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Billie Holiday by John Szwed
Category: Biography and Memoir
Today, Billie Holiday is an icon - an artist whose voice has weathered countless shifts in public taste, and whose impact on contemporary music is unquestionable. But when eighteen-year-old Billie Holiday stepped into Columbia studios in November of 1933 to record 'Riffin' the Scotch' and 'Your Mother's ...Show more
Billie Holiday - The Musician and the Myth by John Szwed
Category: Music
Published in celebration of Holiday's centenary, the first biography to focus on the singer's extraordinary musical talent When Billie Holiday stepped into Columbia's studios in November 1933, it marked the beginning of what is arguably the most remarkable and influential career in ?twentieth-century po ...Show more
Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth by John Szwed
Category: Biography
Revelatory . . . one of the most briskly revealing pieces of jazz biography that I ve read. Richard Brody, "The New Yorker" When Billie Holiday first stepped into a recording studio in November 1933, it marked the beginning of what is arguably the most remarkable and influential career in twentieth-cent ...Show more
Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith by John Szwed
Category: Biography
He was an anthropologist, a filmmaker, a painter, a folklorist, a mystic, and a walking encyclopedia. He taught Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe about the occult, swapped drugs with Timothy Leary, jammed with Thelonious Monk, lived with Allen Ginsberg, and received one of the first Guggenheim grants. ...Show more
Man Who Recorded the World : A Biography of Alan Lomax by John Szwed
Category: Fiction
Writer, musicologist, archivist, singer, DJ, filmmaker, record, radio and TV producer, Alan Lomax was a man of many parts. Without him the history of popular music would have been very different. Armed with a tape-recorder and his own near-flawless good taste, Lomax spent years travelling the US, partic ...Show more
So What? A life of Miles dDvis by John F. Szwed
Category: Fiction
Miles Davis was one of the crucial influences in the development of modern jazz. He regularly changed styles, leaving his impact on a series of forms of jazz. This book tells the story of his childhood, his depressions and his relationship with heroin.
Space Is The Place Sun Ra by Szwed John F
Category: Rock & Roll
Sun Ra, a.k.a. Herman Poole "Sonny" Blount, has been hailed as "one of the great big-band leaders, pianists, and surrealists of jazz" (New York Times) and as "the missing link between Duke Ellington and Public Enemy" (Rolling Stone) . Composer, keyboardist, bandleader, philosopher, poet, and self-procla ...Show more
The Man Who Recorded the World: A Biography of Alan Lomax by John Szwed
Category: Biography Memoir
Writer, musicologist, archivist, singer, DJ, filmmaker, record, radio and TV producer, Alan Lomax was a man of many parts. Without him the history of popular music would have been very different. Armed with a tape-recorder and his own near-flawless good taste, Lomax spent years travelling the US, partic ...Show more
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