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In this, one of the strangest books about writing and language you're likely ever to read, fiction writer and philosophy professor Gass spins off into an improvisational inquiry into the nature of words and consciousness, using as his departure point the concept of the color blue--the idea of blue, the state of blue, the uses of blue...the bluenesses of blue. It's kind of hard to sum up, and if it sounds weird, it is--but it's also wonderful.
Book Description
BLUE PENCILS, blue noses, blue movies, laws, and stockings. The dumps, mopes, Mondays; the ocean, the sky, and the deep, deep ice. The Whale. Jay. Ribbon. Fin. The grass in Kentucky. The china in Grandmother's pantry. Of all the colors, blue has the widest range of associations, and the widest bandwidth of emotional tints and shades. It is therefore the most suitable color of interior life. Whether slick light sharp high bright and thin or low deep sweet thick dark and soft, blue moves easily among them all, and all profoundly qualify our states of feeling. This eccentric essay into the "world of blue" is the heart of the heart of Gass's oeuvre.
Customer Reviews:
Women Readers Beware.......2004-12-17
Linguistic creme brulee. Rich, ornate, evocative; more than a philosophical inquiry, a an almost stream-of-consciousness meditation on the ways in which the word blue has been used by literature and culture in the twentieth century. A mood piece.
Be forewarned: Gass's standards are utterly bizarre, and his "blue period" is misogynistic in the extreme. He relishes the tumescent meanings of blueness, but the only good "blue" scenes, in his view, are those that describe violent rape or abuse. Only if a woman is black and blue and bleeding does the blueness of the language succeed.
Not for the faint-hearted, and far more Sade than sexy. Expect no wisdom, but read it for what it is: a peculiar man's lyrical virtuosity.
Keep At It.......2004-02-04
If I am any sort of example, you will not be sure what this book is about, until you're through. Keep at it. On the way, it's one of the most wondrous pieces of writing I've encountered. When you're there, if I am any sort of example, you will weep (for the joy of affirmation, mostly) and start again.
Contradictory meanings of blue, erotic, electric, heavenly.........2003-07-14
A witty essay on the different shades of blue in our language, from blue jacket, blue bells, blue nose, blue laws, my blue heaven, and lady sings the blues.
It's an enjoyable 91 pages, buzzing with rhetorical questions to inspire thought, frank discussions of formerly bad words (well, they may have yet been obscene when this was first published), pleasantly deconstructing erotic excerpts from Barth and a few other novelists. A breezy book.
Dazzling.......2000-01-19
Gass is a dazzling writer, vastly too dazzling sometimes. Buy Omensetter's Luck, if you have not read it, plus click on In the Heart of the Heart of the Country & plead for reprinting. The first book of Gass litcrit, Fiction and the Figures of Life, in which Gass wonders about the wisdom of writing like Gass would soon be writing himself, is also awfully interesting. Have a ball, if you just must buy this book, but know that you are contributing to general academic diddling.
Thoroughly enjoyable!.......2000-01-09
A great read! This interesting study on language has the added benefit of shocking anyone who rudely reads a few lines over your shoulder.
Book Description
Blue has a long and topsy-turvy history in the Western world. Once considered a hot color, it is now icy cool. The ancient Greeks scorned it as ugly and barbaric, but most Americans and Europeans now pick it as their favorite color. In this entertaining history, the renowned medievalist Michel Pastoureau traces the changing meanings of blue from its rare appearances in prehistoric art to its international ubiquity today in blue jeans and Gauloises cigarette packs.
Any history of color is, above all, a social history. Pastoureau investigates how the ever-changing role of blue in society has been reflected in manuscripts, stained glass, heraldry, clothing, paintings, and popular culture. Beginning with the almost total absence of blue from ancient Western art and language, the story moves to medieval Europe. As people began to associate blue with the Virgin Mary, the color entered the Church despite the efforts of chromophobic prelates. Blue was reborn as a royal color in the twelfth century and functioned as a formidable political and military force through the French Revolution. As blue triumphed in the modern era, new shades were created, and blue became the color of romance. Finally, Pastoureau follows blue into contemporary times, when military clothing gave way to the everyday uniform of blue jeans, and blue became the universal and unifying color of the Earth as seen from space.
With an exceptionally elegant design and strikingly illustrated with one hundred color plates, Blue tells the fascinating history of our favorite color and the cultures that have hated it, loved it, and created great art with it.
Customer Reviews:
True Blue.......2007-08-13
If you are absolutely crazy over the color Blue as much as I am, that is being particularly supercharged,cutting-edge,thrill seeker,tuned in,tuned out,frenzied,hyperactive,eagle-eyed,intense,no pretense,pushy,out-spoken,well-spoken,multi-processing,multi-tasking,multi gigabit per second mental clock rate,obsessive,recessive,demanding,unforgiving and most of all perfectionist lover of Blue, Please for your own sake buy this book. For the price and for what it gives,true value for money,and makes your glass of wine taste much better when you sip it while reading this book.
Antiquarian treasure.......2007-05-10
Thank you for providing me so quickly with a volume difficult to find! The condition of the book was pristine, the contents worth waiting for!
Peacock.......2002-12-18
Only a Frenchman could have written this. Gorgeously illustrated, divertingly precious, breath-takingly arrogant, and close to useless. Pastoureau speculates, tells us how shamefully others have speculated, and then speculates some more. His arrogance, Francophilia, and contempt for people whose previous work does not meet his standards (and lord knows what they are) all work to ruin what could have been an exiciting book. He has a point to make, and darned if chronology, sense, or vision will keep him from doing so. A true history of the color awaits. Hopefully it will come in as pretty a package.
A great readable scholarly book with pictures !.......2002-03-14
Thoroughly researched and compellingly interesting, the story of how the West's modern times favorite color emerged from the middle ages. Lively, vivid, a great & beautiful book.
YGG
From sacred blue to blue jeans...........2002-02-18
Woad, Indigo, Azurite, Lapis, Copper Silicate, Blue Vitriol are some of the sources of the color blue. BLUE, THE HISTORY OF A COLOR, by Michel Pastoureau, is a beautiful art history book, whose organizing principle is the color--blue. Pastoureau's book is a bit "Francocentered" but nevertheless, who better to reflect on blue than a Frenchman. BLUE is both informative and entertaining and a must for any serious art book collector. The photgraphy of various works of art--including selected stained glass windows from the early church--is stunning. The book is loaded with illustrations showing pages from psalters, cathedral windows, figurines, and other art.
For millions of years, the major colors for artistic expression were Black-White-Red. Ancient tales such as "Little Red Riding Hood", "Snow White", and "The Fox and the Crow" reflect this primary triad. The Romans considered blue an inferior color, especially since the Celts up North had discovered the leaves from the Woad plant could be made into a beautiful blue "pastel" suitable for body painting. The liturgal colors of the Catholic Church date from Roman times and are red-white-black (green was added later). However, at some point between the time the Romans lost Europe and the Catholic Church reentered recorded history, blue became associated with Mary the mother of Christ. When Abbe Suger built St. Denis, blue began to rival red for supremacy within the church, although blue never became a vestment color. When St. Louis built his Chapel and the Capet family became the rulers of France with Mary as their patron, the fleur de lis on a blue background became the family standard and the flag of France (fleur de lis = lily of Mary, although it may be a blue flag or iris).
No sooner had blue become THE color of colors, than the Protestants (Pastoureau calls them "Chromoclasts") demanded everything be turned black to reflect sin and penance. After they smashed a few thousand church windows, these reformers, who have been linked to capitalism, turned everything else black -- from telephones to automobiles. As Henry Ford once said, the customer can have any color he wants as long as it's black. Black went on to became the dress of high society--from stove pipe hats to tuxedoes to the little black dress.
During the Reformation, red and white had been dismissed by the Protestants but the shot heard round the world gave them a second chance as the new red-white-blue and blue-white-red flags led to military pants and coats in similar colors. But red and white were a dismal failure as they made targets of their wearers. Blue blends into the horizon so it has lasted longer as a battle garment. Although jungle fatigues and black commando suits are more often than not seen on modern battlefields, mess dress is still blue-white-red for many, and UN soldiers wear fleur-de-lis blue helmets. Blue eventually replaced black on the social front as descendents of the "Puritans" gave up black frocks for navy blue blazers and jeans.
Pastoureau covers iconography, iconology, symbolism, sociology, ethnology, the economic aspects of weaving, dyeing, and manufacture, and a host of other topics associated with the color blue. The book is incredibly rich in detail but far too short, and in the end it raises more questions than it addresses. Pastoureau points to many historical sources that have yet to be translated or fully examined, and art history majors looking for a thesis subject would be well advised to check out this book.
Book Description
Robert Johnson's story presents a fascinating paradox: Why did this genius of the Delta blues excite so little interest when his records were first released in the 1930s? And how did this brilliant but obscure musician come to be hailed long after his death as the most important artist in early blues and a founding father of rock 'n' roll?
Elijah Wald provides the first thorough examination of Johnson's work and makes it the centerpiece for a fresh look at the entire history of the blues. He traces the music's rural folk roots but focuses on its evolution as a hot, hip African-American pop style, placing the great blues stars in their proper place as innovative popular artists during one of the most exciting periods in American music. He then goes on to explore how the image of the blues was reshaped by a world of generally white fans, with very different standards and dreams.
The result is a view of the blues from the inside, based not only on recordings but also on the recollections of the musicians themselves, the African-American press, and original research. Wald presents previously unpublished studies of what people on Delta plantations were actually listening to during the blues era, showing the larger world in which Johnson's music was conceived. What emerges is a new respect and appreciation for the creators of what many consider to be America's deepest and most influential music.
Wald also discusses how later fans formed a new view of the blues as haunting Delta folklore. While trying to separate fantasy from reality, he accepts that neither the simple history nor the romantic legend is the whole story. Each has its own fascinating history, and it is these twin histories that inform this book.
Customer Reviews:
Robert Johnson -- Still not the whole story.......2007-05-07
Escaping The Delta should be one of the first books a blues novice reads as it helps fill out the outline of the music, the role of the delta and the music of Robert Johnson who did escape the delta only to be drawn back to die in its mystery and danger. There was a lot more to say about Robert Johnson and the delta at the time this book was written: very little original oral history research has been done in recent years (with the exception of the recent Howlin' Wolf book), very little extensive research into European blues magazines (the only first person interviews of the classic blues musicians -- few were done in America) has been done because full collections are hard to find (if they exist), and the author failed to interview the only people alive who really knew Robert Johnson (Honeyboy Edwards,Robert Lockwood Jr., and Robert Townsend for example). Thus little new light is shed on Johnson's life, even where he is actually buried (in Little Zion church on the Money Mississippi road outside of Greenwood) and why he is there and not thrown into the river as most bluesmen would have been. With all respect to Mr. Ward who has written an excellent book, I did all of that research in the process of researching the lives of Alex "Rice" Miller (Sonny Boy Williamson II) and Robert Lockwood Jr.. I did have the opportunity to communicate with Ward about his Josh White book (Sonny Boy Williamson II played on his last album). There is more to say on the history of the blues and the delta as well as Robert Johnson.
Not What It Says It Is.......2007-01-12
This volume is a book about something. But its not about Robert Johnson, its not about escaping the Delta, and its hardly about the blues. It is more a rambling chronology of popular music, and the ways in which Blues is nested into that overall context. It is as much or more about musicians other than blues musicians. And when it focuses on "blues musicians", it goes to great and repeated lengths to demonstrate they were not really "Blues" musicians at all. We understand them to be such today, the author labors, because Blues sold. In fact, the author repeats, the "Blues" musicians we have come to revere liked to play, and did play, other kinds of music as much or more than blues, including ragtime, tin pan alley, fife and drum and spirituals. See? They weren't really blues players at all. They were versatile musicians forced into this genre by the music business, many of them preferring to play something other than blues. Huh.
Further, the author posits that latter day (white?) blues musicians are not really playing the blues either. They are acting "as if", affecting musical styles and inflections that are not their own. Sort of make believe blues performing. Imitating the blues musicians of yore, and not authentically expressing themselves in their own right. Despite Fred McDowell's and John Lee Hooker's assertion that "the Blues is a feeling", the author would apparently have us believe that it was only THEIR feeling, not one available to others.
Suffice it to say, the author and I do not share a fundamental view of what the Blues is. Would I buy, read, or reccommend this book. No, no and no. It isn't what it says it is. And what it is is superficial in its depth of understanding of Blues expression, and how and where that happens.
Wonderful!.......2005-12-04
This was a great book and a must-have in any music biography library. It's more than a music biography though. Many of us in this day and age have a mythical idea of who Robert Johnson was, we've all heard the story of how he learned to play guitar by selling his soul to the devil at the crossroads and other such lore, but this book cuts through all that and gets down to the real brass tacks: Robert Johnson was anything but popular in his time, when bands like the Mississippi Sheiks were much more popular.
The historical information in the book is fascinating, it strips away all of our romantic notions about juke joints and mythological bluesmen and shows the real Delta of the early part of this century: gritty, unbelievably impoverished and depressed, dangerous and frightening. Truly the land that begat the blues.
This book is truly excellent.
A Refreshing Insight.......2005-08-24
Elijah Wald's book is outstanding in the sense that he not only gives an insight to the music, but also the the personalities of second-generation bluesmen, with a strong emphasis on Robert Johnson. Mr. Wald has speculated somewhat on what has not been recorded, but much of this is corroborated in one way or the other, mostly based on interviews. The opinions and memories conveyed might have been warped, twisted or recolletions embellished, nevertheless, I strongly believe that this shall stand the test of time and stay as one of the alternatives to the romantic and platonically idealized view of the "bluesman".
I did not read the book as an academic work, but as an in-depth story of Robert Johnson, his predecessors and successors. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Mr. Wald's approach was objective and far from the forced devotion that some hardcore fans of delta blues have shown. As art creates its heroes after they have lived, the concept of the delta bluesman is stereotypically formed in the minds of most people. This is especially emphasized in liner notes, booklets in box sets, and even in some books. Yes, they might have been hard-drinking, womanizing, dangerous people who have shown the delicate side to their personalities in their music and lyrics, but the fact that first and foremost they were entertainers of high calibre is frequently overlooked.
Robert Johnson has only one recorded solo, his lyrics do not have consistency, but John Hammond has selected Johnson for the famed concerts in 1938. The music had already changed by the time the British Blues Explosion took place, but the neo-bluesmen had to find some heroes to identify themselves with. Bluesmen who had died young, hoboed from town to town, drank and smoked excessively and played around with women fitted perfectly with their conception of life, which evolved into sex, drugs and rock'n roll.
I believe that Mr Wald's book is invaluable for uncovering this mystique about the bluesmen, and helping us blues lovers in accepting these people as "people" first.
A Book Above All Others.......2005-04-26
Elijah Wald has put together not only a wonderful testimony to Robert Johnson but has created an excellent introduction to the birth of the blues. After having enjoyed the read, I now have an excellent reference book to all the blues artists (and their songs) that I've known and many he introduced to me for the first time. Elijah's passion for the blues is very apparent and he has enhanced my blues passion all that much more. "Satisfied and tickled too"
Book Description
Why is the sky blue?
Parents don't know what to say when their children ask.
Why the Sky Is Blue answers this ancient and surprisingly complex question in a more entertaining and accessible way than ever before. Götz Hoeppe takes the reader on a historical and scientific journey to show the various ways people in different times and places have explained why the sky looks blue. The richly illustrated story begins with ancient myths and philosophy and ends with the cutting-edge science of optics, statistical physics, and ozone depletion. Most importantly, it is the story of how scientists discovered that the sky's blue depends on life on Earth and the makeup of our planet's ozone layer. Without microbial life's impact on the composition of the atmosphere, the clear daytime sky would probably lack its distinctive color. And without the ozone, the twilight sky's color would also be very different--not the sapphire tone of l'heure bleue, but rather a yellowish or greenish hue.
Why the Sky Is Blue shows that skylight can be viewed from a surprising variety of vantage points. We learn how our physiology and cognitive capacities govern our perception of the sky's color. And we discover why this everyday experience has been such a source of fascination and controversy over the centuries.
Delightful and intriguing, Why the Sky Is Blue shows how the attempt to answer this age-old and deceptively simple question only enhances the magic of the blue sky we see above us.
Customer Reviews:
An adult's answer to a child's question.......2007-07-16
This book could as easily have been titled "Is the Sky Blue?" And the answer to that is yes and no.
Gotz Hoeppe, a German science journalist, points out that the sky near the horizon, if clear, is whitish not blue.
So when a child asks her father, "Daddy, why is the sky blue?" one answer could be: Take a closer look.
A longer, yet still incomplete, answer would be: Light from the sun hits viruses and molecules of gas in the atmosphere and is reflected as blue light. The sky itself -- mostly nitrogen and oxygen -- is colorless.
Figuring this out took a long time. The Greeks about 2,500 years ago were the first to become dissatisfied with mythical answers, but although they put a lot of effort into proposing reasons, they did not know how to test them.
Hoeppe traces the thinking of prescientific physicists through 2,000 years before getting to the period when real answers started to be found.
"Why is the sky blue?" is a childish question but answering it was not child's play. The first clues began to be teased out 400 years ago, and the big breakthrough came with Isaac Newton's experiments showing that white light is composed of colors, including, of course, sky blue. Newton published "Opticks" in 1704.
Some of his ideas were wrong, which began to be recognized about 50 years later. It took another hundred years to straighten most things out, but another 50 after that for Albert Einstein (and others) to explain the weird qualities of light.
One of the interesting things about "Why the Sky is Blue" is that as a German, Hoeppe spreads credit for the development of physics farther east than most popular scientific histories in English do.
He also presents a number of phenomena that readers can try out in their backyards.
For example, the "blue hour." When the sun goes down, the sky stays blue for a while. The hue is almost, but not quite, the same in the blue hour as during bright daylight, but the mechanism for producing it is entirely unrelated.
A careful look at the sky, with Hoeppe's guidance, will reveal a number of other curiosities that we tend to overlook.
Unfortunately, Hoeppe's guidance goes awry in his summation, when he raises the alarm about what increased carbon dioxide is likely to mean for the blue sky.
The answer, very likely, is nothing, thanks to clouds and other buffering effects, but -- astonishingly -- Hoeppe manages to write about greenhouse gases for two chapters without mentioning the most important one -- water vapor.
It wouldn't hurt to skip Chapter 10.
Book Description
Winner of the 2004 Prix Saint-Exupéry, an award given yearly to the best illustrated picture book in France by the family of The Little Prince author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry .
In the big gray city,
Lived a little boy who never played...
With A Blue So Blue, Jean-François Dumont has created an outstanding picture book that will dazzle the eye, stir the imagination, and warm the heart. The exquisitely written tale whisks children off of a fantastic journey across land and sea. Every page features breathtaking paintings, rich in color and detail. It is simply a magical tour de force of illustration and storytelling.
The adventure begins with a little boy's marvelous dream of a perfect blue, a blue both soft and strong, a blue so blue you want to curl up inside it. Armed with a paintbrush, he travels the globe in search of this special color--from a famous art gallery to a mid-Atlantic fishing boat, from a remote blues club in the Mississippi Delta to a sun-drenched desert with a purple sky--only to realize that what he was looking for was right in his very own home after all.
Customer Reviews:
Kind of Blue.......2005-11-19
"Diva," the 1981 thriller directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix, contains a brief shot of a blue vase so beautiful that I remember the experience of that color more than I do most of the characters. The vase had little or nothing to do with the plot; I suspect that Beineix or his cinematographer was simply enthralled with the apperception of that one particular shade.
"A Blue So Blue" is similarly concerned with sensation and aesthetic experience. A young, artistic boy dreams one night of the color blue-but not just any blue. He tries to find that one kind of blue when he awakens. He rummages through his paints and goes to the art museum in search of "the right blue...the blue of his dreams." He even dips his wet paintbrush onto the paintings to sample their blues! A guard suggests that maybe the "Big Blue Sea" is the blue of his dreams. He goes there, but it not the blue he is looking for. A sailor suggests the South Sea, and the boy, in a magnificent 2-page spread, is pictured sailing through a storm towards a tropical island. He dips his paintbrush into the South Sea sky, into a guitar's blue notes in Mississippi, and into an African chief''s blue turban. Finally, the boy finds his blue, and it's a little like "The Wizard of Oz": All the time it was in his own backyard (or front yard, or wherever his mother is).
Unlike the blue vase in Diva, the book's cover does not convey the experience of reading "A Blue So Blue." Jean-Francois Dumont's imaginative, dramatic, gorgeous pictures won the prestigious France's Saint-Exupery Award for the best-illustrated children's book of 2004. Dumont captures the essence of the different settings as well as the emotional climate. Furthermore, Dumont writes colorfully, evoking the boy's adventures and longing in both prose and rhyme. Here's just one example of the boy many attempts to convey his dreamed-of blue:
"'Night after night I've been dreaming of blue,' the little boy said. `A blue so blue it's both precious and plain. A blue so blue, it's hard to explain. Can you help me find the blue of my dreams?'"
Dumont employs his own `precious and plain' half-rhyming prose to narrate the boy's adventures and the advice given by the various well-meaning adults. "A Blue So Blue" speaks to-and shows us--the joy of art and painting, and the sometimes-incomprehensible mixture of beauty with emotion. Children will love the strong portrayals of the guard, the sailor, the blues guitarist, and the searching boy, as well as his voyages and eventual return to his blue-eyed mother. The illustrations have a vibrant immediacy and truth that will appeal to a wide age range. Produced on high quality paper with excellent color reproduction, this book's presents an authentic and memorable aesthetic experience in a very accessible context. Very highly recommended.
A Blue So Blue.......2005-09-06
This was the perfect book for a daughter who is also a mother whose eyes are so blue, but the story was marginal. I would not buy it for my grandchildren, it wasn't entertaining enough. The pictures would appeal to adults more than children. But for my purposes it was perfect.
truly an award winning book.......2005-02-18
This is a wonderful book. I bought it to read to my three year old and both of us love it. The illustrations are beautiful, the prose is brilliant, and the story is magical. Every time we read it, it sparks a new discussion. I have no doubt this will be a favorite for years to come. This is truly an award winning book.
Average customer rating:
- Delightful book for children
- We love Blue Dog!
- A bright, vividly illustrated picturebook
- Big Dog is a Big Hit
- Great book for introducing more names for colors...
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Why Is Blue Dog Blue?
George Rodrigue
Manufacturer: Stewart, Tabori and Chang
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ASIN: 1584791624 |
Book Description
For years Blue Dog's bold blueness has captivated adults. Now children get to join in the fun when they open this vibrant book, which finally answers the question we've all wondered about since we first met Blue Dog's riveting stare: Why is Blue Dog blue? Blue Dog's creator, George Rodrigue, takes readers on a playful tour of his unique color world. In it, he combines preposterous puns with all-new whimsical Blue Dog silkscreens to go where other color guides are too yellow-bellied to tread. Readers of all ages will giggle as Blue Dog changes color from red or green to auburn or chartreuse. By the end of the book, they will see that the artist's reasoning is both logical and magical: Blue Dog simply had to be blue.
Customer Reviews:
Delightful book for children.......2007-05-07
The little girl I gave it to loved it! Beautifully produced.
We love Blue Dog!.......2003-02-28
My infant son and I love "Why is Blue Dog Blue?". He is just 6 months old, but he loves looking at Blue Dog, particularly the shiny cover version, and I enjoy the lively text and rich illustration.
A bright, vividly illustrated picturebook.......2002-05-17
Written and illustrated by George Rodrigues, Why Is Blue Dog Blue?: A Tale Of Colors is a bright, vividly illustrated picturebook for easy readers showcasing a wide range of colors using the image of a personable dog. From cherry red to mustard yellow and salmon pink, Why Is Blue Dog Blue? presents a brilliant color array along with very simple text for young people. A most enjoyable book for little ones, Why Is Blue Dog Blue? is highly recommended for young readers in the process of learning about colors.
Big Dog is a Big Hit.......2002-04-06
This is a wonderful book! It's a surprisingly inventive and original take on colors. Children will want to read it over and over and adults will enjoy the compelling text and innovative design. The illustrations do a terrific job supporting this unique approach to looking at and thinking about color.
Great book for introducing more names for colors..........2002-04-04
I found this book great for teaching young children that there is more to colors than the usual ROYGBIV.
Book Description
With a career that exemplified the maturation of romantic black pop into a sophisticated form spanning social and sexual polities, Marvin Gaye was one of the most consistent and enigmatic of the Motown hit makers. Through interviews with many of the artists and record-company employees closest to the singer, Edmonds examines in detail the making of the legendary What's Going On. In an era of Vietnam and civil rights protests, Gaye's determination and vision resulted not only in inspirational, pioneering grooves but in an album that challenged America to take a long, hard look at itself.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent book, very detailed.......2003-12-23
All Marvin Gaye Fans Should Have This Book. Alicia Keys Turn Me On To This Book, Thank You Alicia
Great Book!.......2003-07-02
This book is wonderful! It gives a full account of the concept behind this wonderful album, which stood the test of time! To get the full effect, order the "What's Going On" Deluxe Edition!
Not only for Marvin fanatics..........2003-01-16
I've read all of the books written about Marvin and picked this up to add to the collection, expecting it to be little more than expanded liner notes for the album. Wow. Very wrong. The book ends up encompassing Marvin's entire life through the scope of his most acclaimed work. It's beautifully written, unfolding more like a novel than you'd ever expect. It's a genuinely moving look at a true artist taking the boldest step of his...and arguably any other musician's...life. I can't recommend this highly enough, both as an admirer of Marvin's and as someone who just likes to read a great book.
Arguably One of the Greatest Albums Period.......2002-01-12
should be more like it.what can you say about the Album "what's Going On"?Mind Blowing to this day.solid all the way around.the kind of Album that is timeless&moves you especially now in light of recent events.Marvin Gaye is one of those Artists in His League&this Book showcases that.also Madd Props to all the Great minds that Contributed to this Classic Album&it reflected then as it does now.War,Sex,Race,Religion,Class,&The World&it's Surroundings.Read the Book&Listen to the album they both will grab your full attention.
Book Description
Otis Redding's definitive southern soul voice resonates down the years as a sound of profound beauty and unfathomable emotional depth. His unique vocal delivery gave Motown's pop artists a run for their money, while his stage presence matched that of pioneering funk magus James Brown for sheer entertainment value. Rising quickly from obscurity and poised for crossover success, he was tragically killed on December 10, 1967 -- only a week after recording the single called "(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay" -- when his private plane crashed into Lake Monoma, near Madison, Wisconsin. In this, the first serious book on the soul legend, Geoff Brown talks to Stax illuminati Booker T. Jones, Isaac Hayes, and David Porter, plus many others, about Redding's tragically brief life and incredible talent.
Customer Reviews:
Pass on this one.......2007-01-15
This book was pretty dissappointing. The author did virtually nothing except turn on a tape recorder and let Yank speak, and then transcribe his monolog. The publisher did nothing excpect slap the pages betweeen a softcover wrapper.
The author provided no or very little historical context of the subject or the music; if it's there, then it is so short and shallow that I missed it. The only discussion of other musians and music is what Yank provides.
For example, there is virtually no real description of how this son-of-a-share-cropper learned to play mandolin or develop his style (heavy tremolo) of music. All Yank said is that he got hold of a mandolin and started fooling around with it. This is the sort of basic information that should have been explored in fuller detail.
On the other hand, maybe I was just looking for something else. Perhaps, if you're into studying Southern culture, you'll find this book useful. But even then, you'd better come with some knowledge of the culture of rural West Tennessee in the first half of the 20th century or you'll miss out on a lot of what Yank is describing. Again, the author could have provided supplemental detail and context.
Well done oral history of unsung blues hero.......2001-10-15
Richard Congress has championed the music of the late Yank Rachell, one of the few blues artists to record extensively on the mandolin. Congress has made available some of rachell's hard to fine post-war recordings on his Random Chance label as well as put together Rachell's oral history. The first 100 or so pages are devoted to Rachell's recollections and if some parts are sketchy, its because Rachell's death prevented Congress from fleshing out more details. Rachell's association with John Estes and others in the neglected Jackson, Tennessee music scene is discussed as is his life as a travelling musician, as well as his pursuits of daytime employment unlike others he played with. He recounts playing in St. Louis and then recording, Big Joe Williams and John Lee "Sonny Boy Williamson" and his early recordings as well as moving up to Indianopolis for the last years of his life. The oral history is supplemented by Rich Delgrosso's discussion of Yank's mandolin style, David Evans' distillation of Yank's guitar playing and recollections of those who came under Yank's spell including Henry Townsend and Charlie Musselwhite. A full discography of Yank's recordings, both as a leader and an accompanist is provided. In summary, this is a very nicely put together volume that provides us with a window into a slice of the blues past often neglected.
Discusses the mandolin instrument's contributions to blues.......2001-09-11
Richard Congress' Blues Mandolin Man provides a biography of the life and music of Yank Rachell, a 1960s blues mandolin performer. This is his first biography, and one of the few books to discuss the mandolin instrument's contributions to blues.
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