I’m excited [insert music geek here] about four music books on the forthcoming fall 2013 list from University of Illinois Press.
One of the most influential and acclaimed female vocalists of the twentieth century, Patsy Cline (1932–63) was best known for her rich tone and emotionally expressive voice. Born Virginia Patterson Hensley, she launched her musical career during the early 1950s as a young woman in Winchester, Virginia, and her heartfelt songs reflect her life and times in this community. A country music singer who enjoyed pop music crossover success, Cline embodied the power and appeal of women in country music, helping open the lucrative industry to future female solo artists.
Bringing together noted authorities on Patsy Cline and country music, Sweet Dreams: The World of Patsy Cline examines the regional and national history that shaped Cline’s career and the popular culture that she so profoundly influenced with her music. In detailed, deeply researched essays, contributors provide an account of Cline’s early performance days in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, analyze the politics of the split between pop and country music, and discuss her strategies for negotiating gender in relation to her public and private persona. Interpreting rich visual images, fan correspondence, publicity tactics, and community mores, this volume explores the rich and complex history of a woman whose music and image changed the shape of country music and American popular culture.
“This book will stand out as a definitive work on Patsy Cline, country music, popular music, and gender and class in post-World War II American culture. The essays provide interesting insights into Cline’s historical, musical, and sociological importance.”—Michael T. Bertrand, author of Race, Rock, and Elvis
Warren R. Hofstra is Stewart Bell Professor of American History at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia. His other books include The Planting of New Virginia: Shenandoah Valley Landscapes, 1700–1800 and Shenandoah Landscapes and the Great Valley Road of Virginia.
Saxophone virtuoso Charlie “Bird” Parker began playing professionally in his early teens, became a heroin addict at 16, changed the course of music, and then died when only 34 years old. His friend Robert Reisner observed, “Parker, in the brief span of his life, crowded more living into it than any other human being.” Like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane, he was a transitional composer and improviser who ushered in a new era of jazz by pioneering bebop and influenced subsequent generations of musicians.
Meticulously researched and written, Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker tells the story of his life, music, and career. This new biography artfully weaves together firsthand accounts from those who knew him with new information about his life and career to create a compelling narrative portrait of a tragic genius.
While other books about Parker have focused primarily on his music and recordings, this portrait reveals the troubled man behind the music, illustrating how his addictions and struggles with mental health affected his life and career. He was alternatively generous and miserly; a loving husband and father at home but an incorrigible philanderer on the road; and a chronic addict who lectured younger musicians about the dangers of drugs. The preeminent hipster, he used his considerable charm to con friends and strangers alike. Above all he was a musician who overcame humiliation, disappointment, and a life-threatening car wreck to take wing as Bird, a brilliant improviser and composer.
With in-depth research into previously overlooked sources, Chuck Haddix corrects much of the misinformation and myth about one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century. Illustrated with several never-before-seen images, Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker chronicles Parker’s trials and triumphs: his struggles in Kansas City, his collaboration with Dizzy Gillespie that led to the development of bebop, his incarceration in the California State Mental Hospital at Camarillo, his rise to international acclaim, his stormy relationship with his fourth wife Chan, the death of his daughter Pree to his untimely death from a life of excess. This is the story of Charlie “Bird” Parker.
“Finally, a biography that includes a detailed account of Bird’s formative years. One feels that Haddix’s research may open new discussions about this flawed genius, and the wonderfully detailed aspects of Parker’s early life present a hitherto unknown aspect of a tragically short but immensely influential existence. Almost sixty years since Parker’s death, this book is surprisingly the first comprehensive account of the life of one of the last century’s foremost and yet enigmatic musicians. Essential reading for any jazz musician.”—Llew Walker, creator of www.birdlives.co.uk
Chuck Haddix is the director of the Marr Sound Archives of the University of Missouri-Kansas City Libraries. He is the coauthor of Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop—A History and the producer and host of KCUR-FM’s “The Fish Fry,” a popular radio program featuring the finest in blues, soul, rhythm & blues, jumpin’ jive, and zydeco. He also teaches Kansas City jazz history at the Kansas City Art Institute.
In many places around the world, flutes and the sounds of flutes are powerful magical forces for seduction and love, protection, vegetal and human fertility, birth and death, and other aspects of human and non-human behavior. This book explores the cultural significance of flutes, flute playing, and flute players from around the world as interpreted from folktales, myths, and other stories—in a word, “flutelore.” A scholarly yet readable study, World Flutelore: Folktales, Myths, and Other Stories of Magical Flute Power draws upon a range of sources in folklore, anthropology, ethnomusicology, and literary analysis.
Describing and interpreting many examples of flutes as they are found in mythology, poetry, lyrics, and other narrative and literary sources from around the world, veteran ethnomusicologist Dale Olsen seeks to determine what is singularly distinct or unique about flutes, flute playing, and flute players in a global context. He shows how and why world flutes are important for personal, communal, religious, spiritual, and secular expression and even, perhaps, existence. This is a book for students, scholars, and any reader interested in the cultural power of flutes.
“This study on flutes and their lore in different global settings is engagingly readable and of genuine interest not only to ethnomusicologists and folklorists, but to all musically minded readers. Olsen unveils an almost boundless panoramic view of the flute as a powerful entity that permeates people’s aesthetic, symbolic, cultural, and mythological worlds and their inner psyches.”—A. J. Racy, author of Making Music in the Arab World: The Culture and Artistry of Tarab
A lifelong flutist performing classical, jazz, and many types of world flute music, Dale Olsen is a professor emeritus of ethnomusicology at Florida State University. His many books include Music of the Warao of Venezuela: Song People of the Rain Forest and Popular Music of Vietnam: The Politics of Remembering, The Economics of Forgetting.
John Philip Sousa’s mature career as the indomitable leader of his own touring band is well known, but the years leading up to his emergence as a celebrity have escaped serious attention. In this revealing biography, Patrick Warfield explains the making of the March King by documenting Sousa’s early life and career. Covering the period 1854 to 1893, this study focuses on the community and training that created Sousa, exploring the musical life of late nineteenth-century Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia as a context for Sousa’s development.
Warfield examines Sousa’s wide-ranging experience composing, conducting, and performing in the theater, opera house, concert hall, and salons, as well as his leadership of the United States Marine Band and the later Sousa Band, early twentieth-century America’s most famous and successful ensemble. Sousa composed not only marches during this period but also parlor, minstrel, and art songs; parade, concert, and medley marches; schottisches, waltzes, and polkas; and incidental music, operettas, and descriptive pieces. Warfield’s examination of Sousa’s output reveals a versatile composer much broader in stylistic range than the bandmaster extraordinaire remembered as the March King.
In particular, Making the March King demonstrates how the bandmaster used his theatrical training to create the character of the March King. The exuberant bandmaster who pleased audiences was both a skilled and charismatic conductor and a theatrical character whose past and very identity suggested drama, spectacle, and excitement. Sousa’s success was also the result of perseverance and lessons learned from older colleagues on how to court, win, and keep an audience. Warfield presents the story of Sousa as a self-made business success, a gifted performer and composer who deftly capitalized on his talents to create one of the most entertaining, enduring figures in American music.
“Making the March King is chock full of fresh and previously unpublished details about John Philip Sousa’s early years, his influences, his formative experiences, and his strategies for promoting his career and reputation. Recommended for anyone interested in music history and the full story of one of the giants of early American popular culture.”—Thomas L. Riis, author of Frank Loesser
Patrick Warfield is an associate professor of music at the University of Maryland and the editor of John Philip Sousa: Six Marches.
For more complete information, click on a book image to go directly to the University of Illinois Press website.
Click here for a look at the complete University of Illinois fall catalog.
Meet Grumpy Cat, internet sensation and author of GRUMPY CAT: A GRUMPY BOOK at Book Expo America in the Chronicle Books booth at 3:00 pm on Friday, May 31!
Grumpy Cat will be at the booth (#739, level 3) for photos. Chronicle will also be giving out Grumpy Cat postcards to promote the book.
Freedom Tower and 9/II Memorial May 7, 2013
I usually don’t broadcast my Foursquare check-ins. Thursday, I embarked on my trip to NYC for sales conference meetings, and when I arrived at the Atlanta airport, I checked in.
To my surprise, I received this reply:
We were! Tom was on the row in front of mine which I realized when we were on the approach into NY. In baggage claim we chatted it up, and took a picture.
I finally got to meet Tom in real life, after selling his books for Abrams for years. What I didn’t know was that Tom would be our surprise guest at the Abrams sales meeting. He called me up to assist him with the Yoda folding demonstration.
Tom said I was possibly the tallest Origami Yoda ever. Tom is a great guy, a generous, indefatigable author for whom it is a joy to work! And, he made sales conference memorable!
Coming in August!
Previous posts:
March Madness
Art2-D2’s Guide to Folding and Doodling
Filed under Tom Angleberger ABRAMS Books Surprise Attack of Jabba the Puppet
A bracelet for the fashionable book lover: Lisa Liddy’s Etched Copper Bracelet Cuff Overflowing Bookshelf. Click on the image for more information.
