Read Books Online and Download eBooks, EPub, PDF, Mobi, Kindle, Text Full Free.
Norman Granz
Download Norman Granz full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Norman Granz ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
Download or read book Norman Granz written by Tad Hershorn and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-10-17 with total page 687 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Any book on my life would start with my basic philosophy of fighting racial prejudice. I loved jazz, and jazz was my way of doing that," Norman Granz told Tad Hershorn during the final interviews given for this book. Granz, who died in 2001, was iconoclastic, independent, immensely influential, often thoroughly unpleasant—and one of jazz’s true giants. Granz played an essential part in bringing jazz to audiences around the world, defying racial and social prejudice as he did so, and demanding that African-American performers be treated equally everywhere they toured. In this definitive biography, Hershorn recounts Granz’s story: creator of the legendary jam session concerts known as Jazz at the Philharmonic; founder of the Verve record label; pioneer of live recordings and worldwide jazz concert tours; manager and recording producer for numerous stars, including Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson.
Book Synopsis Collected Works by : Whitney Balliett
Download or read book Collected Works written by Whitney Balliett and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2002-04-15 with total page 892 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jazz critic for The New Yorker since 1957 and the author of some fifteen books, Whitney Balliett has spent a lifetime listening to and writing about jazz. "All first-rate criticism," he once wrote in a review, "first defines what we are confronting." He could as easily have been describing his own work. For nearly half a century, Balliett has been telling us, in his widely acclaimed pitch-perfect prose, what we are confronting when we listen to America's greatest—and perhaps only original—musical form. Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz 1954-2001 is a monumental achievement, capturing the full range and register of the jazz scene, from the very first Newport Jazz Festival to recent performances (in clubs and on CDs) by a rising generation of musicians. Here are definitive portraits of such major figures as Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Django Reinhardt, Martha Raye, Buddy Rich, Charles Mingus, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holliday, Art Tatum, Bessie Smith, and Earl Hines—a list that barely scratches the surface. Generations of readers have learned to listen to the music with Balliett's graceful guidance. For five decades he has captured those moments during which jazz history is made. Though Balliett's knowledge is an encyclopedic treasure, he has always written as if he were listening for the first time. Since its beginnings in New Orleans at the turn of the century, jazz has been restlessly and relentlessly evolving. This is an art form based on improvising, experimenting, shapeshifting—a constant work in progress of sounds and tonal shades, from swing and Dixieland, through boogie-woogie, bebop, and hard bop, to the "new thing," free jazz, abstract jazz, and atonal jazz. Yet, in all its forms, the music is forever sustained by what Balliett calls a "secret emotional center," an "aural elixir" that "reveals itself when an improvised phrase or an entire solo or even a complete number catches you by surprise." Balliett's celebrated essays invariably capture the so-called "sound of surprise"—and then share this sound with general readers, music students, jazz lovers, and popular American culture buffs everywhere. As The Los Angeles Times Book Review has observed, "Few people can write as well about anything as Balliett writes about jazz."
Book Synopsis Ella Fitzgerald by : Stuart Nicholson
Download or read book Ella Fitzgerald written by Stuart Nicholson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-07-22 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stuart Nicholson's biography of Ella Fitzgerald is considered a classic in jazz literature. Drawing on original documents, interviews, and new information, Nicholson draws a complete picture of Fitzgerald's professional and personal life. Fitzgerald rose from being a pop singer with chart-novelty hits in the late '30s to become a bandleader and then one of the greatest interpreters of American popular song. Along with Billie Holiday, she virtually defined the female voice in jazz, and countless others followed in her wake and acknowledged her enormous influence. Also includes two 8-page inse.
Book Synopsis To Be, Or Not-- to Bop by : Dizzy Gillespie
Download or read book To Be, Or Not-- to Bop written by Dizzy Gillespie and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 634 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: New York: Doubleday, 1979.
Book Synopsis Verve Collector's Edition by : Richard Havers
Download or read book Verve Collector's Edition written by Richard Havers and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2014-09-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From the label that signed America’s jazz legends in the ‘50s and ‘60s, a look at the music, its stars and its continuing influence." —People Hot on the heels of one of the most talked-about jazz books in years comes the musically-enhanced, strictly limited Collector’s Edition. Slipcased with vinyl reissues of ten legendary recordings on Verve, this is an exceptional opportunity to own a unique slice of jazz history. All recordings remastered at Abbey Road Studios Pressed onto 180g heavyweight vinyl for optimum sound quality All album sleeves printed with stunning original artwork Packaged in a dual-compartment cloth-bound display case Strictly limited to 500 copies worldwide Signed by the author Includes the following vinyl pressings: Charlie Parker, Charlie Parker With Strings (1950) Count Basie and His Orchestra, April in Paris (1955) Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues (1956) Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, Ella And Louis (1956) Stan Getz, Big Band Bossa Nova (1962) Quincy Jones and His Orchestra, Big Band Bossa Nova (1962) Bill Evans, Conversations With Myself (1963) The Oscar Peterson Trio, Night Train (1963) Jimmy Smith, The Cat (1964) George Benson, Giblet Gravy (1968)
Download or read book Duke's Diary written by Ken Vail and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume II of this two-volume set traces the artist's life and career month by month from the orchestra's return from an extended European tour in June 1950, to Ellington's death in 1974. Jazz historian and graphic designer Vail presents b & w photographs, newspaper reports, advertisements, reviews, and brief diary-type entries; he includes all known club, concert, theater, television, film, and jam sessions, as well as a selected list of recordings. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Jews and Jazz written by Charles B Hersch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-10-14 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Django written by Michael Dregni and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-11-01 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Django Reinhardt was arguably the greatest guitarist who ever lived, an important influence on Les Paul, Charlie Christian, B.B. King, Jerry Garcia, Chet Atkins, and many others. Yet there is no major biography of Reinhardt. Now, in Django, Michael Dregni offers a definitive portrait of this great guitarist. Handsome, charismatic, childlike, and unpredictable, Reinhardt was a character out of a picaresque novel. Born in a gypsy caravan at a crossroads in Belgium, he was almost killed in a freak fire that burned half of his body and left his left hand twisted into a claw. But with this maimed left hand flying over the frets and his right hand plucking at dizzying speed, Django became Europe's most famous jazz musician, commanding exorbitant fees--and spending the money as fast as he made it. Dregni not only chronicles this remarkably colorful life--including a fascinating account of gypsy culture--but he also sheds much light on Django's musicianship. He examines his long musical partnership with violinist Stéphane Grappelli--the one suave and smooth, the other sharper and more dissonant--and he traces the evolution of their novel string jazz ensemble, Quintette du Hot Club de France. Indeed, the author spotlights Django's amazing musical diversity, describing his swing-styled Nouveau Quintette, his big band Django's Music, and his later bebop ensemble, as well as his many compositions, including symphonic pieces influenced by Ravel and Debussy and his unfinished organ mass inspired by Bach. And along the way, the author offers vivid snapshots of the jazz scene in Paris--colorful portraits of Josephine Baker, Bricktop, Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, and countless others--and of Django's vagabond wanderings around France, Europe, and the United States, where he toured with Duke Ellington. Capturing the extraordinary life and times of one of the great musicians of the twentieth century, Django is a must-read portrait of a true original.
Book Synopsis The Clef/Verve Labels: The MGM era by :
Download or read book The Clef/Verve Labels: The MGM era written by and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums by : Will Friedwald
Download or read book The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums written by Will Friedwald and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of the magisterial A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers now approaches the great singers and their greatest work in an innovative and revelatory way: through considering their finest albums, which is the format in which this music was most resonantly organized and presented to its public from the 1940s until the very recent decline of the CD. It is through their albums that Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan, Nat King Cole, Judy Garland, and the rest of the glorious honor roll of jazz and pop singers have been most tellingly and lastingly appreciated, and the history of the album itself, as Will Friedwald sketches it, can now be seen as a crucial part of musical history. We come to understand that, at their finest, albums have not been mere collections of individual songs strung together arbitrarily but organic phenomena in their own right. A Sinatra album, a Fitzgerald album, was planned and structured to show these artists at their best, at a specific moment in their artistic careers. Yet the albums Friedwald has chosen to anatomize go about their work in a variety of ways. There are studio and solo albums: Lee’s Black Coffee, June Christy’s Something Cool, Cassandra Wilson’s Belly of the Sun. There are brilliant collaborations: famous ones—Tony Bennett and Bill Evans, Louis Armstrong and Oscar Peterson—and wonderful surprises like Doris Day and Robert Goulet singing Annie Get Your Gun. There are theme albums—Dinah Washington singing Fats Waller, Maxine Sullivan singing Andy Razaf, Margaret Whiting singing Jerome Kern, Barb Jungr singing Bob Dylan, and the sublime Jo Stafford singing American and Scottish folk songs. There are also stunning concert albums like Ella in Berlin, Sarah in Japan, Lena at the Waldorf, and, of course, Judy at Carnegie Hall. All the greats are on hand, from Kay Starr and Carmen McRae to Jimmy Scott and Della Reese (Della Della Cha Cha Cha). And, from out of left field, the astounding God Bless Tiny Tim. Each of the fifty-seven albums discussed here captures the artist at a high point, if not at the expected moment, of her or his career. The individual cuts are evaluated, the sequencing explicated, the songs and songwriters heralded; anecdotes abound of how songs were born and how artists and producers collaborated. And in appraising each album, Friedwald balances his own opinions with those of musicians, listeners, and critics. A monumental achievement, The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums is an essential book for lovers of American jazz and popular music.
Download or read book To Care Enough written by Bob Fine and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2014-05-07 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than fifty years, Bob Fine taught in family studies, education, religious studies, human services, and the Holocaust. He also worked professionally in human services, bringing his academic interests to bear on real-life problems of people in distress. In this new collection of essays, he explores his own life journey-from a difficult childhood to his cherished role as father and grandfather-and argues with passion and wit on such wide-ranging topics as parenting, public education, bigotry, violence, and the life-affirming properties of American jazz.
Book Synopsis Profiles in Jazz by : Raymond Horricks
Download or read book Profiles in Jazz written by Raymond Horricks and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly personal collection of jazz portraits--centered around the towering figure of Duke Ellington--with the unabashedly didactic intent of publicizing, promoting, and encouraging listeners at all levels of sophistication to hear jazz anew. And it will. (c) by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.
Book Synopsis The Rise of a Jazz Art World by : Paul Douglas Lopes
Download or read book The Rise of a Jazz Art World written by Paul Douglas Lopes and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-05-30 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 2002 book presents a unique sociological vision of the evolution of jazz in the twentieth century. Analysing organizational structures and competing discourses in American music, Paul Lopes shows how musicians and others transformed the meaning and practice of jazz. Set against the distinct worlds of high art and popular art in America, the rise of a jazz art world is shown to be a unique movement - a socially diverse community struggling in various ways against cultural orthodoxy. Cultural politics in America is shown to be a dynamic, open, and often contradictory process of constant re-interpretation. This work is a compelling social history of American culture that incorporates various voices in jazz, including musicians, critics, collectors, producers and enthusiasts. Accessibly written and interdisciplinary in approach, it will be of great interest to scholars and students of sociology, cultural studies, social history, American studies, African-American studies, and jazz studies.
Download or read book Charlie Parker written by Carl Woideck and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2020-07-16 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Saxophonist Charlie Parker (1920-1955) was one of the most innovative and influential jazz musicians of any era. As one of the architects of modern jazz (often called "bebop"), Charlie Parker has had a profound effect on American music. His music reached such a high level of melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic sophistication that saxophonists and other instrumentalists continue to study it as both a technical challenge and an aesthetic inspiration. This revised edition of Charlie Parker: His Music and Life has been revised throughout to account for new Charlie Parker scholarship and previously unknown Parker recordings that have emerged since the book’s initial publication. The volume opens by considering current research on Parker’s biography, laying out some of the contradictory accounts of his life, and setting the chronology straight where possible. It then focuses on Parker’s music, tracing his artistic evolution and major achievements as a jazz improviser. The musical discussions and transcribed musical examples include timecodes for easy location in recordings—a unique feature to this book.
Book Synopsis Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song by : Judith Tick
Download or read book Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song written by Judith Tick and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An NPR 2023 "Books We Love" Pick • A Kirkus Best Nonfiction Book of 2023 A landmark biography that reclaims Ella Fitzgerald as a major American artist and modernist innovator. Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996) possessed one of the twentieth century’s most astonishing voices. In this first major biography since Fitzgerald’s death, historian Judith Tick offers a sublime portrait of this ambitious risk-taker whose exceptional musical spontaneity made her a transformational artist. Becoming Ella Fitzgerald clears up long-enduring mysteries. Archival research and in-depth family interviews shed new light on the singer’s difficult childhood in Yonkers, New York, the tragic death of her mother, and the year she spent in a girls’ reformatory school—where she sang in its renowned choir and dreamed of being a dancer. Rarely seen profiles from the Black press offer precious glimpses of Fitzgerald’s tense experiences of racial discrimination and her struggles with constricting models of Black and white femininity at midcentury. Tick’s compelling narrative depicts Fitzgerald’s complicated career in fresh and original detail, upending the traditional view that segregates vocal jazz from the genre’s mainstream. As she navigated the shifting tides between jazz and pop, she used her originality to pioneer modernist vocal jazz. Interpreting long-lost setlists, reviews from both white and Black newspapers, and newly released footage and recordings, the book explores how Ella’s transcendence as an improvisor produced onstage performances every bit as significant as her historic recorded oeuvre. From the singer’s first performance at the Apollo Theatre’s famous “Amateur Night” to the Savoy Ballroom, where Fitzgerald broke through with Chick Webb’s big band in the 1930s, Tick evokes the jazz world in riveting detail. She describes how Ella helped shape the bebop movement in the 1940s, as she joined Dizzy Gillespie and her then-husband, Ray Brown, in the world-touring Jazz at the Philharmonic, one of the first moments of high-culture acceptance for the disreputable art form. Breaking ground as a female bandleader, Fitzgerald refuted expectations of musical Blackness, deftly balancing artistic ambition and market expectations. Her legendary exploration of the Great American Songbook in the 1950s fused a Black vocal aesthetic and jazz improvisation to revolutionize the popular repertoire. This hybridity often confounded critics, yet throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Ella reached audiences around the world, electrifying concert halls, and sold millions of records. A masterful biography, Becoming Ella Fitzgerald describes a powerful woman who set a standard for American excellence nearly unmatched in the twentieth century.
Download or read book Swing to Bop written by Ira Gitler and published by New York : Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1985 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than fifty major figures in jazz preserve for posterity their recollections of how jazz moved from the big band era in the late 1930s and 1940s into the modern jazz period.
Book Synopsis Myself Among Others by : George Wein
Download or read book Myself Among Others written by George Wein and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2009-02-18 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No one has had a better seat in the house than George Wein. The legendary impresario has known the most celebrated figures of music in general and jazz in particular--from Duke Ellington to Ella Fitzgerald to Miles Davis to Frank Sinatra. As a founder of the Newport Jazz Festival, the Newport Folk Festival, and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Wein has brought a dazzling spectrum of musicians to millions of fans, forever changing the musical landscape.In this highly praised memoir, Wein looks back on his life and career, describing his unforgettable relationships--sometimes smooth, sometimes tempestuous--with the great musicians he has known. From what really happened when Charlie Mingus visited the White House...to how Miles Davis and the ensemble that would eventually record the greatest jazz album of all time--Kind of Blue--came together at Wein's Storyville nightclub...to the day at Newport when Bob Dylan first "went electric," here are the personalities and forces that have shaped the past half-century of popular music.
