Musicians, singers, bands and groups Books

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Book SynopsisProvides a riveting account of the day Johnny Cash took the stage at Folsom Prison in California. Michael Streissguth skilfully places the concert and the album that followed in the larger context of Cash's artistic development, the era's popular music, and California's prison system, uncovering new angles and exploding a few myths along the way.Trade ReviewAs an important piece of pop, rock, and country music historiography and as a fitting remembrance of the Man in Black, this . . . is essential. Triumphant on biographical and social levels, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison nearly matches its titular musical subject for pure poetic grit. A wonder . . . an important book about an epochal album

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Book SynopsisExplores the ups and downs of one of the most successful girl groups of the early 1960s. Telling their story for the first time, in their own words, Chapel of Love reintroduces the Louisiana Music Hall of Famers to a new audience.

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Book SynopsisFocuses on the white, female artists of the 1950s, a time that predated the chart-topping girl groups of the early 1960s. These popular performers, many of whom graduated out of the big bands of the 1940s, impacted popular music in a huge way.Trade ReviewAuthors have long neglected the fabulous females of the fifties, but Steve Bergsman makes up for that neglect with this fascinating, fact-filled book. All I Want Is Loving You fills a major gap in pop music history and Bergsman is the author who should fill it." - Peter Benjaminson, author of The Story of Motown, Mary Wells: The Tumultuous Life of Motown's First Superstar

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Book SynopsisHighlights the Black female artists of the 1950s, a time that predated the chart-topping girl groups of the early 1960s. Many of the singers of this era became wildly famous and respected, and even made it into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame. However, there were many others, who made one or two great records and then disappeared from the scene.Trade ReviewA singular look and fully researched account of the women singers who were trailblazers in the early 1950s as R&B evolved into rock ’n’ roll." - Aaron Cohen, author of Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power and Aretha Franklin's 'Amazing Grace'"An encyclopedic history that conveys important contributions of individual artists as well as the collective body of women singers." - Frank Matheis, contributing writer for Living Blues, publisher of thecountryblues.com, and coauthor of Sweet Bitter Blues: Washington, DC's Homemade Blues

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Book Synopsis'A brilliant, very funny, very revealing autobiography-through-music. Maybe the best book ever written about being a rockstar' CAITLIN MORAN_______________________________________________________________Bono - artist, activist and the lead singer of Irish rock band U2 - has written his autobiography: honest and irreverent, intimate and profound, Surrender is the story of the remarkable life he's lived, the challenges he's faced and the friends and family who have shaped and sustained him.'When I started to write this book I was hoping to draw in detail what I'd previously only sketched in songs. The people, places, and possibilities in my life. Surrender is a word freighted with meaning for me. Growing up in Ireland in the seventies with my fists up (musically speaking), it was not a natural concept. A word I only circled until I gathered my thoughts for the book. I am still grappling with this most humbling of commands. In the band, in my marriage, in my faith, in my life as an activist. Surrender is the story of one pilgrim's lack of progress ... With a fair amount of fun along the way.' - BonoAs one of the music world's most iconic artists and the cofounder of organizations ONE and (RED), Bono's career has been written about extensively. But in Surrender, Bono's autobiography, he picks up the pen, writing for the first time about his remarkable life and those he has shared it with. In his unique voice, Bono takes us from his early days growing up in Dublin, including the sudden loss of his mother when he was 14, to U2's unlikely journey to become one of the world's most influential rock bands, to his more than 20 years of activism dedicated to the fight against AIDS and extreme poverty. Writing with candour, self-reflection, and humour, Bono opens the aperture on his life - and the family, friends and faith that have sustained, challenged and shaped him.Surrender's subtitle, "40 Songs, One Story," is a nod to the book's 40 chapters, which are each named after a U2 song. Bono has also created 40 original drawings for Surrender which will appear throughout the book.Trade ReviewThis is Bono at his best: thoughtful, reflective, revealing a wisdom that his rock-star persona covers up ... At the root of it all you don't doubt his decency or integrity -- Will Hodgkinson * The Times *A rattling good yarn ... characteristically expansive, but it whizzes by ... Bono has storytelling verve and a genuine desire for self-examination and is enthusiastic about praising others, often at his own expense. ... [a] generous, energetic book -- Dorian Lynskey * Guardian *Bono's memoir bares his soul ... Has any rock superstar written a more revealing biography? He deftly balances the comical and profound and packs anecdotes with cameos by the rich and famous, from Frank Sinatra to Pope John Paul II -- Neil McCormick * Telegraph *Beautifully evoked, a mixture of Joycean exuberance and Chandleresque irony ... most revealing are the intimate personal experiences that shaped him and his chaotic creative process. Punctuating it all is the music. Each chapter uses a U2 song to pull us down memory lane -- Mariella Frostrup * Sunday Times *A rewarding read about a loss-fuelled life lived to the full ... What makes much of this book so exciting and interesting, is that the sadness is overwhelmed by a desperate, frenzied desire to use life more richly since it has proved to be so fragile. Sadness is replaced here by an extraordinary and breathless zeal for friendship but also for love ... Surrender is, in its own generous way, a book written by an Irishman to tell his mother how much he misses her, to tell his mates how much he rates them, and to let his wife and children know how much he loves them -- Colm Toibin * Irish Times *Bono's honesty will win over his harshest critics ... the U2 frontman's memoir is a trumph ... Honest, witty, informative and beautifully written. Surrender will surely join the ranks of the great rock memoirs * Irish Independent *Bono's prose is electrifyingly good. Not confected memories, but the messy, sometimes bathetic minutiae of lived experience, emotions remembered but only truly understood with hindsight and vocabulary that comes much later -- Pete Paphides, author of 'Broken Greek'Will engage and entertain you, full of extraordinary anecdotes and people from Sinatra and Johnny Cash to Pope Benedict and presidents. -- Catherine Meyer, author and founder of WEPBono's book is absolutely brilliant -- Simon SchamaA brilliant, very funny, very revealing, autobiography-through-music. Maybe the best book ever written about being a rockstar -- Caitlin Moran

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Book SynopsisSam Myers: The Blues Is My Story recounts the life of bluesman Sam Myers (1936-2006), as told in his own words to author Jeff Horton. Myers grew up visually handicapped in the Jim Crow South and left home to attend the state school for the blind at Piney Woods. Myers's intense desire to become a musician and a scholarship from the American Conservatory School of Music called him to Chicago. There in 1952 he joined Elmore James's band as a drummer and was featured on some of James's best-known recordings. Following the elder bluesman's death in 1963, Myers fronted bands of his own and recorded many well-received singles and albums. In 1986, Myers became the W. C. Handy Award-winning front man, vocalist, and harmonica player for Anson Funderburgh and the Rockets. Throughout the book, Myers provides a historical context to a bygone era of the blues and reveals his own thoughts and feelings about the musicians with whom he played. And they are a list of who's who in the blues-Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Hound Dog Taylor, and Robert Lockwood Junior in addition to Elmore James. In one chapter Myers describes a personalized deeper meaning to the blues. And in another he relates a series of anecdotes about the lighter side of life on the road. Contributions from Myers's father and stories from a boyhood friend round out the narrative. Dallas musician Brian ""Hash Brown"" Calway dissects the more technical aspects of Myers's harmonica style. Long-time friend and bandmate, Anson Funderburgh, weighs in with a chapter about their songwriting methods and offers some of his own recollections on their twenty years together. An award-winning and prolific musician and singer Sam Myers wrote and recorded what was to be his most famous single, ""Sleeping in the Ground,"" in 1956. He toured all over the U.S. and around the world with Anson Funderburgh and the Rockets. Jeff Horton is a blues musician and journalist active in the Texas blues scene. His work has been published in Southwest Blues magazine.

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Book SynopsisUniquely revealing interviews with one of the world's greatest living composers. György Kurtág (b. 1926) is widely regarded as one of the foremost composers in the second half of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first. Born in Romania, he received crucial training in Paris from Olivier Messiaen and Marianne Stein. He was also shaped by his broadening contact there with the music of Webern and such challenging literary works as the plays of Samuel Beckett. After many years in Hungary, teaching at the Budapest Academy of Music,Kurtág settled near Bordeaux with his wife Márta. The two regularly perform duo-recitals of his music. In 2006, his . . . concertante . . . (2003, for violin, viola and orchestra) won the coveted Grawemeyer Award for MusicComposition. This unique set of interviews with Kurtág, alone or with his wife, gives a fascinating insight into the composer's personality, which is marked by shyness but also an unquenchable thirst for impressions of every kind [artistic, natural and human]. The two speak with disarming openness about their lives -- the background against which masterpieces like Messages of the Late Miss R. V. Troussova (1976-80, for soprano and chamber orchestra) or Stele (1994, for orchestra) were written. The analysis of certain of Kurtág's works, especially of . . . concertante . . ., shows the way that his mind works: no system, no dogma, no formulae -- rather, basic human emotions expressed through means that speak directly to the listener's innermost feelings. The Hungarian music publisher Bálint András Varga has spent nearly forty years working for and with composers.He has published several books, including extensive interviews with Lutoslawski, Berio, and Xenakis.Trade ReviewOffers telling insights . . . [on the] linkage between teaching and communicating, teaching and composing. . . . Reach[es] to the core of Kurtag's essential expressionism. . . . [Kurtag's] tributes to [Ligeti] provide . . . the shrewdest, clearest-eyed judgment of his friend's achievements. 'Mementos of a friendship' . . . is as artfully assembled as any of Kurtag's compositions. -- Arnold Whittall * MUSICAL TIMES *Like many of Kurtág's finest pieces, [this book] is short but densely packed. In three extended interviews with Varga, the composer provides piercing insights into a vast range of music and addresses his own work with startling clarity, candor, and humility. He also delivers three tributes to his longtime friend György Ligeti, revealing more of Ligeti's psychology and creativity than any commentator in print. -- Alex Ross * THE NEW YORKER *Read the full review at http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/alexross/2009/10/gyorgy-kurtag.html * . *This book provides a fascinating and unique insight into the life, mind, and personality of the Hungarian composer György Kurtág [.] this volume surely will play a significant role in enhancing and enlightening the way we experience Kurtág's music, both as listeners and as scholars. MUSIC & LETTERS, May 2011 * . *An important introduction to the music and the personality of this unique composer. -- Pierre BoulezA uniquely sensitive look at Kurtág's extraordinary work, character, and personality. --Kent Nagano, General Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera and Orchestra and Music Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra * . *Table of ContentsIntroduction: A Portrait Sketch of György Kurtág in Three Sittings Three Questions to György Kurtág (1982-1985) The Three Questions Again (1996) Key Words (2007-2008) Mementos of a Friendship: György Kurtág on György Ligeti A Brief Biography of György Kurtág Personalia List of Works Discography Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA compelling portrait of composer-performer Julius Eastman's enigmatic and intriguing life and music. Composer-performer Julius Eastman (1940-90) was an enigma, both comfortable and uncomfortable in the many worlds he inhabited: black, white, gay, straight, classical music, disco, academia, and downtown New York. His music, insistent and straightforward, resists labels and seethes with a tension that resonates with musicians, scholars, and audiences today. Eastman's provocative titles, including Gay Guerrilla, Evil Nigger, Crazy Nigger, and others, assault us with his obsessions. Eastman tested limits with his political aggressiveness, as reflected in legendary scandals like his June 1975 performance of John Cage's Song Books, which featured homoerotic interjections, and the uproar over his titles at Northwestern University. These episodes are examples of Eastman's persistence in pushing the limits of the acceptable in the highly charged arenas of sexual and civil rights. In addition to analyses of Eastman's music, the essays in Gay Guerrilla provide background on his remarkable life history and the era's social landscape. The book presents an authentic portrait of a notable American artist thatis compelling reading for the general reader as well as scholars interested in twentieth-century American music, American studies, gay rights, and civil rights. This Life of Sounds: Evenings for New Music inBuffalo received an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for excellence. Mary Jane Leach is a composer and freelance writer, currently writing music and theatre criticism for the Albany Times-Union.Trade ReviewJulius Eastman enjoyed the admiration of peers such as Morton Feldman, Meredith Monk and Pierre Boulez. Here, highly engaging essays by those who knew Eastman well recall him as a person and assess his brilliance. While there are amusing anecdotes about his more madcap moments . . . the overall message is that he was an artist deserving of significant respect. * BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE *[Eastman's work] effectively rewrote the history of post-war American New Music, restoring to its narrative a gay black voice creating a liberating, high-energy form of organic minimalism. * THE GUARDIAN *It is eminently readable throughout. * JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC STUDIES *[The book will be] a starting point for others who want to engage with Julius Eastman as a performer, scholar, or composer. * ARSC JOURNAL *A picture of [Eastman]--charismatic performer, magnetic personality and emotional escape artist--that puts his work in a context larger and more representative. * BAY AREA REPORTER *A composer of visionary power, a singer with a cavernous bass voice, a collaborator with the diverse likes of Meredith Monk and Pierre Boulez, Eastman had long been a fixture of the New York Music scene....Part of the pleasure of Eastman's rediscovery has been the belated, deserving reinsertion of a black, gay figure into music history. * THE NEW YORK TIMES *Outspoken about his own identity as a black queer man...Eastman was ahead of his time. His music is politics by other means, in search of a form, alighting toward a future that could grant him dignity, when he could be something other than an abstraction. * THE NEW YORKER *A fascinating new collection of essays exploring the life and work of the enigmatic composer Julius Eastman...who worked fluently in jazz, improvisation and acoustical experiments. An indication of his impact is the very fact that so many people have come together [in this book] to remember him and are actively championing his music. * ALBANY TIMES-UNION *The publication of this rigorously researched, lovingly produced, multidimensional study of a singular artist will surely be met with joy by those of us who remember Julius Eastman--the inspired creator, the sly provocateur and martyred saint of the avant-garde. For those who are interested in iconoclasts of whatever stripe, this volume will be a revelation and an invitation to rethink what composition, performance, and life at the precipice of madness can be.-- -- Bill T. Jones, choreographer and dancerThis book has arrived just in time for Black Lives Matter and gets my deepest praise. This important volume of essays brought forth by two brilliant women who have long championed Eastman's music, belongs in every music conservatory library and beyond.-- -- Pauline Oliveros, composerTable of ContentsForeword by George E. Lewis Acknowledgments Introduction: Julius Eastman and His Music - Renee Levine Packer Julius Eastman, A Biography - Renee Levine Packer Unjust Malaise - David Borden The Julius Eastman Parables - R. Nemo Hill Julius Eastman and the Conception of "Organic Music" - Kyle Gann Julius Eastman Singing - John Patrick Thomas An Accidental Musicologist Passes the Torch - Mary Jane Leach A Flexible Musical Identity: Julius Eastman in New York City, 1976-90 - Ryan Dohoney Evil Nigger: A Piece for Multiple Instruments of the Same Type by Julius Eastman (1979), with Performance Instructions by Joseph Kubera - David Borden A Postminimalist Analysis of Julius Eastman's Crazy Nigger - Andrew Hanson-Dvoracek "The Piece Does Not Exist without Julius": Still Staying on Stay On It - Matthew Mendez Connecting the Dots - Mary Jane Leach Gay Guerrilla: A Minimalist Choralphantasie - Luciano Chessa Appendix: Julius Eastman Compositions - Mary Jane Leach Chronology Selected Bibliography List of Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisThe first biography of Yo La Tengo, the massively influential band who all but defined indie music. Yo La Tengo has lit up the indie scene for three decades, part of an underground revolution that defied corporate music conglomerates, eschewed pop radio, and found a third way. Going behind the scenes of one of the most remarkable eras in American music history, Big Day Coming traces the patient rise of husband-and-wife team Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, who—over three decades—helped forge a spandex-and-hairspray-free path to the global stage, selling millions of records along the way and influencing countless bands.Using the continuously vital Yo La Tengo as a springboard, Big Day Coming uncovers the history of the legendary clubs, bands, zines, labels, record stores, college radio stations, fans, and pivotal figures that built the infrastructure of the now-prevalent indie rock world. Journalist and freeform radio DJ Jesse Jarnow draws on all-access interviews and archives for mesmerizing trip through contemporary music history told through one of its most creative and singular acts.

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