Alive at the Village Vanguard


Book Description

The jazz singer narrates the details of her career, describing her meetings with various celebrities in the music, entertainment, theater, and political world while she performed at the famous club in Greenwich Village.




Alive at the Village Vanguard


Book Description

Jazz fans get the inside story of New York's legendary club. At age 83 Lorraine Gordon is a jazz icon who has lived more than a few lives: downtown bohemian uptown grande dame music business pioneer wife lover mother and finally at a point when m










Live At The Village Vanguard


Book Description

Since 1934, the Village Vanguard in New York's Greenwich Village has hosted the foremost in live jazz, folk music, and comedy. Its owner, Max Gordon, has now written a personal history of his club and the hundreds of entertainment legends who have played there. Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, Woodie Guthrie, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Josh White, Pete Seeger-Max has stories about all of them. And what stories! As Nat Hentoff says in his introduction, "A good many so-called professional writers have not done nearly so well."




Led Zeppelin


Book Description

A chronicle of one of the great rock bands explores the roots of the band in the late 1960s rock scene while charting the band's financial success and cultural impact through the 1970s to the present.




Churchill Style


Book Description

A look at the towering twentieth-century leader and his lifestyle that goes beyond the political and into the personal. Countless books have examined the public accomplishments of the man who led Britain in a desperate fight against the Nazis with a ferocity and focus that earned him the nickname “the British Bulldog.” Churchill Style takes a different kind of look at this historic icon—delving into the way he lived and the things he loved, from books to automobiles, as well as how he dressed, dined, and drank in his daily life. With numerous photographs, this unique volume explores Churchill’s interests, hobbies, and vices—from his maddening oversight of the renovation of his country house, Chartwell, and the unusual styles of clothing he preferred, to the seemingly endless flow of cognac and champagne he demanded and his ability to enjoy any cigar, from the cheapest stogies to the most pristine Cubans. Churchill always knew how to live well, truly combining substance with style, and now you can get to know the man behind the legend—from the top of his Homburg hat to the bottom of his velvet slippers. “All readers will appreciate Singer’s highly intelligent observations about how Churchill’s style contributed to, and was ultimately an integral part of his brilliant career.” —Gentleman’s Gazette




Good Things Happen Slowly


Book Description

Jazz could not contain Fred Hersch. Hersch’s prodigious talent as a sideman—a pianist who played with the giants of the twentieth century in the autumn of their careers, including Art Farmer and Joe Henderson—blossomed further in the eighties and beyond into a compositional genius that defied the boundaries of bop, sweeping in elements of pop, classical, and folk to create a wholly new music. Good Things Happen Slowly is his memoir. It’s the story of the first openly gay, HIV-positive jazz player; a deep look into the cloistered jazz culture that made such a status both transgressive and groundbreaking; and a profound exploration of how Hersch’s two-month-long coma in 2007 led to his creating some of the finest, most direct, and most emotionally compelling music of his career. Remarkable, and at times lyrical, Good Things Happen Slowly is an evocation of the twilight of Post-Stonewall New York, and a powerfully brave narrative of illness, recovery, music, creativity, and the glorious reward of finally becoming oneself.




The Rebel Café


Book Description

Ultimately, the book provides a deeper view of 1950s America, not simply as the black-and-white precursor to the Technicolor flamboyance of the sixties but as a rich period of artistic expression and identity formation that blended cultural production and politics.




Coltrane


Book Description

John Coltrane left an indelible mark on the world, but what was the essence of his achievement that makes him so prized forty years after his death? What were the factors that helped Coltrane become who he was? And what would a John Coltrane look like now--or are we looking for the wrong signs? In this deftly written, riveting study, New York Times jazz critic Ben Ratliff answers these questions and examines the life of Coltrane, the acclaimed band leader and deeply spiritual man who changed the face of jazz music. Ratliff places jazz among other art forms and within the turbulence of American social history, and he places Coltrane not just among jazz musicians but among the greatest American artists.