A fantasy novel inspired by the biblical story of Cain and Abel, in which a cursed woman makes a deal with Heaven so that she can escape her endless life. Millennia-old Jane was Qayna in her youth, before she resisted the will of Heaven and became the Marked Woman. Now she only wants to die, and the Legate has offered her a deal—recover an item stolen from Heaven, and in exchange her curse of immortality will be lifted. Can Jane steal back Azazel’s hoof? Will the fairy folk of the Mirror Queendom stop her? And what exactly is the Legate's game?
Blues Book of the Year —Living Blues Association of Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence Best Historical Research in Recorded Blues, Gospel, Soul, or R&B–Certificate of Merit (2018) 2023 Blues Hall of Fame Inductee - Classic of Blues Literature category With this volume, Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff complete their groundbreaking trilogy on the development of African American popular music. Fortified by decades of research, the authors bring to life the performers, entrepreneurs, critics, venues, and institutions that were most crucial to the emergence of the blues in black southern vaudeville theaters; the shadowy prehistory and early development of the blues is illuminated, detailed, and given substance. At the end of the nineteenth century, vaudeville began to replace minstrelsy as America’s favorite form of stage entertainment. Segregation necessitated the creation of discrete African American vaudeville theaters. When these venues first gained popularity, ragtime coon songs were the standard fare. Insular black southern theaters provided a safe haven, where coon songs underwent rehabilitation and blues songs suitable for the professional stage were formulated. The process was energized by dynamic interaction between the performers and their racially-exclusive audience. The first blues star of black vaudeville was Butler “String Beans” May, a blackface comedian from Montgomery, Alabama. Before his bizarre, senseless death in 1917, String Beans was recognized as the “blues master piano player of the world.” His musical legacy, elusive and previously unacknowledged, is preserved in the repertoire of country blues singer-guitarists and pianists of the race recording era. While male blues singers remained tethered to the role of blackface comedian, female “coon shouters” acquired a more dignified aura in the emergent persona of the “blues queen.” Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and most of their contemporaries came through this portal; while others, such as forgotten blues heroine Ora Criswell and her protégé Trixie Smith, ingeniously reconfigured the blackface mask for their own subversive purposes. In 1921 black vaudeville activity was effectively nationalized by the Theater Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A.). In collaboration with the emergent race record industry, T.O.B.A. theaters featured touring companies headed by blues queens with records to sell. By this time the blues had moved beyond the confines of entertainment for an exclusively black audience. Small-time black vaudeville became something it had never been before—a gateway to big-time white vaudeville circuits, burlesque wheels, and fancy metropolitan cabarets. While the 1920s was the most glamorous and remunerative period of vaudeville blues, the prior decade was arguably even more creative, having witnessed the emergence, popularization, and early development of the original blues on the African American vaudeville stage.
The complete lyrics from cultural icon and bestselling author Nick Cave, spanning his entire career to date, with a new foreword by Andrew O'Hagan From Nick Cave's writing for The Birthday Party, through highly acclaimed albums like Murder Ballads, Henry's Dream, DIG, LAZARUS, DIG!!! and Ghosteen, this is a must-have book for all fans of the dark, the beautiful and the defiant - for all fans of the songs of Nick Cave. 'The greatest living songwriter' NME 'A glowing wire, a mainline to meaning ad feeling and art' New Yorker 'Nick Cave is a true lyrical master. He can conjure empathy and hope out of thin air, light out of darkness' Cillian Murphy 'His lyrics - so rich in the toils of love, so committed to memory and everlasting presence - are the best-made of his generation' Andrew O'Hagan 'A poetic craftsman' Will Self 'Alternative rock legend' Billboard 'Cave's genius rings loud and clear' Evening Standard Cover art by Aleksandra Waliszewska
“S O S provides readers with rich, vital views of the African American experience and of Baraka’s own evolution as a poet-activist” (The Washington Post). Fusing the personal and the political in high-voltage verse, Amiri Baraka whose long illumination of the black experience in America was called incandescent in some quarters and incendiary in others was one of the preeminent literary innovators of the past century (The New York Times). Selected by Paul Vangelisti, this volume comprises the fullest spectrum of Baraka’s rousing, revolutionary poems, from his first collection to previously unpublished pieces composed during his final years. Throughout Baraka’s career as a prolific writer (also published as LeRoi Jones), he was vehemently outspoken against oppression of African American citizens, and he radically altered the discourse surrounding racial inequality. The environments and social values that inspired his poetics changed during the course of his life, a trajectory that can be traced in this retrospective spanning more than five decades of profoundly evolving subjects and techniques. Praised for its lyricism and introspection, his early poetry emerged from the Beat generation, while his later writing is marked by intensely rebellious fervor and subversive ideology. All along, his primary focus was on how to live and love in the present moment despite the enduring difficulties of human history. A New York Times Editors’ Choice “A big handsome book of Amiri Baraka’s poetry [that gives] us word magic, wit, wild thoughts, discomfort, and pleasure.” —William J. Harris, Boston Review “The most complete representation of over a half-century of revolutionary and breathtaking work.” —Claudia Rankine, The New York Times Book Review
This fascinating compendium explains the most unusual, obscure, and curious words and expressions from vintage blues music. Utilizing both documentary evidence and invaluable interviews with a number of now-deceased musicians from the 1920s and '30s, blues scholar Stephen Calt unravels the nuances of more than twelve hundred idioms and proper or place names found on oft-overlooked "race records" recorded between 1923 and 1949. From "aggravatin' papa" to "yas-yas-yas" and everything in between, this truly unique, racy, and compelling resource decodes a neglected speech for general readers and researchers alike, offering invaluable information about black language and American slang.
The shellac of the 20's, 30's and 40's caught the fleeting moment, the spirit of the times; the raunchy ragtime, barrelhouse boogie and the country blues. Some of those records will never be replaced. Some, never will be heard again. Many of those songs are here in printed form for the first time, as an only monument to a pristine era never to happen again. This is a valued collection of the great country blues — as sung and played by the greatest of the country bluesmen — as collected and annotated by Stefan Grossman, Hal Grossman and Stephen Calt: Aberdeen Mississippi Blues/Booker White'Bout A Spoonful/Mance LipscombAlabama Blues/Robert WilkinsAin't You Sorry?/Mance LipscombAll Night Long/Skip JamesAt Home Blues/Sam "Lightnin' " HopkinsAvalon Blues/Mississippi John HurtAwful Fix Blues/Buddy Boy HawkinsBanty Rooster Blues/Charlie PattonBeer Drinkin' Women/R.K. TurnerBig Chief Blues/Furry LewisBig Leg Blues/Mississippi John HurtBird Nest Bound/Charlie PattonBob McKinney/Henry ThomasBud Russell Blues/Sam "Lightnin'" HopkinsBull Frog Blues/William HarrisCandy Man Blues/Mississippi John HurtCasey Jones/Furry LewisCatfish Blues/Skip JamesCharlie James/Mance LipscombCoffee Blues/Mississippi John HurtCorinne, Corinna/Mississippi John HurtCounty Farm Blues/Son HouseCrossroad Blues/Robert JohnsonCrow Jane/Skip JamesCypress Grove Blues/Skip JamesDepot Blues/Son HouseDevil Got My Woman/Skip JamesDevil in the Lion's Den/Sam CollinsDough Roller Blues/Joe CallicottDown the Dirt Road/Charlie PattonDrunken Spree/Skip JamesDry Well Blues/Charlie PattonFallin' Down Blues/Robert WilkinsFuture Blues/Willie BrownGet Away Blues/Robert WilkinsHambone Blues/Ed BellHammer Blues/Charlie PattonHell Hound On My Trail/Robert JohnsonHot Jelly Roll Blues/George CarterHow Long Buck/Skip JamesI'm Satis fied/Mississippi John HurtJinx Blues/Son HouseKnocking Down Windows/Mance LipscombLong Train Blues/Robert WilkinsMarried Woman Blues/Joe Callicott
Bill Bay asked me to write a follow up book to my last book, "The Bluegrass Pickers Tune Book (20233). If you like Bluegrass music (232 songs) I'd recommend getting that book to add to your collection. the focus of this book, the Acoustic Source Book is on roots and old-time music. the book is focused on the time period from late 1800's until 1940's. There are a few songs from the Bluegrass Book that were too important to be left out. I decided not to use any patriotic and Christmas songs and came up with a list of about 400 songs which eventually was cut down to over 200. During the late 1800's and early 1900's there was an important evolution in American music; the birth of jazz, ragtime, and blues. This was also the period of the phonograph and early commercial recordings. Music from the Minstrel period as well as traditional songs were used as staple for the roots musicians. In the early 1900's there were rags, blues, gospel, Tin-Pan Alley, jug band, spiritual, old-time country and popular songs. I've tried to include some of the well-known songs from every genre to give you a big slice of Americana. There are some great songs that are popular roots, bluegrass and old-time songs today that have never been published. There are also great songs that are not well known that should be played and enjoyed.Richard Matteson with Kara Pleasants Wildwood Flower http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO9Xde2bdwA Paul & Silas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv5Tmaff9HQ Meet Me By the Moonlight http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gwzCZfnG64 Scarborough Fair http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grbxMlz_DlI Water is Wide http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-hZkxWs8gs Richard Matteson with Jessica KasterBarbara Allen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX6PE80W4Pw In the Pines http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtOL9Id5TW4 Hop Along Peter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5kAzSQ__rU Ain't Gonna Lay my Armor Down http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsBYRuT2_FU
Over 200 blues songs from the twenties to the present are included in this deluxe edition. Features many artists representing a wide variety of styles and includes rare photographs. Songs include: Basin Street Blues * Bulldoze Blues (Goin' Up the Country) * Everyday (I Have the Blues) * Five Long Years * Hoochie Coochie Man * Mystery Train * San Francisco Bay Blues * St. Louis Blues * Statesboro * The Thrill Is Gone * and more.
This anthology includes many of the major poets to have emerged and gained pre-eminence since World War II, and whose writing reflects not only the significant changes in this nation's postwar history, and the coming to grips with a nuclear age, but also an entirely new way of looking at and structuring reality. United by their "postmodernist" concerns with spontaneity, "instantism," formal and syntactic flexibility, and the revelation of both the creator and the process through the writing itself, these 38 poets represent very diverse strains of an essential American individualism. Included are many of the poets whose work first gained widespread national attention with the 1960 publication of The New American Poetry: Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Blackburn, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Denise Levertov, Robert Duncan, and others. Among the poets included here for the first time are Anne Waldman, Diane di Prima, Ed Sanders, Jerome Rothenberg, and James Koller. In addition to a new preface by Allen and Butterick, the book provides autobiographical notes of all the poets and listings of their major works.
