"Wright's fervent, musical prose captures the very essence of the blues.Play Pretty Blues is a work of extraordinary imagination and soul."--Will Allison, author ofLong Drive Home The mysteries of blues legend Robert Johnson's life and death long ago became myth. Part researched reconstruction, part vivid imagination, this lyrical novel brings Johnson alive through the voices of his six wives, revealing the husband and son inside the legend. Snowden Wright was born and raised in Mississippi. His work has been published atSalon, theAtlantic Online,Esquire Online, and theNew York Daily News. He lives in New York.
Experience music history with this memoir by one of the last of the genuine old school Blues and R&B legends, the Grammy-winning dynamic showman Bobby Rush. This memoir charts the extraordinary rise to fame of living blues legend, Bobby Rush. Born Emmett Ellis, Jr. in Homer, Louisiana, he adopted the stage name Bobby Rush out of respect for his father, a pastor. As a teenager, Rush acquired his first real guitar and started playing in juke joints in Little Rock, Arkansas, donning a fake mustache to trick club owners into thinking he was old enough to gain entry. He led his first band in Arkansas between Little Rock and Pine Bluff in the 1950s. It was there he first had Elmore James play in his band. Rush later relocated to Chicago to pursue his musical career and started to work with Earl Hooker, Luther Allison, and Freddie King, and sat in with many of his musical heroes, such as Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed and Little Walter. Rush eventually began leading his own band in the 1960s, crafting his own distinct style of funky blues, and recording a succession of singles for various labels. It wasn't until the early 1970s that Rush finally scored a hit with "Chicken Heads." More recordings followed, including an album which went on to be listed in the Top 10 blues albums of the 1970s by Rolling Stone and a handful of regional jukebox favorites including "Sue" and "I Ain't Studdin' Ya." And Rush's career shows no signs of slowing down now. The man once beloved for performing in local jukejoints is now headlining major music/blues festivals, clubs, and theaters across the U.S. and as far as Japan and Australia. At age eighty-six, he is still on the road for over 200 days a year. His lifelong hectic tour schedule has earned him the affectionate title "King of the Chitlin' Circuit," from Rolling Stone. In 2007, he earned the distinction of being the first blues artist to play at the Great Wall of China. His renowned stage act features his famed shake dancers, who personify his funky blues and his ribald sense of humor. He was featured in Martin Scorcese's The Blues docuseries on PBS, a documentary film called Take Me to the River, performed with Dan Aykroyd on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and most recently had a cameo in the Golden Globe nominated Netflix film, Dolemite Is My Name, starring Eddie Murphy. He was recently given the highest Blues Music Award honor of B.B. King Entertainer of the Year. His songs have also been featured in TV shows and films including HBO's Ballers and major motion pictures like Black Snake Moan, starring Samuel L. Jackson. Considered by many to be the greatest bluesman currently performing, this book will give readers unparalleled access into the man, the myth, the legend: Bobby Rush.
Based on the touching song “This Pretty Planet” by Tom Chapin and John Forster, this hopeful and whimsically illustrated picture book celebrates the pretty planet we call home. Winds blow. Tides flow. Shooting stars descend. Our lives begin, middle, and end on This pretty planet. From icy tundras to sandy beaches, lush forests to tall mountains, this exuberant picture book journeys around the globe and presents the natural wonders of the planet with a contagious sense of awe and whimsy. Young readers will get lost in the detailed illustrations as the narration serves as a gentle reminder of why we must care for and protect our pretty planet.
The classic and beloved song is brought to life with bright and colorful illustrations by Tim Hopgood. First recorded in 1967 by Louis Armstrong, and with sales of over one million copies, "What a Wonderful World" has become a poignant message of hope for people everywhere. Sweet and positive in its message, with bright, beautiful art, this book is sure to be a hit. Perfect for sharing!
"After forty-six years of being on the road, this is the right time to look back in a way I've never done before: now and then. This is the story of my life in rock and roll -- and how the band that has meant everything to me came to define me. I'm looking forward to sharing it with you." Mick Fleetwood has been a member of the ever-evolving Fleetwood Mac, one of the world's most successful and adored bands, for over four decades. Here he tells the full and candid story of his life as one of music's greatest drummers and bandleaders, the cofounder of the deeply loved supergroup that bears his name and that of his bandmate and lifelong friend John McVie. In this intimate portrait of a life lived in music, Fleetwood vividly recalls his upbringing tapping along to every song playing on the radio, his experiences as a musician in '60s London, and the earliest permutation of the band featuring Peter Green. Play On sheds new light on Fleetwood Mac's raucous history, describing the highs and lows of being in the band that Fleetwood was determined to keep together. Here he reflects on the creation of landmark albums such as Rumours and Tusk, the great loves of his life, and the many incredible and outrageous moments of recording, touring, and living with Fleetwood Mac. Fleetwood describes these moments with honesty and immediacy, taking us to the very heart of this multilayered journey that has always been anchored in music. Through it all, from intense love to plaintive heartaches, from collaborations to confrontations, it's been the drive to play on that has prevailed. Now, then, and always, it's Fleetwood Mac.
Memphis, Tennessee, is a major crossroads for blues musicians, songs, and styles. Memphis is where the blues first "came to town" and established itself as a cosmopolitan performance genre, and the city has long been a center of synthesis and evolution in blues recording. This volume tells the story of the blues in Memphis through previously unpublished interviews with nine performers who helped create and sustain the music from the days before its commercial success through the early 1970s. Their attitudes, experiences, and insights impart a deeper understanding of the blues aesthetic and philosophy. The performers' backgrounds range across the blues genres, from classic blues (Lillie Mae Glover) to country blues (Bukka White), from jug band blues (Laura Dukes) to tough, postwar electric blues (Joe Willie Wilkins and Houston Stackhouse). Some, like Furry Lewis and Bukka White, are known around the world. Others, like Laura Dukes, are locally popular, while Boose Taylor is virtually unknown. The range of instruments mastered by the musicians--banjo, fiddle, guitar, fife, bass, ukulele, piano, and harmonica--testifies to the many expressive voices of the blues. Some of the interviewees were singing and performing mostly for white blues/folk revivalist audiences by the 1970s; others, such as Joe Willie Wilkins and Houston Stackhouse, continued to perform mostly for black audiences in Memphis and in the small cafes that dotted the Mississippi Delta. Each interview is illustrated by noted printmaker George D. Davidson and introduced with a biographical sketch by Fred J. Hay. In addition, Hay's extensive notes identify many other blues performers--friends and music partners of the interviewees whose names come up in their many asides and allusions. Together these materials document and pay tribute to the remarkable richness of the Memphis blues scene.
The Voice of the Blues brings together interviews with many pioneering blues men including Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Jimmy Reed, B.B. King, and many others.
A member of Muddy Waters' legendary late 1940s-1950s band, Jimmy Rogers pioneered a blues guitar style that made him one of the most revered sidemen of all time. Rogers also had a significant if star-crossed career as a singer and solo artist for Chess Records, releasing the classic singles "That's All Right" and "Walking By Myself." In Blues All Day Long, Wayne Everett Goins mines seventy-five hours of interviews with Rogers' family, collaborators, and peers to follow a life spent in the blues. Goins' account takes Rogers from recording Chess classics and barnstorming across the South to a late-in-life renaissance that included new music, entry into the Blues Hall of Fame, and high profile tours with Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones. Informed and definitive, Blues All Day Long fills a gap in twentieth century music history with the story of one of the blues' eminent figures and one of the genre's seminal bands.
Brassroots Democracy recasts the birth of jazz, unearthing vibrant narratives of New Orleans musicians to reveal how early jazz was inextricably tied to the mass mobilization of freedpeople during Reconstruction and the decades that followed. Benjamin Barson presents a "music history from below," following the musicians as they built communes, performed at Civil Rights rallies, and participated in general strikes. Perhaps most importantly, Barson locates the first emancipatory revolution in the Americas—Haiti—as a nexus for cultural and political change in nineteenth-century Louisiana. In dialogue with the work of recent historians who have inverted traditional histories of Latin American and Caribbean independence by centering the influence of Haitian activists abroad, this work traces the impact of Haitian culture in New Orleans and its legacy in movements for liberation. Brassroots Democracy demonstrates how Black musicians infused participatory music practice with innovative forms of grassroots democracy. Late nineteenth-century Black brass bands and activists rehearsed these participatory models through collective performance that embodied the democratic ethos of Black Reconstruction. Termed "Brassroots Democracy," this fusion of political and musical spheres revolutionized both. Brassroots Democracy illuminates the Black Atlantic struggles that informed music-as-world-making from the Haitian Revolution through Reconstruction to the jazz revolution. The work theorizes the roots of the New Orleans brass band tradition in the social relations grown in maroon ecologies across the Americas. Their fruits contributed to the socio-sonic commons of the music we call jazz today.
