Showing titles in History & Criticism

While scores of books have been written about Elvis Presley, this is the first meticulously researched biography of Tom Parker written by someone who knew him personally. And for anyone truly interested in the performer many consider the greatest and most influential of the 20th century, it is impossible to understand how Elvis came to be such a phenomenon without examining the life and mind of Parker, the man who virtually controlled Elvis' every move.

A decade and a half ago, Illmatic launched one of the most storied careers in hip hop, and cemented New York’s place as the genre’s epicenter. With this in-depth look at the record, Matthew Gasteier explores the competing themes that run through Nas’s masterpiece and finds a compelling journey into adulthood.

Bloomsbury presents Rock of Pages by Jesse Kavadlo, read by Christopher Ragland. Rock of Pages provides contexts and close readings of 1980s heavy metal with forty years of hindsight, drawing upon analytical frameworks usually associated with literature and literary studies. Based on decades of...

George Harrison met Muhammad Ali in 1964, when both men were on the cusp of worldwide fame. We Shook Up the World is the story of these two larger-than-life figures at a momentous time. A unique blend of biography and cultural history, this book goes to the very heart of the zeitgeist that each man inhabited and reinvented in profound and enduring ways.

Voodoo, D'Angelo's much-anticipated 2000 release, set the standard for the musical cycle ordained as "neo-soul," a label the singer and songwriter would reject more than a decade later. The album is a product of heightened emotions and fused sensibilities; an amalgam of soul, rock, jazz, gospel, hip-hop, and Afrobeats. D'Angelo put to music his own pleasures and insecurities as a man-child in the promised land. It was both a tribute to his musical heroes: Prince, Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye, J Dilla...and a deconstruction of rhythm and blues itself.

In this book, Mark Polizzotti examines just what makes the songs on Highway 61 Revisited so affecting, how they work together as a suite, and how lyrics, melody, and arrangements combine to create an unusually potent mix. He blends musical and literary analysis of the songs themselves, biography (where appropriate) and recording information (where helpful).

Люди поют и играют на музыкальных инструментах с древнейших времен, но проследить непрерывную историю музыки невозможно, слишком она разнообразна и неоднородна. Поэтому Эндрю Форд—композитор, исследователь и ведущий популярной радиопрограммы о музыке—предлагает иной подход. Он выделяет ключевые темы в истории музыки и показывает, как они проявлялись в разных культурах и эпохах—от ритуальных песнопений и первых систем записи звуков до современных лейблов и стриминговых платформ.

Have you ever had a dream? Something you wanted so bad you just couldn’t let it go? For a group of kids in Harlem in the Eighties, their dreams would change pop music forever. Teddy Riley, Timmy Gatling, and Aaron Hall form a group called Guy that would fuse hip-hop and R&B and launch a new sound.

In Simply Stravinsky, Professor Pieter van den Toorn takes a fresh look at the composer and his legacy, providing a compact, exciting, and accessible introduction to the 20th century’s most celebrated composer and his timeless music. From Stravinsky’s apprenticeship in St. Petersburg to his life among the émigré community in Southern California, Professor van den Toorn shows how the composer’s music was tied to his personality and how it came to influence artists from Aaron Copland to Philip Glass.

Weaving together more than a hundred interviews with Davis's bandmates, family members, friends, and peers, this book powerfully reconstructs Davis's extraordinary life and career. Washita Love Child thoroughly and finally restores the "red dirt boogie brother" to his rightful place in rock history, cementing his legacy for generations to come.

On September 19, 1985, a US Senate hearing was instigated by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC)—founded by Tipper Gore, wife of Senator and later Vice President Al Gore; and Susan Baker, wife of Treasury Secretary James Baker—who wanted to introduce a parental warning system that would label all music albums containing alleged offensive material.

Stephen Catanzarite takes a close look at what many consider to be U2's most fully formed album through the prisms of religion, politics, spirituality, and culture, illuminating its previously unexplored depths, arguing that it's a concept album about love and the fall of man.

In this wickedly entertaining and thoroughly informed homage to one of rock music's towering pinnacles, Erik Davis investigates the magic—black or otherwise—that surrounds this album. Carefully peeling the layers from each song, Davis reveals their dark and often mystical roots—and leaves the listener to decide whether [FOUR SYMBOLS] is some form of occult induction or just an inspired, brilliantly played rock album.

A chi è dedicata questa collana? A chi ha spesso sentito parlare di un certo artista o di un certo genere musicale ma non lo conosce perfettamente. A chi non è interessato a biografie "vita morte e miracoli" e a noiosi trattati su un genere o un altro, ma unicamente a ciò che in ambito musicale conta davvero: la musica.

A tell-all biography of the epic in-fighting of the Grateful Dead in the years following band leader Jerry Garcia's death in 1995 The Grateful Dead rose to greatness under the inspired leadership of guitarist Jerry Garcia, but the band very nearly died along with him after his sudden death in...

For a Kentucky rifleman who spent his tour trudging through Vietnam's Central Highlands, it was Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'". For a "tunnel rat" who blew smoke into the Viet Cong's underground tunnels, it was Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze". For a black marine distraught over the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., it was Aretha Franklin's "Chain of Fools".

Tom Jobim mudou a história da música brasileira com a bossa nova e suas canções, que influenciaram pelo menos duas gerações de compositores. E levou essa música para o mundo. Mas disso os leitores provavelmente já sabem. O que Ruy Castro mostra em O ouvidor do Brasil é um Tom por vezes inesperado e desconhecido, que emerge sob diferentes ângulos em cada crônica. Em conjunto, os textos formam uma espécie de perfil biográfico fragmentado de um dos maiores artistas que o Brasil já teve.

When blues master Robert Johnson's recordings were rereleased to great fanfare in the 1960s, little was known about his life, giving rise to legends that he gained success by selling his soul to the devil. Biography of a Phantom is musicologist Mack McCormick's search, from the late 1960s until McCormick's death in 2015, to uncover Johnson's life story. McCormick spent decades reconstructing Johnson's mysterious life and developing theories about his untimely death at the age of 27, but never made public his discoveries. Biography of a Phantom publishes his compelling work for the first time.

Half-Cuban, half-Puerto Rican, Luis "DJ Disco Wiz" Cedeño is 100 percent Boogie Down Bronx. Born in the 60s, Wiz struggled in a turbulent and violent relationship with his alcoholic father while trying to protect his mother who was suffering from breast cancer. Raised in the 70s, Wiz learned the code of the streets while hustling with his crew, the East Side Boys.

Few bands in rock history have proven to be as enduring and influential as Led Zeppelin. And during the '80s, there was an overabundance of "Zeppelin disciples," or, as guitar great Gary Moore once put it, Led Clones.