Author : Tony Bacon
Publisher : Hal Leonard Corporation
Page : 184 pages
File Size : 50,94 MB
Release : 2008
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780879309244
The first full-color, comprehensive history, tracing the entire development of one of the 20th century's most important musical instruments. Based on firsthand interviews with primary inventors and makers of past and present bass guitars, this new book examines the birth of the instrument, its popularization during the 1960s and 1970s, and modern variations of the instrument.
Author : Karen Tongson
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Page : 153 pages
File Size : 22,38 MB
Release : 2019-06-01
Category : Music
ISBN : 1477318860
In the '60s and '70s, America's music scene was marked by raucous excess, reflected in the tragic overdoses of young superstars such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. At the same time, the uplifting harmonies and sunny lyrics that propelled Karen Carpenter and her brother, Richard, to international fame belied a different sort of tragedy—the underconsumption that led to Karen's death at age thirty-two from the effects of an eating disorder. In Why Karen Carpenter Matters, Karen Tongson (whose Filipino musician parents named her after the pop icon) interweaves the story of the singer’s rise to fame with her own trans-Pacific journey between the Philippines—where imitations of American pop styles flourished—and Karen Carpenter’s home ground of Southern California. Tongson reveals why the Carpenters' chart-topping, seemingly whitewashed musical fantasies of "normal love" can now have profound significance for her—as well as for other people of color, LGBT+ communities, and anyone outside the mainstream culture usually associated with Karen Carpenter’s legacy. This hybrid of memoir and biography excavates the destructive perfectionism at the root of the Carpenters’ sound, while finding the beauty in the singer's all too brief life.
Author : Mike Cidoni Lennox
Publisher : Chronicle Books
Page : 344 pages
File Size : 31,19 MB
Release : 2021-11-16
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 164896091X
Introduction by Richard Carpenter The definitive biography of one of the most enduring and endeared recording artists in history—the Carpenters—is told for the first time from the perspective of Richard Carpenter, through more than 100 hours of exclusive interviews and some 200 photographs from Richard's personal archive, many never published. After becoming multimillion-selling, Grammy-winning superstars with their 1970 breakthrough hit "(They Long to Be) Close to You," Richard and Karen Carpenter would win over millions of fans worldwide with a record-breaking string of hits including "We've Only Just Begun," "Top of the World," and "Yesterday Once More." By 1975, success was taking its toll. Years of jam-packed work schedules, including hundreds of concert engagements, proved to be just too much for the Carpenters to keep the hits coming—and, ultimately, to keep the music playing at all. However, Richard and Karen never took their adoring public, or each other, for granted. In Carpenters: The Musical Legacy, Richard Carpenter tells his story for the first time. With candor, heart, and humor, he sheds new light on the Carpenters' trials and triumphs—work that remains the gold standard for melodic pop. This beautifully illustrated definitive biography, with exclusive interviews and never-before-seen photographs, is a must-have for any Carpenters fan.
Author : Chris Strodder
Publisher : Santa Monica Press
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 39,66 MB
Release : 2015-03-23
Category : Travel
ISBN : 1595808264
The Disneyland Book of Lists offers a new way to explore six decades of Disneyland® history. Hundreds of fascinating lists cover the past and present and feature everything from the park’s famous attractions, shops, restaurants, parades, and live shows to the creative artists, designers, characters, and performers who have made Disneyland® the world’s most beloved theme park. Inside the pages of this fun- and fact-filled book you will find: • 13 of Walt Disney’s Disneyland® Favorites • 32 Signs and Structures Reminding of Disneyland’s® Past • A Dozen Scary Moments on Disneyland® Attractions • 47 Disneyland® Parades • 18 Secrets in the Haunted Mansion • 30 Jokes from the Jungle Cruise • 25 Special Events You May Not Have Heard Of • 15 Urban Legends • 123 Celebrity Guests • 26 Attractions and Exhibits with the Longest Names • 11 Movies Based on Disneyland® Attractions • A Dozen World Records Set at Disneyland® In addition to lists created by author Chris Strodder (The Disneyland® Encyclopedia), the book will include lists from celebrities, Disneyland® experts and historians, Disneyland® Imagineers and designers, and other current and former Disneyland® employees. People have been making lists since Biblical times (think Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, compiled 2,100 years ago), and to this day various top tens, hit parades, and bucket lists chronicle every aspect of our lives. But until now, no book has used lists to categorize all the diverse elements in Disneyland®. Fun, fascinating, factual, and sixty years in the making, The Disneyland® Book of Lists is the only Disneyland® book of its kind.
Author : Randy Schmidt
Publisher : Omnibus Press
Page : 493 pages
File Size : 15,89 MB
Release : 2012-03-07
Category : Music
ISBN : 0857127691
Karen Carpenter was the instantly recognisable lead singer of the Carpenters. The top-selling American musical act of the 1970s, they delivered the love songs that defined a generation. Karen's velvety voice on a string of 16 consecutive Top 20 hits from 1970 to 1976 – including Close to You, We've Only Just Begun, Rainy Days and Mondays, Superstar, and Hurting Each Other – propelled the duo to worldwide stardom and record sales of over 100 million. Karen's musical career was short – only 13 years. During that time, the Carpenters released 10 studio albums, toured more than 200 days a year, taped five television specials, and won three Grammys and an American Music Award. But that's only part of Karen's story. As the world received news of her death at 32 years of age in 1983, she became the proverbial poster child for anorexia nervosa. Little Girl Blue is an intimate profile of Karen Carpenter, a girl from a modest Connecticut upbringing who became a Superstar. Based on exclusive interviews with nearly 100 friends and associates, including record producers, studio musicians, songwriters, television directors, photographers, radio personalities, classmates, childhood friends, neighbours, personal assistants, romantic interests, hairdressers, and housekeepers.'...thorough and affectionate biography of a singer who's been constantly undervalued by the music industry.' MOJO 'Schmidt cannot be faulted... carefully factual, sensitively pitched book.' The Word 'The first truly convincing account of her nightmarish story.' The Guardian
Author : Marc Myers
Publisher : Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 18,91 MB
Release : 2016-11-01
Category : Music
ISBN : 0802189652
“A winning look at the stories behind 45 pop, punk, folk, soul and country classics” in the words of Mick Jagger, Stevie Wonder, Cyndi Lauper and more (The Washington Post). Every great song has a fascinating backstory. And here, writer and music historian Marc Myers brings to life five decades of music through oral histories of forty-five era-defining hits woven from interviews with the artists who created them, including such legendary tunes as the Isley Brothers’ Shout, Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love, Janis Joplin’s Mercedes Benz, and R.E.M’s Losing My Religion. After receiving his discharge from the army in 1968, John Fogerty did a handstand—and reworked Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony to come up with Proud Mary. Joni Mitchell remembers living in a cave on Crete with the mean old daddy who inspired her 1971 hit Carey. Elvis Costello talks about writing (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes in ten minutes on the train to Liverpool. And Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page, Rod Stewart, the Clash, Jimmy Cliff, Roger Waters, Stevie Wonder, Keith Richards, Cyndi Lauper, and many other leading artists reveal the emotions, inspirations, and techniques behind their influential works. Anatomy of a Song is a love letter to the songs that have defined generations of listeners and “a rich history of both the music industry and the baby boomer era” (Los Angeles Times Book Review).
Author : Daniel Levitin
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 229 pages
File Size : 46,19 MB
Release : 2019-07-04
Category : Music
ISBN : 0241987369
From the author of The Changing Mind and The Organized Mind comes a New York Times bestseller that unravels the mystery of our perennial love affair with music ***** 'What do the music of Bach, Depeche Mode and John Cage fundamentally have in common?' Music is an obsession at the heart of human nature, even more fundamental to our species than language. From Mozart to the Beatles, neuroscientist, psychologist and internationally-bestselling author Daniel Levitin reveals the role of music in human evolution, shows how our musical preferences begin to form even before we are born and explains why music can offer such an emotional experience. In This Is Your Brain On Music Levitin offers nothing less than a new way to understand music, and what it can teach us about ourselves. ***** 'Music seems to have an almost wilful, evasive quality, defying simple explanation, so that the more we find out, the more there is to know . . . Daniel Levitin's book is an eloquent and poetic exploration of this paradox' Sting 'You'll never hear music in the same way again' Classic FM magazine 'Music, Levitin argues, is not a decadent modern diversion but something of fundamental importance to the history of human development' Literary Review
Author : Marc Myers
Publisher : University of California Press
Page : 278 pages
File Size : 47,60 MB
Release : 2019-02-26
Category : Music
ISBN : 0520305515
Why Jazz Happened is the first comprehensive social history of jazz. It provides an intimate and compelling look at the many forces that shaped this most American of art forms and the many influences that gave rise to jazz’s post-war styles. Rich with the voices of musicians, producers, promoters, and others on the scene during the decades following World War II, this book views jazz’s evolution through the prism of technological advances, social transformations, changes in the law, economic trends, and much more. In an absorbing narrative enlivened by the commentary of key personalities, Marc Myers describes the myriad of events and trends that affected the music's evolution, among them, the American Federation of Musicians strike in the early 1940s, changes in radio and concert-promotion, the introduction of the long-playing record, the suburbanization of Los Angeles, the Civil Rights movement, the “British invasion” and the rise of electronic instruments. This groundbreaking book deepens our appreciation of this music by identifying many of the developments outside of jazz itself that contributed most to its texture, complexity, and growth.
Author : Jerry Leiber
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 339 pages
File Size : 41,19 MB
Release : 2009-06-09
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1416566805
The hitmakers behind Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” and “Jailhouse Rock” recount their rise to songwriting stardom while authoring the classic American R&B sound of countless chart-topping singles. In 1950 a couple of rhythm and blues–loving teenagers named Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller met for the first time. They discovered their mutual affection for R&B and, as Jerry and Mike put it in this fascinating autobiography, began an argument that has been going on for over fifty years with no resolution in sight. Leiber and Stoller were still in their teens when they started working with some of the pioneers of rock and roll, writing such hits as "Hound Dog," which eventually became a #1 record for Elvis Presley. Jerry and Mike became the King’s favorite songwriters, giving him "Jailhouse Rock" and other #1 songs. Their string of hits with the Coasters, including "Yakety Yak," "Poison Ivy," and "Charlie Brown," is a part of rock ’n’ roll history. They founded their own music label and introduced novel instrumentation into their hits for the Drifters and Ben E. King, including "On Broadway" and "Stand by Me." They worked with everyone from Phil Spector to Burt Bacharach and Peggy Lee. Their smash musical Smokey Joe’s Café became the longest-running musical revue in Broadway history. Lively, colorful, and irreverent, Hound Dog describes how two youngsters with an insatiable love of good old American R&B created the soundtrack for a generation.
Author : Quincy Jones
Publisher : Crown
Page : 473 pages
File Size : 23,23 MB
Release : 2002-10-08
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0767905105
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “One of the most prolific and revered producers in music history” (Rolling Stone) recounts his moving life story and decades working alongside superstars like Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, and dozens of others. “[Jones] was orchestrating the sound of America, complicating it while grasping what makes it pop. . . . His music opens one of the most-watched television events ever broadcast (Roots) and his production is behind the best-selling album ever recorded (Thriller).”—Wesley Morris, The New York Times Quincy Jones grew up poor on the mean streets of Chicago’s South Side, brushing against the law and feeling the pain of his mother’s descent into madness. But when his father moved the family west to Seattle, he took up the trumpet and was literally saved by music. A prodigy, he played backup for Billie Holiday and toured the world with the Lionel Hampton Band before leaving his teens. Soon, though, he found his true calling, inaugurating a career that included arranging albums for Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, and Count Basie; composing the scores of such films as The Pawnbroker, In Cold Blood, In the Heat of the Night, and The Color Purple; producing the bestselling album of all time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and the bestselling single “We Are the World”; and producing and arranging his own highly praised albums, including the Grammy Award–winning Back on the Block. His musical achievements, in a career that spans every style of American popular music, yielded an incredible eighty Grammy nominations and twenty-eight wins, and are matched by his record as a pioneering music executive, film and television producer, tireless social activist, and business entrepreneur—one of the most successful black business figures in America. Q is an impressive self-portrait by one of the master makers of American culture, a complex, many-faceted man with far more than his share of talents and an unparalleled vision, as well as some entirely human flaws.
