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Music Stars - Nonfiction

Books about musical style, musicians, composers, etc.

Nonfiction

• With Billie
  Author: Blackburn, Julia
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 25 ISBN: 0375406107 Date: 2005
  LJ Booklist
  Here are the voices of piano players and dancers, pimps and junkies, producers and critics, narcotics agents, friends, lovers, and fellow musicians, who provide a complete and complex picture of Billie Holiday.
  Updated 4.7.05
• Guitar: An American Life
  Author: Brookes, Tim
  Publisher: Grove $ 24 ISBN: 0802117961 Date: 2005
  LJ Kirkus
  When the author wasn't breathing over a guitar maker's shoulder, he was trying to unravel the symbolic associations a guitar holds for musicians and nonmusicians alike. His quest took him across the country talking to historians, curators, and guitar makers.
  Updated 4.7.05
• Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Culture
  Author: Chang, Jeff
  Publisher: St Martins $27.95 ISBN:031230143X Date: 2005
  PW
  Based on original interviews with DJs, rappers, graffiti writers, activists, and gang members, this work chronicles the events, the ideas, the music, and the art that marked the hip-hop generation's rise from the ashes of the 1960s into the new millennium.
  Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
  Updated 2.7.05
• Morning Glory: A Biography of Mary Lou Williams
  by Dahl, Linda
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 30 ISBN: 0375408991 Date: 2000
  LJ
  Imagine a pianist playing concerts with Benny Goodman and Cecil Taylor in successive years (1977-78). That pianist was Mary Lou Williams. In a career which spanned over fifty years, Mary was always on the cutting edge."--Bob Jacobsen, www.allaboutjazz
  
  
• Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment
  Author: Gaines, James R.
  Publisher: Fourth Estate $ 23.95 ISBN: 0007156588 Date: 2005
  LJ
  A vivid history of the clash between belief and reason is played out in the climactic meeting of a composer and a king: Bach and Frederick the Great.
  Updated 2.7.05
• Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker
  Author: Gavin, James Publisher: Knopf $ 26.95 ISBN:0679442871 Date: 2002
  PW
  The wild ride of the most romanticized icon in jazz, thrillingly recounted in this first major biography. Gavin narrates the harrowing spiral of dependency down which Baker tumbled, dragging with him those who dared to get close. Deep in a Dream is a revelation of a musician whose singular artistry and personal aura have never lost their power to fascinate and seduce.
  Updated 4.18.02
• Piano Girl: Lessons in Life, Music, and the Perfect Blue Hawaiian
  Author: Goldsby, Robin
  Publisher: Backbeat $ 22.95 ISBN: 0897308249 Date: 2005
  PW
  This entertaining memoir provides a glimpse into the comedies, tragedies, andmundane miracles witnessed from the business perspective of a world-traveling lounge musician.
  Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars
  Updated 3.21.05
• Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke
  Author: Gurlanick, Peter
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 27.95 ISBN: 0316377945Date: 2005
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  The author of Careless Love and Last Train to Memphis returns with his most powerful book ever--a revealing portrait of one of America's greatest musical artists, Sam Cooke.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 9.17.05
• Hell Bent for Leather: Confessions of a Heavy Metal Addict
  Author: Hunter, Seb
  Publisher: Fourth Estate $ 26.95 ISBN: 0060722924 Date: 2004
  PW
  Reaching deep into the most embarrassing depths of the family photo album, Hunter offers a witty and touching account of heavy metal mania in the tradition of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity.
  Updated 4.26.04
• Broadway: The American Musical
  Author: Kantor, Michael
  Publisher: Bulfinch $ 60 ISBN: 0821229052 Date: 2004
  Booklist LJ PW
  Along with jazz and abstract expressionism, the Broadway musical is one of the few uniquely American art forms. This companion to the six-part PBS documentary series is a colorful and fascinating exploration of how Americans define the Broadway musical and how the musical defines Americans. Compelling, in-depth text is complemented by lavish illustrations, including photographs, sheet-music covers, caricatures, and more.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 11.2.04
• Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota
  by Klosterman, Chuck
  Publisher: Scribner $ 23 ISBN: 0743202279 Date: 2001
  Kirkus
  Powered by a sharp and wholly original voice, Klosterman delivers a real-life High Fidelity in this savvy, deliriously funny memoir of growing up a shameless heavy-metal devotee in 1980s North Dakota.
  Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars
• Strange Fruit: Billie Holliday, Cafe Society and a Cry for Civil Rights
  by Margolick, David
  Publisher: Running Press $ 16.95 ISBN: 0762406771 Date: 2000
  Booklist
  From four-time Pulitzer Prize nominee David Margolick, "Strange Fruit" explores the story of the memorable civil rights ballad made famous by Billie Holiday in the late 1930s. The song's powerful, evocative lyrics -- written by a Jewish Communist schoolteacher -- portray the lynching of a black man in the South. Margolick's careful reconstruction of the story behind the song includes a discography of "Strange Fruit" recordings as well as newly uncovered photographs that capture Holiday in performance at Greenwich Village's Cafe Society. - Publisher Marketing.
• Boogie Man: The Adventures of John Lee Hooker in the American Twentieth Century
  by Murray, Charles Shaar
  Publisher: St Martins $ 27.95 ISBN: 0312265638 Date: 2000
  Booklist
  Award-winning rock critic Murray explores the life and times of a legend whose career has spanned more than half a century: John Lee Hooker, the last of the Mississippi Delta bluesmen.
• The Flute
  Author: Powell, Ardal
  Publisher: Yale $ 35 ISBN: 0300093411 Date: 2002
  Library Journal
  This authoritative book tells the story of the flute in the musical life of Europe and North American from the twelfth century to the present day. It discusses the evolution of the instrument, the revolutions in playing style and repertoire, the lives of flute players and makers, and the uses of the instrument within various types of music. The volume will delight both those who play the flute and those who love its music. - Publisher Marketing.
  Updated 6.30.02
• England's Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock and Beyond
  Author: Savage, Jon
  Publisher: St Martins $ 19.95 (trade paperback) ISBN: 0312288220 Date: 2002
  Library Journal
  Savage's critically acclaimed social history of the punk band the Sex Pistols and 1970's England is a searing and disturbingly familiar study of a country suffering from a stagnant economy, a disgruntled work force, and youthful rage.
  Updated 4.1.02
• The Rose and the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad
  Author: Willentz, Sean and Greil Marcus (ed)
  Publisher: Norton $ 26.95 ISBN: 0393059545 Date: 2004
  Booklist
  Wilentz and Marcus have assembled an astonishing group of writers and artists--more than a dozen novelists, essayists, performers, and critics--to explore the ineffable power of the American ballad in words and in drawings.
  Updated 11.29.04