Do you want to know when Duke Ellington was king of The Cotton Club? Have you ever wondered how old Miles Davis was when he got his first trumpet? From birth dates to gig dates and from recordings to television specials, Leonard Feather and Ira Gitler have left no stone unturned in their quest for accurate, detailed information on the careers of 3.300 jazz musicians from around the world. We learn that Duke Ellington worked his magic at The Cotton Club from 1927 to 1931, and that on Miles ...

How to Set Up a Stratocaster shows you how to get your favorite guitar to play and sound fantastic. Stratocasters are in most ways just like other guitars but their reliance on a spring tremolo and the design of the pickups can make them more difficult to setup. This book shows you in detail how to adjust the guitar to perfection. There are lots of illustrations and the book is easy to follow.Make your Stratocaster guitar play and sound the way that you always wanted it to. This bo...

Never wonder how to play certain jazz chords on guitar again with this easy-to-use and comprehensive text. Also an excellent reference book, this book presents a plethora of chords and voicings commonly found used when playing jazz guitar. Virtually every type of jazz chord and its inversions is presented in standard notation and tab accompanied by a photo of the chord being executed on the guitar fingerboard. Jazz Guitar Photo Chords is perfect for jazz band guitarists needing new voicing...

Japan’s jazz community—both musicians and audience—has been begrudgingly recognized in the United States for its talent, knowledge, and level of appreciation. Underpinning this tentative admiration, however, has been a tacit agreement that, for cultural reasons, Japanese jazz “can’t swing.” In Blue Nippon E. Taylor Atkins shows how, strangely, Japan’s own attitude toward jazz is founded on this same ambivalence about its authenticity.Engagingly told through the voices of ma...

Read closely, there are no easy ways to riches! This is NOT a get rich quick book;it's NOT an "easy" guide to making money, and there are NO secrets in this book. The formula to make six figures with your money is quite simple, and if you want to really make money with you music without chasing a record deal, then you need to read this book!Many independent musicians have dreams of becoming the next big superstar. Those dreams are usually predicated on getting a lucrative Recording...

This comprehensive A-to-Z reference is "an impressive contribution to jazz history and surprisingly good reading" (Michael Ullman, author of Jazz Lives).This informative book documents the careers of South Carolina jazz and blues musicians from the nineteenth century to the present. The musicians range from the renowned (James Brown, Dizzy Gillespie), to the notable (Freddie Green, Josh White), the largely forgotten (Fud Livingston, Josie Miles), the obscu...

Saxophonist, multi-wind player, arranger, composer, music director, theater works producer, educator, and visionary, Pat Patrick performed with Duke Ellington’s and Quincy Jones’ orchestras, Thelonious Monk, Mongo Santamaria, Nat King Cole, James Moody, Eric Dolphy, Marvin Gaye, Patti Labelle, and Billy Taylor. Most of his career, however, was spent laying down the baseline grooves on the baritone saxophone with the indefinable Sun Ra Archestra for over 35 years.Based on research i...

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: A Research and Information Guide is a valuable tool for any scholar, performer, or music student interested in accessing the most pertinent resources on the life, works, and cultural context of the composer. It is an updated, annotated bibliography of resources on the biographical, musical, and religious aspects of Mendelssohn's life.

Part reference book, part history, and part road map to the connectivity of popular music, this book is a must for all rock 'n' roll fans as it brings together a compilation of over two hundred genres of rock music—an entertaining, enlightening, knotty family tree of America's favorite musical genre.In the six decades since rock 'n' roll stole America's soul, the single genre has produced over two hundred sub-genres. The days of being able to walk in to a Tower Records and seek out...

The book reviews the blues structures and how these have evolved from the beginning of the last century to present day.The book first analyzes the standard progression. This progression, as defined in its primordial form of the Country Blues, crystallized in the Classic Blues period and was used also in Urban Blues and subsequent evolutions of Rhythm 'n' Blues, Funk, and Blues Rock. The book moves on to cover Blues progressions with substitution, created by the “boppers'" need to ha...

J.J. Johnson, known as the spiritual father of modern trombone, has been a notable figure in the history of jazz. His career has embodied virtually every innovation and development in jazz over the past half-century. Covering his life from childhood and education through his adult musical career playing with jazz greats such as Dizzy Gillespie, this book offers an illustration of Johnson's technical and stylistic development, as well as a thorough catalogue of his compositions, film scores...