAP-Radio dispute of 1941 and ending with the payola scandal in 1959. Although these disputes typically revolved around economic issues, in making their cases to the public the respective sides often asserted the significant role played by popular music in promoting core national values. While such rhetoric was basically self-serving, when set against the backdrop of major events like World War II, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Cold War, it resonated strongly with the public and helped convince many that popular music offered more to its audience than momentary diversion. Considering that the resolutions to these conflicts also tended to expand opportunities for previously marginalized styles and performers, notably African-Americans and rural southerners, it became natural to link popular music to ideas of social progress as well. This contributed to the creation of what could be called “rock and roll culture,” a coherent set of values related to concepts of youth, authenticity, sexual liberation, and social equality that emerged by the end of the 1950s. These traits became a prevalent part of American culture through the end of the twentieth century, with popular music seen a perhaps the most significant medium for expressing those values.


Spinning Blues Into Gold

Spinning Blues Into Gold

Author: Nadine Cohodas

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2001-09-28

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780312284947

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Sun Records gave us rock and roll, Motown Records gave us pop soul, and Chess Records gave us the blues. Chess was label for Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry, Etta James, and Bo Diddley--and in this critcially acclaimed history we learn the full story of this legendary label. The greatest artists who sang and played the blues made their mark with Leonard and Phil Chess, whose Chicago-based record company was synonymous with the sound that swept up from the South, embraced the Windy City, and spread out like wildfire into mid-century America. Spinning Blues into Gold is the impeccably researched story of the men behind the music and the remarkable company they created. Chess Records--and later Checkers, Argo, and Cadet Records--was built by Polish immigrant Jews, brothers who saw the blues as a unique business opportunity. From their first ventures, a liquor store and then a nightclub, they promoted live entertainment. And parlayed that into the first pressings sold out of car trunks on long junkets through the midsection of the country, ultimately expanding their empire to include influential radio stations. The story of the Chess brothers is a very American story of commerce in the service of culture. Long on chutzpah, Leonard and Phil Chess went far beyond their childhoods as the sons of a scrap-metal dealer. They changed what America listened to; the artists they promoted planted the seeds of rock 'n' roll--and are still influencing music today. In this book, Cohodas expertly captures the rich and volatile mix of race, money, and recorded music. She also takes us deep into the world of independent record producers, sometimes abrasive and always aggressive men striving to succeed. Leonard and Phil Chess worked hand-in-glove with disenfranchised black artists, the intermittent charges of exploitation balanced by the reality of a common purpose that eventually brought fame to many if not most of the parties concerned. From beginning to end, as we find in these pages, the lives of the Chess brothers were socially, financially, and creatively entwined with those of the artists they believed in.


Give My Poor Heart Ease

Give My Poor Heart Ease

Author:

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 638

ISBN-13: 0807833258

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Collects interviews and commentary on blues and gospel music from the Mississippi Delta area, and discusses how race relations, connections to the sacred, and Southern life helped mold this style of music.


The Sun & The Moon & The Rolling Stones

The Sun & The Moon & The Rolling Stones

Author: Rich Cohen

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2016-05-10

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0804179247

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A gritty, one-of-a-kind backstage account of the world’s greatest touring band, from the opinionated music journalist who was along for the ride as a young reporter for Rolling Stone in the 1990s ONE OF THE TOP FIVE ROCK BIOGRAPHIES OF THE YEAR—SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—KIRKUS REVIEWS A book inspired by a lifelong appreciation of the music that borders on obsession, Rich Cohen’s fresh and galvanizing narrative history of the Rolling Stones begins with the fateful meeting of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on a train platform in 1961—and goes on to span decades, with a focus on the golden run—from the albums Beggars Banquet (1968) to Exile on Main Street (1972)—when the Stones were at the height of their powers. Cohen is equally as good on the low points as the highs, and he puts his finger on the moments that not only defined the Stones as gifted musicians schooled in the blues, but as the avatars of so much in our modern culture. In the end, though, after the drugs and the girlfriends and the bitter disputes, there is the music—which will define, once and forever, why the Stones will always matter. Praise for The Sun & The Moon & The Rolling Stones “Fabulous . . . The research is meticulous. . . . Cohen’s own interviews even yield some new Stones lore.”—The Wall Street Journal “[Cohen] can catch the way a record can seem to remake the world [and] how songs make a world you can’t escape.”—Pitchfork “No one can tell this story, wringing new life even from the leathery faces of mummies like the Rolling Stones, like Rich Cohen. . . . The book beautifully details the very meaning of rock ’n’ roll.”—New York Observer “Masterful . . . Hundreds of books have been written about this particular band and [Cohen’s] will rank among the very best of the bunch.”—Chicago Tribune “Cohen, who has shown time and time again he can take any history lesson and make it personal and interesting . . . somehow tells the [Stones’] story in a whole different way. This might be the best music book of 2016.”—Men’s Journal “[Cohen’s] account of the band’s rise from ‘footloose’ kids to ‘old, clean, prosperous’ stars is, like the Stones, irresistible.”—People “You will, as with the best music bios, want to follow along on vinyl.”—The Washington Post “A fresh take on dusty topics like Altamont and the Stones’ relationship with the Beatles . . . Cohen takes pilgrimages to places like Nellcôte, the French mansion where the Stones made Exile on Main Street, and recounts fascinating moments from his time on tour.”—Rolling Stone “On the short list of worthwhile books about the Stones . . . The book is stuffed with insights.”—San Francisco Chronicle