The Blues

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

• Author : Tom Robbins
• Publisher : Bantam
• File Size : 11,5 Mb
• Release Date : 2003-06-17
• Genre: Fiction
• Pages : 384
• ISBN 10 : 9780553897890

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“This is one of those special novels—a piece of working magic, warm, funny, and sane.”—Thomas Pynchon The whooping crane rustlers are girls. Young girls. Cowgirls, as a matter of fact, all “bursting with dimples and hormones”—and the FBI has never seen anything quite like them. Yet their rebellion at the Rubber Rose Ranch is almost overshadowed by the arrival of the legendary Sissy Hankshaw, a white-trash goddess literally born to hitchhike, and the freest female of them all. Freedom, its prizes and its prices, is a major theme of Tom Robbins’s classic tale of eccentric adventure. As his robust characters attempt to turn the tables on fate, the reader is drawn along on a tragicomic joyride across the badlands of sexuality, wild rivers of language, and the frontiers of the mind.

Lady Sings the Blues

• Author : Billie Holiday
• Publisher : Penguin Classics
• File Size : 9,5 Mb
• Release Date : 2018-11-29
• Genre: African American singers
• Pages : 0
• ISBN 10 : 0241351294

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"I've been told that no one sings the word 'hunger' like I do. Or the word 'love'." Lady Sings the Blues is the inimitable autobiography of one of the greatest icons of the twentieth century. Born to a single mother in 1915 Baltimore, Billie Holiday had her first run-in with the law at aged 13. But Billie Holiday is no victim. Her memoir tells the story of her life spent in jazz, smoky Harlem clubs and packed-out concert halls, her love affairs, her wildly creative friends, her struggles with addiction and her adventures in love. Billie Holiday is a wise and aphoristic guide to the story of her unforgettable life.

Chasing the Blues

• Author : Josephine Matyas
• Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
• File Size : 19,5 Mb
• Release Date : 2021-09-15
• Genre: Music
• Pages : 288
• ISBN 10 : 9781493060610

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Chasing the Blues explores the roots of the blues---the music birthed in the Mississippi Delta by African Americans who fashioned a new form of musical expression grounded in their shared experience of brutal oppression. They used the power of music to survive that oppression, creating a simple-in-structure, emotionally complex form that transformed and upended culture and became the bedrock of popular song. Tracing the music back to its geographical and cultural origins in the Delta is key to understanding how the blues were shaped. Over time, the Delta blues have touched virtually every form of popular music (rock and roll, soul, R&B, country-western, gospel), creating the soundscape of our lives. What makes this book unique? Fathoming how the music flowed from living and working conditions in the heart of the Deep South; appreciating how life-changing events like the Flood of 1927 sparked a mass migration away from plantation life, spreading the blues to the cities in the North and becoming the soundtrack to the civil rights movement; how blues musicians interacted, "cross-fertilizing" their music by learning, influencing, and imitating each other. The habits of travel are shifting, and there is more interest and a larger market for diving deep into destinations closer to home. Interest in Black history and culture and the role Black Americans played in shaping America is at an all-time high. By appreciating the roots of this most American style of music, readers will have a richer experience listening to songs and visiting blues' holy and sacred sites.

Broadcasting the Blues

• Author : Paul Oliver
• Publisher : Routledge
• File Size : 8,7 Mb
• Release Date : 2014-02-04
• Genre: Music
• Pages : 210
• ISBN 10 : 9781135467166

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Broadcasting the Blues: Black Blues in the Segregation Era is based on Paul Oliver's award-winning radio broadcasts from the BBC that were created over several decades. It traces the social history of the blues in America, from its birth in the rural South through the heyday of sound recordings. Noted blues scholar Paul Oliver draws on decades of research and personal interviews with performers--some of whom he "discovered" and recorded for the first time--to draw a picture of how the blues aesthetic developed, giving new insights into the role blues played in American society before racial integration. The book begins by outlining the history of the blues from African music through country stomps, ragtime songs, and field hollers. From the heroic figures of black folksong--including the steel-driving railroad worker John Henry and the destructive Boll Weevil--to the content of the emerging blues, the author discusses the "meaning" behind the often coded words of the blues, evoking topics such as playful sexuality, magic and medicine, the stresses of segregation, and commentary on national events. Finally, the author traces the history of blues documentation, showing how our views of the early blues have been shaped through a complex interplay of social forces, and indicating possible lines for future research.

The Spirituals and the Blues

• Author : Cone, James H.
• Publisher : Orbis Books
• File Size : 7,8 Mb
• Release Date : 2022-11-03
• Genre: History
• Pages : null
• ISBN 10 : 9781608339433

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"How two forms of song helped sustain slaves and their children in the midst of tribulation. With a new introduction by Cheryl Townsend Gilkes"--

King of the Blues

• Author : Daniel de Vise
• Publisher : Grove Press
• File Size : 12,7 Mb
• Release Date : 2021-10-05
• Genre: Biography & Autobiography
• Pages : null
• ISBN 10 : 9780802158079

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The first full and authoritative biography of an American—indeed a world-wide—musical and cultural legend “No one worked harder than B.B. No one inspired more up-and-coming artists. No one did more to spread the gospel of the blues.”—President Barack Obama “He is without a doubt the most important artist the blues has ever produced.”—Eric Clapton Riley “Blues Boy” King (1925-2015) was born into deep poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi. Wrenched away from his sharecropper father, B.B. lost his mother at age ten, leaving him more or less alone. Music became his emancipation from exhausting toil in the fields. Inspired by a local minister’s guitar and by the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker, encouraged by his cousin, the established blues man Bukka White, B.B. taught his guitar to sing in the unique solo style that, along with his relentless work ethic and humanity, became his trademark. In turn, generations of artists claimed him as inspiration, from Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton to Carlos Santana and the Edge. King of the Blues presents the vibrant life and times of a trailblazing giant. Witness to dark prejudice and lynching in his youth, B.B. performed incessantly (some 15,000 concerts in 90 countries over nearly 60 years)—in some real way his means of escaping his past. Several of his concerts, including his landmark gig at Chicago’s Cook County Jail, endure in legend to this day. His career roller-coasted between adulation and relegation, but he always rose back up. At the same time, his story reveals the many ways record companies took advantage of artists, especially those of color. Daniel de Visé has interviewed almost every surviving member of B.B. King’s inner circle—family, band members, retainers, managers, and more—and their voices and memories enrich and enliven the life of this Mississippi blues titan, whom his contemporary Bobby “Blue” Bland simply called “the man.”

Playing the Blues Blues Rhythm Guitar

• Author : STEVE TROVATO
• Publisher : Mel Bay Publications
• File Size : 13,6 Mb
• Release Date : 2016-05-26
• Genre: Music
• Pages : 28
• ISBN 10 : 9781610654111

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This in-depth blues rhythm guitar text is core curriculum of the University of Southern California's Studio Guitar Department, which is part of the prestigious Flora L. Thornton School of Music, located in Los Angeles, California. It features eighteen twelve-bar blues rhythm guitar accompaniments in the style of guitarists such as Chuck Berry, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Nine of the songs use a shuffle feel and nine use a straight eighth note feel. the play along CD contains two versions of each of the eighteen songs in the book. the first version has the guitar part and the second version is without the guitar. This gives you the ability to play along with the guitar part as a guide and also to play along with the track as the only guitarist.The examples are written using traditional musical notation and tablature. Included for each song is a short description of the important points to consider when learning each example. the book presents songs that will expand the guitarist's vocabulary by presenting a variety of different ways a guitarist can play through the twelve bar blues. A number of different chord variations, keys and tempos are used in demonstrating these eighteen idiomatic rhythm guitar parts that have been used by the masters.

Encyclopedia of the Blues

• Author : Gérard Herzhaft
• Publisher : University of Arkansas Press
• File Size : 20,5 Mb
• Release Date : 1992-01-01
• Genre: Music
• Pages : 532
• ISBN 10 : 1557282528

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The popular Encyclopedia of the Blues, first published by the University of Arkansas Press in 1992 and reprinted six times, has become an indispensable reference source for all involved with or intrigued by the music. The work alphabetizes hundreds of biographical entries, presenting detailed examinations of the performers and of the instruments, trends, recordings, and producers who have created and popularized this truly American art form.

A Bibliography of the Blues

• Author : Joseph Charles Hickerson
• Publisher : Unknown
• File Size : 13,6 Mb
• Release Date : 1971
• Genre: Blues (Music)
• Pages : 16
• ISBN 10 : IND:30000078174038

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Time in the Blues

• Author : Julia Simon
• Publisher : Oxford University Press
• File Size : 6,8 Mb
• Release Date : 2017-08-18
• Genre: Music
• Pages : 256
• ISBN 10 : 9780190666576

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Spontaneity, immediacy and feeling characterize the blues as a genre. Whether it's the movement of call and response, the expressive bends and wails of voice and instruments or the synergistic relationship between audience and performers, the blues embody a kind of "living in the moment" aesthetic. At the same time, the blues genre has always responded in a unique way to its historical moment, its formal characteristics, figures, and devices constantly emerging from--and speaking to--the social relations emanating from Jim Crow segregation, sharecropping, racist violence, and migration. Time in the Blues presents an interdisciplinary analysis of the specific forms of temporality produced by and reflected in the blues. Examining time as it is represented, enacted, and experienced through the blues, interdisciplinary scholar Julia Simon addresses how the material conditions in the early twentieth century shaped a musical genre. The technical aspects of the blues--ostinato patterns, cyclical changes, improvisation, call and response--emerge from and speak to the Jim Crow era's economic, social, and political relations. Through this temporal analysis, Simon addresses how the moment-to-moment aspect of time in blues performance relates to the genre's location within historical time, with careful examinations of the historical performance and reception of blues music from the 1920s to the present day. Simon examines the structuring of time, and analyzes temporality to open the broader questions of desire, agency, self-definition, faith, and forms of resistance as they are articulated in this music. Ultimately, Time in the Blues, argues for the relevance, significance, and importance of time in the blues for shared values of community and a vision of social justice.

The Voice of the Blues

• Author : Jim O'Neal
• Publisher : Psychology Press
• File Size : 6,6 Mb
• Release Date : 2002
• Genre: Blues (Music)
• Pages : 452
• ISBN 10 : 0415936535

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Some voices you will hear in The Voice of the Blues: "I sing blues for some money and I sing because I love 'em. They tried to put me over in another bag but I just don't fit no other bag. Exactly I fits one shoe, and that is the blues."-Muddy Waters "I never did name one of my records 'the blues' . . . Everybody else called my sounds what I made 'the blues.' But I always just felt good behind 'em; I didn't feel like I was playin' no blues. I felt like it sound just as good to the spiritual people as it would to somebody in a bar. . ."-Jimmy Reed "The Voice of the Blues" brings together lengthy interviews with pioneering blues performers including Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Jimmy Reed, B. B. King, and many others. Each interview captures the "voice" of the blues performer, reflecting life experiences, musical influences, and achievements. Illustrations include rare archival photographs and documents. A must for fans of the blues-both traditional and electric.

Africa and the Blues

• Author : Gerhard Kubik
• Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
• File Size : 10,6 Mb
• Release Date : 2008-04-10
• Genre: Music
• Pages : 260
• ISBN 10 : 9781604737288

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In 1969 Gerhard Kubik chanced to encounter a Mozambican labor migrant, a miner in Transvaal, South Africa, tapping a "cipendani," a mouth-resonated musical bow. A comparable instrument was seen in the hands of a white Appalachian musician who claimed it as part of his own cultural heritage. Through connections like these Kubik realized that the link between these two far-flung musicians is African-American music, the sound that became the blues. Such discoveries reveal a narrative of music evolution for Kubik, a cultural anthropologist and ethnomusicologist. Traveling in Africa, Brazil, Venezuela, and the United States, he spent forty years in the field gathering the material for "Africa and the Blues." In this book, Kubik relentlessly traces the remote genealogies of African cultural music through eighteen African nations, especially in the Western and Central Sudanic Belt. Included is a comprehensive map of this cradle of the blues, along with 31 photographs gathered in his fieldwork. The author also adds clear musical notations and descriptions of both African and African American traditions and practices and calls into question the many assumptions about which elements of the blues were "European" in origin and about which came from Africa. Unique to this book is Kubik's insight into the ways present-day African musicians have adopted and enlivened the blues with their own traditions. With scholarly care but with an ease for the general reader, Kubik proposes an entirely new theory on blue notes and their origins. Tracing what musical traits came from Africa and what mutations and mergers occurred in the Americas, he shows that the African American tradition we call the blues is truly a musical phenomenon belonging to the African cultural world. Gerhard Kubik is a professor in the department of ethnology and African studies at the University of Mainz, Germany. Since 1983 he has been affiliated with the Center for Social Research of Malawi, Zomba. He is a permane

How Belfast Got the Blues

• Author : Noel McLaughlin
• Publisher : Intellect Books
• File Size : 18,5 Mb
• Release Date : 2020-10-08
• Genre: Music
• Pages : 744
• ISBN 10 : 9781789382754

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This is not just an important music book; it is an important history book. It captures the moment before Belfast and Northern Ireland became synonymous with the Troubles. It places one of the best-known figures in global popular music, Van Morrison, in his historical and sociocultural context. It also reinstates Ottilie Patterson into her rightful role as a central figure in Ireland’s music. It addresses a significant gap in Ireland’s popular music studies by appraising the contribution of a politically and musically significant female figure. It makes a major original contribution to the understanding of popular music culture in Northern Ireland, and to the broader popular music culture in Britain in the 1960s. It will remain for many years the definitive study of the subject and a point of reference for further research and controversy. In light of the re-emergence of Northern Ireland in contemporary British political debate, this book presents a nicely timed intervention, placing Northern Ireland at the forefront of a key moment in British and Irish cultural history, and presenting highly innovative readings of key popular cultural figures. Integrating its account of the popular music culture and local ‘scene’ in Northern Ireland with the broader and highly complex context of the sociopolitical milieu, it offers original and insightful readings of key 1960s figures, including film director Peter Whitehead, The Rolling Stones, Them, Ottilie Patterson and Van Morrison. It includes much new material, obtained in interviews and through meticulous archival research, to challenge the mainstream narrative of the mid-1960s music scene in Belfast. It is extremely well researched, making use of newspaper and film archives and existing publications, but also an impressive set of personal interviews with veteran musicians and others from that time. The authors challenge much of the received wisdom about the period – for instance, about the decline of the showband �

Nobody Knows Where the Blues Come From

• Author : Robert Springer
• Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
• File Size : 16,5 Mb
• Release Date : 2009-09-23
• Genre: Music
• Pages : 320
• ISBN 10 : 9781628469967

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Musicians and music scholars rightly focus on the sounds of the blues and the colorful life stories of blues performers. Equally important and, until now, inadequately studied are the lyrics. The international contributors to Nobody Knows Where the Blues Come From explore this aspect of the blues and establish the significance of African American popular song as a neglected form of oral history. “High Water Everywhere: Blues and Gospel Commentary on the 1927 Mississippi River Flood,” by David Evans, is the definitive study of songs about one of the greatest natural disasters in the history of the United States. In “Death by Fire: African American Popular Music on the Natchez Rhythm Club Fire,” Luigi Monge analyzes a continuum of songs about exclusively African American tragedy. “Lookin’ for the Bully: An Enquiry into a Song and Its Story,” by Paul Oliver traces the origins and the many avatars of the Bully song. In “That Dry Creek Eaton Clan: A North Mississippi Murder Ballad of the 1930s,” Tom Freeland and Chris Smith study a ballad recorded in 1939 by a black convict at Parchman prison farm. “Coolidge’s Blues: African American Blues from the Roaring Twenties” is Guido van Rijn’s survey of blues of that decade. Robert Springer's “On the Electronic Trail of Blues Formulas” presents a number of conclusions about the spread of patterns in blues narratives. In “West Indies Blues: An Historical Overview 1920s-1950s,” John Cowley turns his attention to West Indian songs produced on the American mainland. Finally, in “Ethel Waters: ‘Long, Lean, Lanky Mama,’” Randall Cherry reappraises the early career of this blues and vaudeville singer

The Blues A Very Short Introduction

• Author : Elijah Wald
• Publisher : Oxford University Press
• File Size : 17,8 Mb
• Release Date : 2010-08-03
• Genre: Music
• Pages : 152
• ISBN 10 : 9780199750795

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Praised as "suave, soulful, ebullient" (Tom Waits) and "a meticulous researcher, a graceful writer, and a committed contrarian" (New York Times Book Review), Elijah Wald is one of the leading popular music critics of his generation. In The Blues, Wald surveys a genre at the heart of American culture. It is not an easy thing to pin down. As Howlin' Wolf once described it, "When you ain't got no money and can't pay your house rent and can't buy you no food, you've damn sure got the blues." It has been defined by lyrical structure, or as a progression of chords, or as a set of practices reflecting West African "tonal and rhythmic approaches," using a five-note "blues scale." Wald sees blues less as a style than as a broad musical tradition within a constantly evolving pop culture. He traces its roots in work and praise songs, and shows how it was transformed by such professional performers as W. C. Handy, who first popularized the blues a century ago. He follows its evolution from Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith through Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix; identifies the impact of rural field recordings of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton and others; explores the role of blues in the development of both country music and jazz; and looks at the popular rhythm and blues trends of the 1940s and 1950s, from the uptown West Coast style of T-Bone Walker to the "down home" Chicago sound of Muddy Waters. Wald brings the story up to the present, touching on the effects of blues on American poetry, and its connection to modern styles such as rap. As with all of Oxford's Very Short Introductions, The Blues tells you--with insight, clarity, and wit--everything you need to know to understand this quintessentially American musical genre.