Product Description
by Herlin Riley and Johnny Vidacovich: This cool book and CD set traces the evolution of New Orleans jazz and second-line drumming from the early styles of ragtime and traditional jazz to their modern applications in contemporary jazz.
Customer Reviews:
Down Home Drums.......2007-05-12
This is THE book about the heart and soul of New Orleans druming styles.
Back Cover Blurbs-Check them out!.......2005-10-07
JIM KELTNER: A great feast, the music and the players from New Orleans, a subject so near and dear to my heart, beautifully presented with lots of details and great pictures.
JOSEPH "ZIGABOO" MODELISTE: Even growing up in New Orleans it was difficult to get this information. This book is a solid piece of work and I'm glad to see these influential players getting the recognition they deserve.
STEVE SMITH: New Orleans is the foundation of all drumset playing period! In this well researched and clearly presented book, are the roots of modern day jazz, blues, R&B, and rock drumming (to name a few). Check it out!
ADAM NUSSBAUM: This is not just a book about licks--it's about people. A great source from a deep well, New Orleans.
CHRIS PARKER: Finally an informal, astute, and insightful look at the global and perennial influence of New Orleans music, especially its feel as originated and expounded on by its drummer/composers/arrangers. These are great men. What's not to love?
ROYAL HARTIGAN: This work is a major contribution to the study of African-American heritage, New Orleans traditions, and the soul of 20th-century drumming. Through the photographs, conversations, transcriptions, and the CD, you feel the spirit of New Orleans music, from ragtime, brass bands, and gospel, through funerals, street beats, funk, rhythm and blues, to the modern scene.
VAL WILMER: Just as the unsung denizens of Congo Square used the drum to remind them they had a past and a future, New Orleans music continues to be both historic and contemporary at the same time. Ideas of personal liberation that began with a reminiscence of an African homeland still inspire the city's drummers. Some are featured here. An invaluable and committed book.
JEFF POTTER (Modern Drummer): More than a book/CD of transcriptions and patterns, this is a volume about history. Its two halves are based on videos from DCI's New orleans Drumming series: Herlin Riley's Ragtime and Beyond and Johnny Vidacovich's Street Beats: Modern Applications. Riley guides us through the evolution of New Orleans jazz drumming styles from their riverboat and brass band beginnings to swing, and Vidacovich demonstrates how he blends local traditions into his modern jazz and R&B drumming.
Although writer Dan Thress receives second billing, he deserves equal praise for his knowledgeable interviews and well-researched articles on important Crescent city drummers such as Vernel Fournier, Baby Dodds, Ed Blackwell, James Black, Joseph "Smokey" Johnson, and David Lee.
Also included are discographies and a pullout poster charting the lineage of influential and notable N'awlins drummers from 1873 to the present. Great to play through or just read, this is a cultural mini-encyclopedia.
Average customer rating:
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Preservation Hall: Music from the Heart
William Carter
Manufacturer: W W Norton & Co Inc
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0393029158 |
Book Description
Former Time Paris Bureau Chief and bestselling author Tom Sancton returns to the New Orleans of his youth and the music that shaped and guided his life.
Song for my Fathers is the story of a young white boy driven by a consuming passion to learn the music and ways of a group of aging black jazzmen in the twilight years of the segregation era. Contemporaries of Louis Armstrong, most of them had played in local obscurity until Preservation Hall launched a nationwide revival of interest in traditional jazz. They called themselves "the mens." And they welcomed the young apprentice into their ranks.
The boy was introduced into this remarkable fellowship by his father, an eccentric Southern liberal and failed novelist whose powerful articles on race had made him one of the most effective polemicists of the early Civil Rights movement. Nurtured on his father's belief in racial equality, the aspiring clarinetist embraced the old musicians with a boundless love and admiration. In a sense, they became his spiritual fathers and role models. Meanwhile his real father, who had first led the boy to the "mens" and shared his reverence for them, later recoiled in horror at the idea that his son might lose his way in the world of late-night jazz joints, French Quarter bar rooms, and a precarious life on the margins of society. The tension between the father's determination to control the boy's destiny and his son's abiding passion for the music is a major theme of the book.
The narrative unfolds against the vivid backdrop of New Orleans in the 1950s and '60s. But that magical town is more than decor; it is perhaps the central player, for this story could not have taken place in any other city in the world. Written several years before Katrina crashed into New Orleans and changed its face forever, Song for My Fathers seems all the more moving in the wake of that cataclysm. 16 pages of color.
Customer Reviews:
Song for My Fathers: A New Orleans Story in Black and White.......2007-01-17
As a fan of New Orleans and Dixieland jazz, I ordered this book as soon as it became available, and consumed it immediately. Tom Sancton met all my expectations, and also provided me with recent history of my favorite musicians, the Olympia Brass Band. He honestly described people and an era that will never be recaptured, with love, and affection, but without guilding the lily. These were real people, shown by Sancton with all their warts, and I miss them all greatly. On a visit to the Preservation Hall recently, I enjoyed the music provided by all white musicians and one black drummer, but was so aware of the loss of those originals. The drummer's father, one of the Fathers described by Sancton, is now gone, and we cried on each other's shoulders, over the loss of a music that can be preserved, but musicians who can never be duplicated. I am just so appreciative to Tom Sancton for producing this book, especially now that Katrina has erased so many of his memories.
Coming of Age with George Lewis, et. al........2006-11-25
Sancton has written an outstanding account of his coming of age in 60's New Orleans while learning trad jazz clarinet from George Lewis and other "old mens" at Preservation Hall in the French Quarter. Whether you love New Orleans and trad jazz, or not I think you'll enjoy Sancton's memoir. His story of being an Uptown white boy spending a lot of time with black musicians in the a world apart from where most of his comtemporaries were growing up is nothing if not unique. Sancton's day job after a Harvard degree turned out to be a correspondent for Time Magazine. So, he can definitely turn a good phrase. In addtion to documenting his interactions with the musicians, Sancton also writes about race, culture, and history in New Orleans. He also explores his relationship with members of his family, especially his writer father, who has an interesting story of his own, probably the subject of another book.Just a delightful read.
Jealous.......2006-09-19
Jealous
Boy, am I jealous of this guy! He lived a dream life as a teenager.
Every musician that reads this will envy this story. Well written and boy am I jealous!
Gone With The Wind.......2006-07-27
Tom's is a touching and layered story; both a personal bio and a history of New Orleans Jazz and its creators. Tom pulls back the veil and introduces us, in a very personal way, to both his family and biological father, and to the "mens" as his jazz fathers called themselves. A tale of passages; Tom's from childhood to manhood; the mens' passage on to the great second-line in the sky, and, finally, the passage of a way of life for a whole region possibly passed into only the memories of people fortunate enough to have lived it, and a few graying pages. It is a poignant story told well and sure to be loved by all readers.
Book Description
The richly evocative tale of a musician, his city, and the origins of jazz.
In the early twentieth century, New Orleans was a place of colliding identities and histories, and Louis Armstrong was a gifted young man of psychological nimbleness. A dark-skinned, impoverished child, he grew up under low expectations, Jim Crow legislation, and vigilante terrorism. Yet he also grew up at the center of African American vernacular traditions from the Deep South, learning the ecstatic music of the Sanctified Church, blues played by street musicians, and the plantation tradition of ragging a tune.
Louis Armstrong's New Orleans interweaves a searching account of early twentieth-century New Orleans with a narrative of the first twenty-one years of Armstrong's life. Drawing on a stunning body of first-person accounts, this book tells the rags-to-riches tale of Armstrong's early life and the social and musical forces that shaped him. The city and the musician are both extraordinary, their relationship unique, and their impact on American culture incalculable. 16 pages of illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
A very, very great book.......2007-06-08
Thomas Brothers has pulled off the near-impossible for a youngish man living in the 21st century. He has managed to dissect and explain most of the complex social and musical interactions in New Orleans as they existed in the years when Louis Armstrong was growing up, coming of age, and learning his way around the horn and the music business. He adroitly explains how the social and cultural climate of New Orleans was exactly right for not only the formation of the music we call jazz, but also how it trickled down from the uptown African-Americans to the downtown Creoles.
I only give the book four stars, however, for one reason. Mr. Brothers does not include or describe the jazz music created by Jack "Papa" Laine, Tom Brown and THEIR bands in the further downtown white districts. Laine was leading jazz bands from the mid-1890s on, and his graduates included virtually all the better-known white jazz musicians such as Nick La Rocca, Larry Shields, Eddie Edwards and Alcide "Yellow" Nunez. While it is true that the "Original" Dixieland Jazz Band claimed credit for music that was not their own, the same was true of "blues composer" W.C. Handy, whose wholesale theft of folk material was exposed by Jelly Roll Morton in 1938; of Clarence Williams, who routinely stole songs from everyone (Brothers even blithely credits him with stealing "I Wish That I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate" from Armstrong); and of Benjamin and Reb Spikes, who stole songs from EVERYBODY, black, Creole or white. As a matter of fact, the ODJB's original clarinetist, Alcide "Yellow" Nunez, even stole "Livery Stable Blues" from his former bandmates, copyrighting it under his name and that of white bandleader Vincent Lopez! So much for honor among thieves.
Despite this oversight, the book is excellent in every respect. Armstrong's development, musically, intellectually and socially, is explained in painstaking detail. (One of my few complaints is that Mr. Brothers overuses the word "hegemony" as much as Gene Santoro overuses th word "zeitgeist.") Very well written, thoroughly researched, and a full explanation of exactly "how" jazz developed, especially in New Orleans, and how this development affected the greatest early jazz soloist of them all. Highly recommended.
Satchmo and the context of New Orleans.......2006-10-14
It is amazing, beautiful, and triumphant that African Americans, who at the beginning of the 20th-century were mostly despised by the dominant White culture and subject to wanton and homicidal violence in the South, should at the same time have created jazz -- the only original American music and which, in its origins, is essentially happy and upbeat.
In Mr. Brothers's superb new book, he examines the reasons for this aspect of jazz, as well as many other aspects. As he says in his introduction to "Louis Armstrong's New Orleans", it is not so much a biography of Satchmo as it is an attempt to place him and jazz in the historical, social, political, and musical contexts into which the man and the music were born.
Satchmo was the perfect person in the perfect place at the perfect time. The aftermath of the defeat of Reconstruction and the institution of Jim Crow laws was the impetus for 40,000 ex-slaves to flee the plantations and move to New Orleans. Among their possessions they brought their music. This music and its players fused African rhythms and tonalities with Western instruments. The old plantation bands, which were composed mostly of string instruments, began the tradition of "ragging" the tune; that is, taking the melody, breaking it apart, and riffing on it.
When this music arrived in New Orleans, it was translated into wind instruments such as the clarinet and trombone, but especially the cornet. Blues structure also developed at the same time. At the beginning of the 20th century, brass bands were flourishing in New Orleans. Buddy Bolden, a cornetist who played the blues, became the first jazz soloist. The music took off. Into this fecund world, Louis Armstrong was born (1901).
The son of a teenage mother and absent father, Louis roamed the streets of New Orleans selling newspapers, carrying the instruments of band players, and getting himself into trouble occasionally. Trouble sent him to school where he got his own instrument and emerged as a cornetist who, at the age of 14, was good enough to be a substitute in bands. By 17 he was renowned in his hometown and by his mid-twenties he had moved to Chicago as part of the Great Migration of Blacks to the north. He had come to Chicago by invitation of his cornet mentor, Joe "King" Oliver. Soon, Satch would be cutting the records -- with his Hot Five and Hot Seven bands -- that first made his reputation and then made him a planetary legend.
All of this Mr. Brothers tells in a literate, compulsively readable style. But he brings more to the table. What is crucial in his book is the understanding of the many strands of context so important to a full picture of any artist's achievement. One example: Mr. Brothers highlights how important the cornet was to the origins of jazz in New Orleans because it was a brass instrument that could be played LOUD and with dexterity. In fact, everybody who remembered Buddy Bolden remarked on the fact that he played loudly (Bolden went insane around 1907 before he could be recorded). This was important because the music mostly took place outdoors in the streets and could be heard a mile or two away. Thus audiences flocked to the bands. Of equal importance in this analysis is that jazz developed before there were automobiles; consequently, cities were quiet enough so that a band could be heard from two miles away.
Another thread of analysis Mr. Brothers foregrounds: The established Creole musicians of New Orleans. They lived downtown on the west side of Canal Street. They were of French heritage and classically trained because of it. They looked down on the "raggy" people, i.e., Blacks, who lived uptown on the other side of Canal. Eventually the Jim Crow laws caught up with the Creoles, and so there grew some empathy between the groups as outsiders trapped by White racism. This social and political dynamic eventually brought the musicians together and benefited both ethnic groups. Many Black musicians learned to read music from the Creole example, and many Creole musicians learned how to "rag time," i.e., play jazz. Sidney Bechet (note the French last name), the greatest of early jazz clarinetists, is the most famous example of a Creole jazz musician. Jelly Roll Morton may have been partly Creole as well.
There is some examination of jazz in Mr. Brothers's book that requires an understanding of very basic music theory. It is helpful to know the fairly rigid and repetitive musical structure of 12-bar blues. It is also of use to know that 4/4 "flat" time means that every beat in a 4-bar measure is of equal weight -- unlike European music in which the first and third beats are accented. Knowing what a melody is and that the heart and soul of jazz is to take the melody apart ("rag" it) is also necessary. I confess to being a musician, but still, these are minor matters, not major ones in appreciating this terrific book. Finally: One highly recommended companion to "Louis Armstrong's New Orleans", is Lee Friedlander's book of photographs, "The Jazz People of New Orleans."
A Good Dose of Music Theory .......2006-08-18
I'd really rate this book at a 3+ stars. It was a great deal more music theory than I had expected. There were just enough really interesting history tidbits buried in the explanation of arpeggio's, syncopation to keep me reading. New Orleans at the turn of the century must have been much like a musical, folks burst into song at every opportunity!
Average customer rating:
- Marvelous look back well before Katrina
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New Orleans: Jazzlife, 1960 (Photo Books)
William Claxton , and
Joachim E. Berendt
Manufacturer: Taschen
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Book Description
A love letter to the birthplace of Jazz
New Orleans will never again appear as it does in these rare and stunning photographs by William Claxton taken for the book Jazzlife in 1960. While traveling around the United States with musicologist Joachim E. Berendt to record America's original art form, Claxton met and photographed the jazz personalities in every major and minor city, capturing these musicians in their natural environment. Among the most poignant and soulful photographs are these from the colorful melting pot of New Orleans, the city where jazz was born.
Customer Reviews:
Marvelous look back well before Katrina.......2007-04-17
In 1960, noted photographer William Claxton and German musicologist Joachim Berendt travelled the United States to document the American Art Form. The massive coffee table book "JazzLife" was published by Taschen and available in a regular edition which lists for $200 or a deluxe edition with prints and an audio CD for over $1000. It is a 700 page book and weighs over 17 pounds. Did I say coffee table book, the book itself might serve as a coffee table. Ok enough for the poor attempts at humor.
From "JazzLife," Taschen has published the portion devoted to the New Orleans, "New Orleans 1960," which is a more manageable 191 pages and has pertinent text portions to explain their trip across the United States and their experiences in the Crescent City and also Angola Penitentiary. It is dedicated to the many souls who lost their lives and the survivors who are rebuilding the city.
The selling point for this are the stunning photos of Claxton, who is probably best known for his iconic images of James Dean and Chet Baker. There are many striking images here, mostly of traditional jazz performers including the Eureka Brass Band, the Tuxedo Brass Band, the marvelous clarinet player George Lewis (and one of a marvelous one of Lewis' wife and Lewis 100 + year old mother), Nick LaRocca (who they recall was still claiming to have invented jazz), drummer Paul Barbarin, blues singer Lizzie Miles, trombonist Jim Robinson, Lewis Keppard and so many others. There are a couple images of a picnic in Slidell where Snooks Eaglin and band are seen playing on a truck bed, as well as a marvelous image of the Melvin Lastie Quintet (which included at the time drummer Charles ' Honeyboy' Otis), one of the few representations of modern jazz that they captured. A series of images here also follow a funeral to the cemetery and then back witnessing the second line exploding on the way back. The section on Angola includes marvelous images of Hoagman Maxey and Roosevelt Charles.
Text is presented in English, French and German and certainly helps the appreciation of the marvelous images. Certainly this will appeal to lovers of traditional jazz and the Cresent City.
Book Description
"A refreshing and stimulating look at Jewish vaudeville, theater, and movies sure to revise our understanding of the Jazz Age."
--Deborah Dash Moore, author of GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation
"In this engaging and accessible book, Merwin describes a much more empowered generation of Jewish show business than is suggested by previous work. A fresh and provocative perspective on familiar material."
-Harley Erdman, author of Staging the Jew: The Performance of an American Ethnicity, 1860-1920
"Clearly written, carefully researched, and thoughtfully argued, In Their Own Image fills important gaps in existing scholarship. This book will appeal to anyone interested in American Jewish culture, American theater and film history, and American popular culture."
-Joel Berkowitz, author of Shakespeare on the American Yiddish Stage
The Jazz Age of the 1920s is an era remembered for illegal liquor, innovative music and dance styles, and burgeoning ideas of social equality. It was also the period during which second-generation Jews began to emerge as a significant demographic in New York City. In Their Own Image examines the growing cultural visibility of Jewish life amid this vibrant scene.
From the vaudeville routines of Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor, George Jessel, and Sophie Tucker, to the slew of Broadway comedies about Jewish life and the silent films that showed immigrant families struggling to leave the ghetto, images and representations of Jews became staples of interwar popular culture. Through the performing arts, Jews expressed highly ambivalent feelings about their identification with Jewish and American cultures. Ted Merwin shows how they became American by producing and consuming not images of another group, but images of themselves. As a result, they humanized Jewish stereotypes, softened anti-Semitic attitudes, and laid the groundwork for today's Jewish comedians.
An entertaining look at the role popular culture plays in promoting the acculturation of an ethnic group, In Their Own Image enhances our understanding of American Jewish history and provides a model for the study of other groups and their integration into mainstream society.
Book Description
Praise for the first edition of A New History of Jazz:“The most outstanding single-volume history of jazz around.”Don Rose, Jazz Institute of Chicago “No jazz writer, scholar, teacher, musician, or fan should be without it on his or her desk. Yes, it really is that good.”W. Royal Stokes, Jazz Notes “Shipton has taken on the big on here and come up trumps…More trustworthy and less sentimental than many similar efforts…it achieves something approaching an essential text.” Mojo All the great names in jazz history are here, from Louis Armstrong to Miles Davis and from Sidney Bechet to Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. But unlike those historians who call a halt with the death of Coltrane in 1967, Shipton continues the story with the major trends in jazz over the last 40 years: free jazz, jazz rock, world music influences, and the re-emergence of the popular jazz singer.
Customer Reviews:
Recomendo.......2007-09-02
Outra noite estava eu dormindo e lendo o imenso livro A New History Of Jazz, de Alyn Shipton. Na taça ao lado, três dedos do bastante honesto Cabeça do Pote: um tinto 2001 das lusas Terras Durienses, encontrado por compreensíveis R$20,00 nos mercados de Vila Velha e cercanias. Acordando num susto lancinante ouvi um ruído dramático gerado pela agulha do toca-discos: era minha bisavó colocando Tete Montoliu, The Music I Like To Play, Volume 1 para ouvir. Olhei desconfiado: piano solo?
Não esperava grande coisa de um pianista espanhol cego tocando jazz sem cozinha. Mas confesso a boa surpresa ao ouvir, entre uma ou duas dúzias de clichês da música erudita européia, um pianista cheio de excelente técnica e profundo swing. Se é que podemos fazer tal tipo de análise, ele me soou como uma espécie de Red Garland possuído pelo espírito de Bud Powell. Colorido, veloz e preciso sem perder a emoção. Passeando por clássicos populares, como Don't Smoke Anymore, Alone Together ou Whisper Not, Tete convence até aqueles que, como eu, não apreciam beber um tinto ao som de 50 intermináveis minutos de piano solo. Recomendo ambos, piano e livro, embora Shipton não faça qualquer referência ao grande pianista espanhol em suas quase mil páginas de boa história. Merecia ser citado.
Especially recommended for college library and music history shelves........2007-04-07
Now in a newly revised and updated edition, A New History of Jazz is the award-winning chronicle of the evolution of this widely beloved form of music, as told by music author, publisher, editor, and critic Alyn Shipton. From the precursors to the first jazz tunes, to variations regional styles, to the "big picture" of the jazz scene that is so easily lost amid tracing its popularity in underground clubs, to the unique and colorful individuals who espoused jazz, to the migration of jazz worldwide, A New History of Jazz strives above all to be comprehensive in its chronicling. Written in a highly detailed yet accessible tone, A New History of Jazz will prove as invaluable to curious lay readers and music scholars alike. Especially recommended for college library and music history shelves.
Shipton is a master!.......2003-10-08
Alyn Shipton knows more about the history of jazz than any human on the face of the planet, and this book displays his skills at their finest. Shipton is a masterful writer and this belongs on the shelf of all who consider themselves an afficionado. Buy two copies and give one to a friend.
Authoritative.......2003-03-30
Jazz has always been a bit of a mystery for me, and only in the past few months have I made a (thus far rewarding) attempt to really understand it. I have read a couple of more basic introductions (the NPR Guide, the Complete Idiot's Guide) and found Shipton's book to be very well written and researched. It provides a great background, not only on the music, but also on the environment that created jazz. He takes pleasure in debunking some of the myths that have grown up around the music (sometimes too much pleasure), but his arguments are always backed up with research. While giving ample coverage to the giants of jazz, he also introduces the reader to many other figures who have shaped the music. Shipton is opinionated, but it always clear where he is stating an opinion. All in all, I would highly recommend this book for anyone looking to deepen their understanding and curiosity about jazz. The only real shortcoming is that the book only has a small section of photographs. I am now reading the Ken Burns book, and while I'm not ready to offer a judgment on the overall text, the pictures are certainly great--I get to see many of the people and places Shipton refers to in this very good book.
The antidote to Ken Burnsý Jazz.......2003-02-11
Jazz is arguably the most important music of the 20th century. But, as significant as jazz is, its history, like the music itself, is an inexact art. In his book, A New History of Jazz, Alyn Shipton challenges the conventional assertions about the development and spread of Jazz, delving deep into the annals of available documented history to provide substance to his treatise. What is known about jazz is that the African-American culture is interwoven throughout the music's derivation and subsequent worldwide proliferation. After this, things get a little less definite.
Lester Bowie (Art Ensemble of Chicago) once asked: "Is Jazz Dead, Yet?" He eloquently answered his own question by saying that although jazz has changed over the years, sometimes radically, the music has survived by virtue of its ability to change, adapting by taking on elements of newly discovered musical concepts. What was once jazz is different now and will continue to change in the future. In other words, in oxymoronic fashion, jazz is dead-- but thriving. Likewise, the uncertain origins of what became "jazz," at this point in history, are fluid and will continue to change as more information is added to the mix.
This newest attempt to uncover the beginnings of jazz has been unflinchingly billed as "The antidote to Ken Burns' Jazz," the PBS ten part series which garnered a great deal of attention in early 2001. The author's desire to go head to head with the most popular presentation of jazz in many years is good for him and good for jazz. Much like Miles Davis' belief that controversy brings attention to the music and gets more people listening--a debate on the details of when, where and how jazz began will accomplish this same goal. Unfortunately, at almost a thousand pages, only the most ardent jazz fan will take advantage of this well written, well-documented history of Jazz.
Mr. Shipton approaches this subject as a jazz historian. Professionally, he is a critic for The Times in London and presents jazz radio programs for the BBC network. It seems that almost any assertion presented in the book is painstakingly footnoted at least once. Admittedly though, since the evolution and spread of early jazz was something that occurred over many years (and it seems many places), the "facts' are sometime imprecise and the same events are often interpreted differently by those observing it. The birth of jazz, like other historical events relies on music, memory and early personal chronicles from inside and outside the circle of the events themselves. In these ambiguous situations, Mr. Shipton lays out his evidence and allows the reader to learn the different possibilities that may or may not lead to a definitive conclusion.
I invite you to get on this historical roller coaster that is jazz: The beginnings, the middle and the present are all included here for your consideration. Also, keep in mind the Columbia/Epic/Legacy two-CD collection "Jazz, the Definitive Performances," which is billed as an accompaniment to the Book. It begins with the 1917 recording of (Back Home Again In) Indiana by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and ends with Wynton Marsalis' Freedom Is In The Trying (1995). And, of course, like the book, there is a lot in the middle
Larry Dane-Kellogg is host of JazzCapades, a radio program on WHCJ in Savannah, GA
Book Description
In this rousing tribute to an unforgettable time and place, Jerome Charyn picks up where Gangs of New York left off and transports readers back to a swaggering, golden era in American life—the Roaring Twenties—when Broadway the street exploded into Broadway the legend. Charyn looks at the men and women who helped make the Big Street the most glamorous place on the planet, from Mae West to Fanny Brice, Legs Diamond to Irving Berlin, Scott Fitzgerald to Arnold Rothstein, and many more. In cinematic prose and numerous photographs, Charyn captures Broadway’s vagabondage, outlaw culture, and self-mythologizing. He brings a rollicking, rough-and-tumble period in New York history to life—conjuring an intoxicating portrait of Jazz Age excess by examining the denizens of that greatest of all “staggering machine[s] of desire,” the street known as Broadway.
Customer Reviews:
Lullabye of Broadway.......2004-05-06
This book is simply awash in great little anecdotes about the folks who spent their days in and around the Broadway of the early part of the 20th century. We get tales of the famous and the infamous, the good and the bad, the rich and the not so rich, and a myriad of supporting characters so colorful they could fill a Damon Runyan book of stories. It's not meant to be a book of mini biographies, but there are some interesting lives explored. The book also contains one of the most incisive analyses of "The Great Gatsby" I've ever read. If the author leaves you wishing for more information about some of the people you meet, that may be the book's only failing: it's too short. I could really have enjoyed reading another few hundred pages about the people and places he describes!
Who edited this book?.......2004-03-31
Well, this book is filled with lots of interesting stories, but it's so disorganized it seems like it was written by an Jazz age drunk! Better editing would have done wonders for this book which has great stories about some of the celebrities of the 1920's, but flows sloppily from one anecdote to another.
A Colorful Historic Era.......2003-12-22
Author Jerome Charyn provides the reader with a cast of colorful characters such as Arnold Rothstein who used to enjoy wasting his time in Lindy's Restaurant, Al Jolson who was very difficult to live with and a self promoter, Legs Diamond, who detective Johnny Broderick once stuffed into a garbage can, Flo Ziegfeld, who glamorized the American girl, former singing waiter Irving Berlin who sang at Nigger Mike's and then went on to become the writer of over one thousand songs. Author Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald and wife Zelda, gangster Owney Madden, Fannie Brice and her husband Billy Rose who was 5' 3 1/2" in his elevator shoes "who walked with the bounce of an overwound toy." Bert Gordon, W.C. Fields, Ruby Keeler, boxers Jack Dempsey and Johnson, and, of course, The Bambino himself, George Herman Ruth. The book is filled with anecdotes of these and other famous and infamous characters that made The Great White Way the historic place it is today. If you like social history you should love this book. I did come to one conclusion about a great majority of these individuals. As famous or infamous they may have been, many of them shared a feeling of loneliness even though they were major players in American social history.
Underrated book on Broadway's colorful past.......2003-11-01
Gangsters and Golddiggers is a fascinating book that introduces you to the unique characters that made up early broadway. From its early existence as an Indian trail to the rise of theater and organized crime, this book offers a glimpse into a world that vibrates with violence and lust. Gangsters and Golddiggers reads almost like an epic motion picture. Definately pick this one up.
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Jazz Guide, New York City, 2nd Edition (Jazz Guide New York City)
Steve Dollar
Manufacturer: Little Bookroom
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Pilgrimage
ASIN: 189214543X
Release Date: 2007-01-23 |
Book Description
A "richly anecdotal and wonderful" slim, pocket-size guide now updated to include all the newest hot spots on the Big Apple jazz scene
Jazz Guide: New York City is the only comprehensive guide to jazz in the Big Apple–now revised and expanded to include all the newest hot spots on the scene. Whether uptown or downtown, big bands or subway soloists, it’s all here. Drop in on the elegant clubs where legendary headliners call the tunes, then hit a hole-in-the wall joint to hear scrappy young bands play all night. Jazz Guide: New York City profiles more than eighty venues where you can experience the best of every kind of jazz–from traditional large ensembles to smoking combos, avant-garde to hard-bop, old-school to DJ-driven, acoustic to electronic–as well as closely related music from around the world, including the drum cultures of the Caribbean, Latin America, and West Africa.
Beyond the clubs, the guide explores music festivals, specialty stores, and jazz lore, including visits to Harlem and 52nd Street in their heydays, the famous bridge where Sonny Rollins moonlighted, and the neighborhood Louis Armstrong called home.
Customer Reviews:
An Entertaining Lesson.......2007-06-22
This book is more than a guide. It's an entertaining lesson in jazz history. The author writes like he's talking to an expert and/ or a novice at the same time. Dollar's expertise is also completely down to earth, often relating stories and anecdotes, which really draws in the reader and gives us a feeling for the depth of the subject.
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Jazz: From New Orleans to the New Jazz Age
Carlton Books , and
Ronald Atkins
Manufacturer: Carlton Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1858685923 |
Book Description
From its birth at the beginning of the century, and throughout its many subsequent twists and turns, jazz has evolved into one of popular music's most enduring forms. Jazz: The Ultimate Guide is a beautifully illustrated, easy-to-follow reference work that highlights the key periods, principal movements, and greatest musicians that make up the rich cultural history of jazz. This book charts the fusion of American migrant cultures that created the original New Orleans jazz, and the movements to Chicago and New York that eventually produced the hugely popular big band swing music of the 1930s and 40s. These pioneers, and the developments that followed, are all discussed in detail, along with illustrated biographies of over 500 of the top names in jazz.
Books:
- Now Face to Face
- Our Wedding Anniversary Memory Book
- Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, and Interviews, a Centennial Celebration
- RandB Fake Book: 375 Rhythm and Blues Songs (Fake Books)
- Road Trip USA: Cross-Country Adventures on America's Two-Lane Highways (Road Trip USA Cross-Country Adventures on America's Two-Lane Highways)
- Safe Harbor (Drake Sisters, Book 5)
- Singing Cowboys
- Soundscapes
- Storms: My Life with Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac
- Style and Idea: Selected Writings
Books Index
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