In this richly textured anthology, well-known scholar David Brackett brings together more than 100 readings from a wide range of sources and by writers who have played an integral part in the development of popular music criticism. Brackett includes articles from mainstream and specialized magazines, newspapers, and scholarly journals, as well as interviews and autobiographies of musicians and other music industry insiders. Organized into broad time periods, the chapters are divided into sections by genre, and these sections are organized chronologically. The chapter divisions parallel those found most frequently in textbooks on popular music. Representing a wide variety of time periods, styles, and genres--and including groundbreaking criticism on disco, hip-hop, rap, and techno--the selections introduce students to important social and cultural issues raised by the study of popular music. Topics covered include the role of race, class conflict, gender roles, regional differences in the reception of popular music, and the relative value of artistry versus commerce. Extensive editorial introductions and headnotes supply context for the selections, provide links between different eras and genres, clarify the issues raised by the documents, and explain their historical significance. The second edition of this captivating anthology features eleven new source readings and introductions, further reading and discography selections for each chapter, and a companion website containing student and instructor resources.

    For more than ten years, the author was granted access to DeLay's classes and lessons at Juilliard and the Aspen Music Festival and School, and this book reveals DeLay's deep intuition of each student's needs. An exploration of the mysteries of teaching and learning, it includes a feast of anecdotes about an extraordinary character.

    Proving that good music and shocking tabloid-style stories make excellent bedfellows, it presents tales of revenge, murder, curious accidents, and strange fates that span more than two thousand years. Highlights include:*A cursed song that kills those who hear it*A composer who lovingly cradles the head of Beethoven's corpse when his remains are exhumed half a century after his death* A fifteenth-century German poet who sings of the real-life Dracula*A dream of the devil that inspires a virtuoso violin pieceUnlike many music books that begin their histories with the seventeenth or eighteenth-centuries, Beethoven's Skull takes the reader back to the world of ancient Greece and Rome, progressing through the Middle Ages and all the way into the twentieth century. It also looks at myths and legends, superstitions, and musical mysteries, detailing the ways that musicians and their peers have been rather horrible to one another over the centuries.

    Stephen Smith invites all singers to improve their vocal technique through his renowned and time-tested wholistic method. Focusing not only on the most important technical, but also on the often overlooked psychological and spiritual elements of learning to sing, his book allows readers to develop their own full and individual identities as singers. With philosophies and techniques drawn from a lifetime of teaching voice, Smith demonstrates how one can reveal the true unique sound of one's own voice by singing with the whole self. The master's method, presented in concrete and comprehensible terms with helpful illustrations, is enhanced by a CD containing exercises performed by singers from Smith's own studio-singers whose talent and training bring them across the country and around the world. The clear and easy style of The Naked Voice welcomes the reader into Smith's teaching studio, and into conversation with Smith himself as he presents the six simple and elegant exercises that form the core of his method. These exercises provide a foundation for free singing, and lead singers through the step-by-step process of mastering the technique. Throughout, Smith speaks sympathetically and encouragingly to the singer in search of an unencumbered and effective approach to the art. The Naked Voice is a must-read for all singers, giving teachers and students, amateurs and professionals, access to the methods and concepts that have earned Smith his reputation as one of the most highly-sought-after vocal instructors in the international arena today.

    With clear and easy-to-understand exercises, The Piano Handbook is perfect for anyone interested in learning the piano or improving their skills. It provides fresh material and techniques in styles ranging from classical to jazz, rock, bebop and fusion, and gives new players everything they need to learn and enjoy the piano. This book's innovative tutorial approach covers classical and contemporary music styles in an integrated way, and the companion audio brings the playing techniques and concepts to life. A full-color photo gallery illustrates the history of the piano and its essential recordings. The book also includes access to audio downloads of selected examples and pieces. This hardcover, deluxe edition also features semi-concealed spiral binding so the book stays open on the piano. The Piano Handbook prepares you not just to play, but to perform and not just as a pianist, but as a complete musician.

    This landmark book documents the magazine’s rise to prominence as the voice of rock and roll and a leading showcase for era-defining photography. From the 1960s to the present day, the book offers a decade-by-decade exploration of American music and history. Interviews with rock legends—Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Kurt Cobain, Bruce Springsteen, and more—appear alongside iconic photographs by Baron Wolman, Annie Leibovitz, Mark Seliger, and other leading image-makers. With feature articles, excerpts, and exposés by such quintessential writers as Hunter S. Thompson, Matt Taibbi, and David Harris, this book is an irresistible and essential keepsake of the magazine that has defined American music for generations of readers.

    Kienzle meticulously sifted through archival material, government records, recollections by colleagues and admirers, interviewing many involved in Jones’s life and career. The result: an evocative portrait of this enormously gifted, tragically tormented icon called “the Keith Richards of country.”Kienzle chronicles Jones’s impoverished East Texas childhood as the youngest son of a deeply religious mother and alcoholic, often-abusive father. He examines his three troubled marriages including his union with superstar Tammy Wynette and looks unsparingly at Jones’s demons. Alcohol and later cocaine nearly killed him until fourth wife Nancy helped him learn to love himself. Kienzle also details Jones’s remarkable musical journey from singing in violent Texas honky tonks to Grand Ole Opry star, hitmaker and master vocalist whose raw, emotionally powerful delivery remains the Gold Standard for country singers.The George Jones of this heartfelt biography lived hard before finding contentment until he died at eighty-one—a story filled with whiskey, women and drugs but always the saving grace of music.Illustrated with eight pages of photos.

    Soxx & the Blue Jeans she toured the country.Later, she sang backup—and collected numerous scintillating backstage stories—with, among others, Dionne Warwick, the Mamas and the Papas, and Sonny and Cher. Now in My Name Is Love, Darlene is ready to tell her tales about Elvis coming on to her backstage during his famous '68 Comeback Special, about wild parties she witnessed at Tom Jones's house, and about her love affair with Bill Medley of the Righteous Brothers. She also recalls how she found herself cleaning houses in Beverly Hills, heard herself on the radio, and vowed to make a comeback. That comeback has included roles in all of the Lethal Weapon movies, starring roles on Broadway, and headlining concert appearances worldwide.A dishy, behind-the-scenes showbiz memoir, My Name Is Love is also the inspiring story of a woman who refused to give up.

    By temperament, he was a high-strung and sensitive romantic, a towering figure whose tempestuous personal life found powerfully coherent expression in the ever-shifting textures of his music. Now, acclaimed music critic Gene Santoro strips away the myths shrouding Jazz's Angry Man, revealing Mingus as more complex than even his lovers and close friends knew. A pioneering bassist and composer, Mingus redefined jazz's terrain. He penned over 300 works spanning gutbucket gospel, Colombian cumbias, orchestral tone poems, multimedia performance, and chamber jazz. By the time he was 35, his growing body of music won increasing attention as it unfolded into one pioneering musical venture after another, from classical-meets-jazz extended pieces to spoken-word and dramatic performances and television and movie soundtracks. Though critics and musicians debated his musical merits and his personality, by the late 1950s he was widely recognized as a major jazz star, a bellwether whose combined grasp of tradition and feel for change poured his inventive creativity into new musical outlets. But Mingus got headlines less for his art than for his volatile and often provocative behavior, which drew fans who wanted to watch his temper suddenly flare onstage. Impromptu outbursts and speeches formed an integral part of his long-running jazz workshop, modeled partly on dramatic models like Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. Keeping up with the organized chaos of Mingus's art demanded gymnastic improvisational skills and openness from his musicians-which is why some of them called it the Sweatshop. He hired and fired musicians on the bandstand, attacked a few musicians physically and many more verbally, twice threw Lionel Hampton's drummer off the stage, and routinely harangued chattering audiences, once chasing a table of inattentive patrons out of the FIVE SPOT with a meat cleaver. But the musical and mental challenges this volcanic man set his bands also nurtured deep loyalties. Key sidemen stayed with him for years and even decades. In this biography, Santoro probes the sore spots in Mingus's easily wounded nature that helped make him so explosive: his bullying father, his interracial background, his vulnerability to women and distrust of men, his views of political and social issues, his overwhelming need for love and acceptance. Of black, white, and Asian descent, Mingus made race a central issue in his life as well as a crucial aspect of his music, becoming an outspoken (and often misunderstood) critic of racial injustice. Santoro gives us a vivid portrait of Mingus's development, from the racially mixed Watts where he mingled with artists and writers as well as mobsters, union toughs, and pimps to the artistic ferment of postwar Greenwich Village, where he absorbed and extended the radical improvisation flowing through the work of Allen Ginsberg, Jackson Pollock, and Charlie Parker. Indeed, unlike Most jazz biographers, Santoro examines Mingus's extra-musical influences--from Orson Welles to Langston Hughes, Farwell Taylor, and Timothy Leary--and illuminates his achievement in the broader cultural context it demands. Written in a lively, novelistic style, Myself When I Am Real draws on dozens of new interviews and previously untapped letters and archival materials to explore the intricate connections between this extraordinary man and the extraordinary music he made.

    Why did a particular piece move him? How did the music work? Over time, he realized that his passion for this music was not enough. He needed to understand it. Take Bach, for starters. Who was he? How does one account for his music and its unshakeable hold on us today? As a critic, Tommasini has devoted particular attention to living composers and overlooked repertory. But, like all classical music lovers, the canon has remained central for him. In 2011, in his role as the Chief Classical Music Critic for the New York Times, he wrote a popular series in which he somewhat cheekily set out to determine the all-time top ten composers. Inviting input from readers, Tommasini wrestled with questions of greatness. Readers joined the exercise in droves. Some railed against classical music’s obsession with greatness but then raged when Mahler was left off the final list. This intellectual game reminded them why they loved music in the first place. Now in THE INDISPENSABLE COMPOSERS, Tommasini offers his own personal guide to the canon--and what greatness really means in classical music. What does it mean to be canonical now? Who gets to say? And do we have enough perspective on the 20th century to even begin assessing it? To make his case, Tommasini draws on elements of biography, the anxiety of influence, the composer's relationships with colleagues, and shifting attitudes toward a composer's work over time. Because he has spent his life contemplating these titans, Tommasini shares impressions from performances he has heard or given or moments when his own biography proves revealing. As he argues for his particular pantheon of indispensable composers, Anthony Tommasini provides a masterclass in what to listen for and how to understand what music does to us.

    Inside, you’ll find all of the biggest-selling, most-played hits for the past six decades. Each alphabetized artist entry includes biographical info, the date their single reached the Top 40, the song’s highest position, and the number of weeks on the charts, as well as the original record label and catalog number. Other sections—such as “Record Holders,” “Top Artists by Decade,” and “#1 Singles 1955-2009”—make The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits the handiest and most indispensable music reference for record collectors, trivia enthusiasts, industry professionals and pop music fans alike. Did you know?    • Beyoncé’s 2003 hit “Crazy in Love” spent 24 weeks in the Top 40 and eight of them in the #1 spot.   • Billy Idol has had a total of nine Top 40 hits over his career, the last being “Cradle of Love” in 1990.    • Of Madonna’s twelve #1 hits, her 1994 single “Take a Bow” held the spot the longest, for seven weeks—one week longer than her 1984 smash “Like a Virgin.”   • Marvin Gaye’s song “Sexual Healing” spent 15 weeks at #3 in 1982, while the same song was #1 on the R&B chart for 10 weeks.   • Male vocal group Boyz II Men had three of the biggest chart hits of all time during the 1990s.   • The Grateful Dead finally enjoyed a Top 10 single in 1987 after 20 years of touring.    • Janet Jackson has scored an impressive 39 Top 40 hits—one more than her megastar brother Michael!

     The early 1980s were an exciting time for music. Hair metal bands were selling out stadiums, while clubs and house parties in New York City has spawned a new genre of music. At the time, though, hip hop's reach was limited, an artform largely ignored by mainstream radio deejays and the rock-obsessed MTV network.But in 1986, the music world was irrevocably changed when Run-DMC covered Aerosmith's hit "Walk This Way" in the first rock-hip hop collaboration. Other had tried melding styles. This was different, as a pair of iconic arena rockers and the young kings of hip hop shared a studio and started a revolution. The result: Something totally new and instantly popular. Most importantly, "Walk This Way" would be the first rap song to be played on mainstream rock radio.In Walk This Way, Geoff Edgers sets the scene for this unlikely union of rockers and MCs, a mashup that both revived Aerosmith and catapulted hip hop into the mainstream. He tracks the paths of the main artists--Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Joseph "Run" Simmons, and Darryl "DMC" McDaniels--along with other major players on the scene across their lives and careers, illustrating the long road to the revolutionary marriage of rock and hip hop. Deeply researched and written in cinematic style, this music history is a must-read for fans of hip hop, rock, and everything in between.

    Title: Play Ukulele Today! Level 1 Binding: Paperback Author: Tagliarino, Barrett Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation

    The late 1960s in West Germany was a period of profound breakthroughs, upheavals and reversals. Out of this climate, a music scene exploded that would forever change the face of western rock; at times anarchic, at others mystical, magickal, or utopian, it pushed rock beyond any known limits. Illustrated with concert photos, posters, record cover art and other rare visual material, and also including essays by Michel Faber, Erik Davis, David Stubbs, Ken Hollings and testimonials from Gavin Russom (Delia and Gavin/Black Meteoric Star), Plastic Crimewave, Stephen Thrower (Coil/Cyclobe), and Ann Shenton (Add N to (X)) this is an essential compendium to a music whose spirit and ideas still vibrate through contemporary culture today.

    The complete songbook from the greatest singer/songwriter of all time! Now with every song together in one giant volume, the ultimate Dylan songbook features over 329 tunes including all of his greatest hits as well as his lesser-known work. With melody line, chord symbols and full lyrics. Songs include: Blowin' in the Wind * Forever Young * Just Like a Woman * Mr. Tambourine Man * She Belongs to Me * Tangled Up in Blue * The Times They Are Changin' * Visions of Johanna * and hundreds more.