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Showing 5561 - 5580 of 7781 items
By Mario Zucca, Elizabeth Lunday. 2009
True tales of murder riots heartbreak and great music With outrageous anecdotes about everyone…
from Gioachino Rossini draft-dodging womanizer to Johann Sebastian Bach jailbird to Richard Wagner alleged cross-dresser Secret Lives of Great Composers recounts the seamy steamy and gritty history behind the great masters of international music You ll learn that Edward Elgar dabbled with explosives that John Cage was obsessed with fungus that Berlioz plotted murder and that Giacomo Puccini stole his church s organ pipes and sold them as scrap metal so he could buy cigarettes This is one music history lesson you ll never forgetBy Meryl Danziger. 2016
A tall, skinny man in blue jeans stands on a stage, one hand on his banjo, the other raised to…
the crowd of 15,000 people who have come to celebrate his ninetieth birthday. "Sing it!" he shouts, and everyone sings. How did a humble, banjo-playing Harvard University dropout become one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century? This is the story of Pete Seeger--singer, songwriter, social activist, environmentalist--who filled his toolbox with songs and set out to repair whatever in the world was broken. His story intertwines with a century of American history, and readers will be surprised to discover how many familiar songs, people, and projects somehow connect back to this one individual. What was it like for a city boy like Pete to hope freight trains with Woody Guthrie, the free-spirited composter of "This Land Is Your Land"? "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," a song beloved by people all over the world, might have been lost to history had it not been for Pete Seeger. The Hudson River is cleaner than it used to be; what did Pete do to help that happen? Through learning of his life of activism, readers will become links in the chain, inspired to reflect on their own power to make change.From the Hardcover edition.By Victoria Micklish Pasmore. 2015
If Memphis is the birthplace of rock 'n' roll, it certainly spent its adolescence along U.S. Highway 67. Known today…
as Rock 'n' Roll Highway 67, it runs from Newport, Arkansas, to the Missouri border. It is here that the first rock 'n' rollers honed their skills, playing the small towns along the two-lane road. Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins--These were just a few of the young musicians who performed their music in the school gyms, honky-tonks, and clubs that dotted Highway 67 with such colorful names as Bloody Bucket, Silver Moon, Porky's Rooftop, and the Skylark Drive In Theater. Presley, Cash, Lewis and Perkins--Sun Records' "Million Dollar Quartet"--toured together while nurturing such local talent as Sonny Burgess, Bobby Brown, Narvel Flats, and Charlie Rich. In these pages, author Vicki Pasmore takes you on a guided tour of the Rock 'n' Roll Highway to meet 20 of the entertainers who gave it its name.By Tom Sancton. 2010
Song for My Fathers is the story of a young white boy driven by aconsuming passion to learn the music…
and ways of a group of agingblack jazzmen in the twilight years of the segregation era.Contemporaries of Louis Armstrong, most of them had played in localobscurity until Preservation Hall launched a nationwide revival ofinterest in traditional jazz. They called themselves "the mens." Andthey welcomed the young apprentice into their ranks. The boy was introduced into this remarkable fellowship by hisfather, an eccentric Southern liberal and failed novelist whose powerfularticles on race had made him one of the most effective polemicistsof the early Civil Rights movement. Nurtured on his father's belief inracial equality, the aspiring clarinetist embraced the old musicianswith a boundless love and admiration. The narrative unfolds againstthe vivid backdrop of New Orleans in the 1950s and '60s. But thatmagical place is more than decor; it is perhaps the central player, forthis story could not have taken place in any other city in the world.By Juanes. 2013
"I'm doing what I believe I was brought to this world to do: to create music that raises awareness, renews…
hearts, and generates change. I'll continue looking to the stars and traveling the globe as God permits me. And I hope I have many years left to connect through art, to play my guitar, and to continue chasing the sun."--Juanes In Chasing the Sun, the international music icon and humanitarian shares the incredible story of his life and how music and faith guided his path. In his own un-adulterated words, and with visually arresting images throughout--some of them never before seen--Juanes imparts his defining moments from childhood to present day, reflecting on his spiritual and musical journey and the personal and professional experiences that shaped the man he is today. Born and raised in Colombia, Juanes developed his deep love of music from his family and learned to play guitar at an early age. By age sixteen, he became a founding member, lead guitarist, vocalist, and song-writer for Ekhymosis, which went on to become Colombia's leading hard-rock band. However, it was his career as a solo artist that propelled him toward international superstardom. With great honesty, Juanes reveals how his times of glory were often intersected by times of doubt and soul-searching and how remaining true to his beliefs and passionate about his art gave him the strength and foresight to reinvent himself and his career. While his role as a recording artist is well documented, the very private Juanes has never opened up in his own words--until now.By Tom Doyle. 2013
An illuminating look at the most tumultuous decade in the life of a rock icon--the only McCartney biography in decades…
based on firsthand interviews with the ex-Beatle himself. As the 1970s began, the Beatles ended, leaving Paul McCartney to face the new decade with only his wife Linda by his side. Holed up at his farmhouse in Scotland, he sank into a deep depression. To outsiders, McCartney seemed like a man adrift--intimidated by his own fame, paralyzed by the choices that lay before him, cut loose from his musical moorings. But what appeared to be the sad finale of a glorious career was just the start of a remarkable second act. The product of a long series of one-on-one interviews between McCartney and Scottish rock journalist Tom Doyle, Man on the Run chronicles Paul McCartney's decadelong effort to escape the shadow of his past, outrace his critics, and defy the expectations of his fans. From the bitter and painful breakup of the Beatles to the sobering wake-up call of John Lennon's murder, this is a deeply revealing look at a sometimes frightening, often exhilarating period in the life of the world's most famous rock star. Sensing that he had nowhere to go but up, Paul McCartney started over from scratch. With emotional--and musical--backing from Linda, he released eccentric solo albums and embarked on a nomadic hippie lifestyle. He formed a new band, Wings, which first took flight on a ramshackle tour of British university towns and eventually returned Paul to the summit of arena rock superstardom. In Man on the Run, Doyle follows McCartney inside the recording sessions for Wings' classic album Band on the Run--and provides context for some of the baffling misfires in his discography. Doyle tracks the dizzying highs and exasperating lows of a life lived in the public spotlight: the richly excessive world tours, the Japanese drug bust that nearly ended McCartney's career, his bitter public feuds with his erstwhile Beatle bandmates, and the aftermath of an infamous drug-and-alcohol-fueled jam session where McCartney helped reconcile the estranged John Lennon and Yoko Ono. For Paul McCartney, the 1970s were a wild ride with some dark turns. Set against the backdrop of a turbulent decade, Man on the Run casts the "sunny Beatle" in an entirely new light.Advance praise for Man on the Run "Tom Doyle's Man on the Run is a riveting dispatch from the seventies. Paul McCartney's story is told with clever pacing, unflinching honesty, and a gripping narrative drive that benefits from his intimate participation via interviews and support. This is simply one of the best rock biographies anyone has written."--Stephen Davis, bestselling author of Hammer of the Gods and Watch You Bleed "Man on the Run is simply brimming with enough fascinating facts and expertly rendered anecdotes to make even the most ardent McCartney follower do an abrupt about-face. Maybe I'm amazed? You better believe it."--Kent Hartman, music industry executive and bestselling author of The Wrecking Crew "What happens when you can do anything you like but nothing will ever be good enough? Doyle makes sense of a stoned shaggy dog story that has none of the narrative neatness of the Beatles' rise and fall."--The Guardian (U.K.), "Music Books of the Year" "[Doyle] offers a level-headed and admirably nonjudgmental portrait of a turbulent ten years, punctuated by great music, creative misfires and frequent run-ins with the law."--Sunday Express (U.K.)From the Hardcover edition.By Philip Glass. 2015
The long-awaited memoir by "the most prolific and popular of all contemporary composers" (New York Times). A world-renowned composer of…
symphonies, operas, and film scores, Philip Glass has, almost single-handedly, crafted the dominant sound of late-twentieth-century classical music. Yet here in Words Without Music, he creates an entirely new and unexpected voice, that of a born storyteller and an acutely insightful chronicler, whose behind-the-scenes recollections allow readers to experience those moments of creative fusion when life so magically merged with art. "If you go to New York City to study music, you'll end up like your uncle Henry," Glass's mother warned her incautious and curious nineteen-year-old son. It was the early summer of 1956, and Ida Glass was concerned that her precocious Philip, already a graduate of the University of Chicago, would end up an itinerant musician, playing in vaudeville houses and dance halls all over the country, just like his cigar-smoking, bantamweight uncle. One could hardly blame Mrs. Glass for worrying that her teenage son would end up as a musical vagabond after initially failing to get into Juilliard. Yet, the transformation of a young man from budding musical prodigy to world-renowned composer is the story of this commanding memoir. From his childhood in post-World War II Baltimore to his student days in Chicago, at Juilliard, and his first journey to Paris, where he studied under the formidable Nadia Boulanger, Glass movingly recalls his early mentors, while reconstructing the places that helped shape his artistic consciousness. From a life-changing trip to India, where he met with gurus and first learned of Gandhi's Salt March, to the gritty streets of New York in the 1970s, where the composer returned, working day jobs as a furniture mover, cabbie, and an unlicensed plumber, Glass leads the life of a Parisian bohemian artist, only now transported to late-twentieth-century America. Yet even after Glass's talent was first widely recognized with the sensational premiere of Einstein on the Beach in 1976, even after he stopped renewing his hack license and gained international recognition for operatic works like Satyagraha, Orphée, and Akhnaten, the son of a Baltimore record store owner never abandoned his earliest universal ideals throughout his memorable collaborations with Allen Ginsberg, Ravi Shankar, Robert Wilson, Doris Lessing, Martin Scorsese, and many others, all of the highest artistic order. Few major composers are celebrated as writers, but Philip Glass, in this loving and slyly humorous autobiography, breaks across genres and re-creates, here in words, the thrill that results from artistic creation. Words Without Music ultimately affirms the power of music to change the world.By Philip Glass, Robert Scotto. 2013
The basis of a full-length documentary."Moondog is one of America's great originals."-Alan Rich, New York Magazine Here is a revised…
edition of a book that celebrates one of the most improbable lives of the twentieth century: a blind and homeless man who became the most famous eccentric in New York and who, with enormous diligence, rose to prominence both in major label pop music recordings in addition to symphonic concerts of his compositions. This edition of Moondog will soon be seen a as a feature documentary titled The Viking of 6th Avenue directed by Holly Elson and produced by Hard Working Movies.Born Louis Thomas Hardin in 1916, Moondog first made an impression in the late 1940s when he became a mascot of The New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall. His unique, melodic compositions were released on the Prestige jazz label. In the late 1960s the Viking-garbed Moondog was a pop music sensation on Columbia Records. Moondog's compositional style influenced his former roommate Philip Glass, whose preface appears in the book. Moondog's work transcends labels and redefines the distinction between popular and high culture. A wide-ranging compilation of Moondog recordings, which includes four Madrigals played by Philip Glass, Steven Reich, Jon Gibson, and Moondog himself, are offered as free downloads for every purchaser of this biography.By Michael Gray. 2007
Evoking the turbulent past of the subject's time and place, this odyssey to rural Georgia peels back the many layers…
of Blind Willie McTell's compelling, occasionally shocking, but ultimately uplifting story. Portraying him as one of the most gifted artists of his generation, this account uncovers the secrets of McTell's ancestry, the hardships he suffered--including being blind from birth--and the successes he enjoyed. Traveling throughout the South and beyond, this personal and moving journey unearths a lost world of black music, exploring why he drifted in and out of the public eye, how he was "rediscovered" time and again through chance meetings, and why, until now, so little has been written about the life of this extraordinary man. Part biography, part travelogue, part social history, this atmospheric, unforgettable tale connects the subject's life to the tumultuous sweep of history, exploding every stereotype about blues musicians and revealing a vulnerable milieu of poverty and discrimination, demonstrating that little may have changed in the Deep South, even today.By Janis Winehouse. 2014
"Amy was one of those rare people who made an impact . . . She was a bundle of emotions,…
at times adorable and at times unbearable. . . . Amy's passing did not follow a clear line. It was jumbled, and her life was unfinished--not life's natural order at all. She left no answers, only questions, and in the years since her death I've found myself trying to make sense of the frayed ends of her extraordinary existence." Arguably the most gifted artist of her generation, Amy Winehouse died tragically young, aged just twenty-seven. With a worldwide fan base and millions of record sales to her name, she should have had the world at her feet. Yet in the years prior to her death, she battled with addiction and was frequently the subject of lurid tabloid headlines.Amy's mother, Janis, knew her in a way that no one else did. In this warm, poignant, and at times heartbreaking memoir, she tells the full story of the daughter she loved so much. As the world watched the rise of a superstar, then the free fall of an addict to her tragic death, Janis simply saw her Amy: the daughter she'd given birth to, the girl she'd raised and stood by despite her unruly behavior, the girl whose body she was forced to identify two days after her death--and the girl she's grieved for every day since. Including rare photographs and extracts from Amy's childhood journals, Loving Amy offers a new and intimate perspective on the life and untimely death of a musical icon.By Jas Obrecht. 2015
Since the early 1900s, blues and the guitar have traveled side by side. This book tells the story of their…
pairing from the first reported sightings of blues musicians, to the rise of nationally known stars, to the onset of the Great Depression, when blues recording virtually came to a halt. Like the best music documentaries, Early Blues: The First Stars of Blues Guitar interweaves musical history, quotes from celebrated musicians (B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Ry Cooder, and Johnny Winter, to name a few), and a spellbinding array of life stories to illustrate the early days of blues guitar in rich and resounding detail. In these chapters, you'll meet Sylvester Weaver, who recorded the world's first guitar solos, and Paramount Records artists Papa Charlie Jackson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Blind Blake, the "King of Ragtime Blues Guitar." Blind Willie McTell, the Southeast's superlative twelve-string guitar player, and Blind Willie Johnson, street-corner evangelist of sublime gospel blues, also get their due, as do Lonnie Johnson, the era's most influential blues guitarist; Mississippi John Hurt, with his gentle, guileless voice and syncopated fingerpicking style; and slide guitarist Tampa Red, "the Guitar Wizard." Drawing on a deep archive of documents, photographs, record company ads, complete discographies, and up-to-date findings of leading researchers, this is the most comprehensive and complete account ever written of the early stars of blues guitar--an essential chapter in the history of American music.By Darden Asbury Pyron. 2000
More people watched his nationally syndicated television show between 1953 and 1955 than followed I Love Lucy. Even a decade…
after his death, the attendance records he set at Madison Square Garden, the Hollywood Bowl, and Radio City Music Hall still stand. Arguably the most popular entertainer of the twentieth century, this very public figure nonetheless kept more than a few secrets. Darden Asbury Pyron, author of the acclaimed and bestselling Southern Daughter: The Life of Margaret Mitchell, leads us through the life of America's foremost showman with his fresh, provocative, and definitive portrait of Liberace, an American boy. Liberace's career follows the trajectory of the classic American dream. Born in the Midwest to Polish-Italian immigrant parents, he was a child prodigy who, by the age of twenty, had performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Abandoning the concert stage for the lucrative and glittery world of nightclubs, celebrities, and television, Liberace became America's most popular entertainer. While wildly successful and good natured outwardly, Liberace, Pyron reveals, was a complicated man whose political, social, and religious conservativism existed side-by-side with a lifetime of secretive homosexuality. Even so, his swishy persona belied an inner life of ferocious aggression and ambition. Pyron relates this private man to his public persona and places this remarkable life in the rapidly changing cultural landscape of twentieth-century America. Pyron presents Liberace's life as a metaphor, for both good and ill, of American culture, with its shopping malls and insatiable hunger for celebrity. In this fascinating biography, Pyron complicates and celebrates our image of the man for whom the streets were paved with gold lamé. "An entertaining and rewarding biography of the pianist and entertainer whose fans' adoration was equaled only by his critics' loathing. . . . [Pyron] persuasively argues that Liberace, thoroughly and rigorously trained, was a genuine musician as well as a brilliant showman. . . . [A]n immensely entertaining story that should be fascinating and pleasurable to anyone with an interest in American popular culture. "-Kirkus Reviews "This is a wonderful book, what biography ought to be and so seldom is. "-Kathryn Hughes, Daily Telegraph "[A]bsorbing and insightful. . . . Pyron's interests are far-ranging and illuminating-from the influence of a Roman Catholic sensibility on Liberace and gay culture to the aesthetics of television and the social importance of self-improvement books in the 1950s. Finally, he achieves what many readers might consider impossible: a persuasive case for Liberace's life and times as the embodiment of an important cultural moment. "-Publishers Weekly "Liberace, coming on top of his amazing life of Margaret Mitchell, Southern Daughter, puts Darden Pyron in the very first rank of American biographers. His books are as exciting as the lives of his subjects. "-Tom Wolfe "Fascinating, thoughtful, exhaustive, and well-written, this book will serve as the standard biography of a complex icon of American popular culture. "-Library JournalBy Richard F. Thomas. 2017
“The coolest class on campus” – The New York TimesWhen the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan…
in 2016, a debate raged. Some celebrated, while many others questioned the choice. How could the world’s most prestigious book prize be awarded to a famously cantankerous singer-songwriter who wouldn’t even deign to attend the medal ceremony?In Why Bob Dylan Matters, Harvard Professor Richard F. Thomas answers this question with magisterial erudition. A world expert on Classical poetry, Thomas was initially ridiculed by his colleagues for teaching a course on Bob Dylan alongside his traditional seminars on Homer, Virgil, and Ovid. Dylan’s Nobel Prize brought him vindication, and he immediately found himself thrust into the spotlight as a leading academic voice in all matters Dylanological. Today, through his wildly popular Dylan seminar—affectionately dubbed "Dylan 101"—Thomas is introducing a new generation of fans and scholars to the revered bard’s work. This witty, personal volume is a distillation of Thomas’s famous course, and makes a compelling case for moving Dylan out of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and into the pantheon of Classical poets. Asking us to reflect on the question, "What makes a classic?", Thomas offers an eloquent argument for Dylan’s modern relevance, while interpreting and decoding Dylan’s lyrics for readers. The most original and compelling volume on Dylan in decades, Why Bob Dylan Matters will illuminate Dylan’s work for the Dylan neophyte and the seasoned fanatic alike. You’ll never think about Bob Dylan in the same way again.By Stephen Hinton. 2012
In the first musicological study of Kurt Weill's complete stage works, Stephen Hinton charts the full range of theatrical achievements…
by one of twentieth-century musical theater's key figures. Hinton shows how Weill's experiments with a range of genres--from one-act operas and plays with music to Broadway musicals and film-opera--became an indispensable part of the reforms he promoted during his brief but intense career. Confronting the divisive notion of "two Weills"--one European, the other American--Hinton adopts a broad and inclusive perspective, establishing criteria that allow aspects of continuity to emerge, particularly in matters of dramaturgy. Tracing his extraordinary journey as a composer, the book shows how Weill's artistic ambitions led to his working with a remarkably heterogeneous collection of authors, such as Georg Kaiser, Bertolt Brecht, Moss Hart, Alan Jay Lerner, and Maxwell Anderson.By Brian Christopher Thompson. 2015
Calixa Lavallée, the composer of "O Canada," was the first Canadian-born musician to achieve an international reputation. While primarily remembered…
for the national anthem, Lavallée and his work extended well beyond Canada, and he played a multitude of roles in North American music as a composer, conductor, administrator, instrumentalist, educator, and critic. In Anthems and Minstrel Shows, Brian Thompson analyzes Lavallée's music, letters, and published writings, as well as newspapers and music magazines of the time, to provide a detailed account of musical life in nineteenth-century North America and the relationship between music and nation. Leaving Quebec at age sixteen, Lavallée travelled widely for a decade as musical director of a minstrel troupe, and spent a year as a bandsman in the Union Army. Later, as a performer and conductor, he built a repertoire that prepared audiences for the intellectually challenging music of European composers and new music by his US contemporaries. His own music extended from national songs to comic operas, and instrumental music, as he shifted between the worlds of classical and popular music. Previously portrayed as a humble French Canadian forced into exile by ignorance and injustice, Lavallée emerges here as ambitious, radical, bohemian, and fully engaged with the musical, social, and political currents of his time. While nationalism and nation-building are central to this story, Anthems and Minstrel Shows asks to which nation - or nations - Lavallée and "O Canada" really belong.By Lily Isaacs. 2014
A powerful, unforgettable account of Christ's grace, mercy, and His work in their lives! A talented daughter of Holocaust survivors,…
Lily Isaacs is a woman who has felt pain and loss, and found the incomparable joy of a life with Jesus Christ. As a new Christian believer, she became estranged from her Jewish parents because of her faith, yet she never walked alone, always clinging to the hope she found in Christ. Throughout her music and that of her children, who together form the beloved and multi-award winning group The Isaacs, you hear the resonating inspirational legacy of this family's faith journey. An autobiographical look at Lily's life, from being a Jewish folk singer to serving as vocalist and matriarch of The Isaacs The powerful account of her struggle with a once unknown faith and how she finally "cried her way to God from the church's back pew" The incredible insights behind heartbreaking moments which were her greatest opportunities of faith. Whether surviving breast cancer or a challenging career, Lily's steady refrain has been one of God's constant love, comfort, and strength. With a remarkable and unforgettable mix of acoustic, gospel, and country music, she and The Isaacs continue to inspire and entertain audiences in churches and on stage around the world!By Calvin C. Rydbom. 2018
Music made in Akron symbolized an attitude more so than a singular sound. Crafted by kids hell-bent on not following…
their parents into the rubber plants, the music was an intentional antithesis of Top 40 radio. Call it punk or call it new wave, but in a short few years, major labels signed Chrissie Hynde, Devo, the Waitresses, Tin Huey, the Bizarros, the Rubber City Rebels and Rachel Sweet. They had their own bars, the Crypt and the Bank. They had their own label, Clone Records. They even had their own recording space, Bushflow Studios. London's Stiff Records released an Akron compilation album, and suddenly there were "Akron Nights" in London clubs and CBGB was waiving covers for people with Akron IDs. Author Calvin Rydbom of the "Akron Sound" Museum remembers that short time when the Rubber City was the place.By Robert Spaethling. 2000
"A wonderful collection that gives Mozart a voice as a son, husband, brother and friend." --New York Times Book Review…
"Mozart's honesty, his awareness of his own genius and his contempt for authority all shine out from these letters."--Sunday Times (London). " In Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life, Robert Spaethling presents "Mozart in all the rawness of his driving energies" (Spectator), preserved in the "zany, often angry effervescence" of his writing (Observer). Where other translators have ignored Mozart's atrocious spelling and tempered his foul language, "Robert Spaethling's new translations are lively and racy, and do justice to Mozart's restlessly inventive mind" (Daily Mail). Carefully selected and meticulously annotated, this collection of letters "should be on the shelves of every music lover" (BBC Music Magazine).By Christoph Wolff. 2012
ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award winner A fresh look at the life of Mozart during his imperial years by one of the…
world's leading Mozart scholars. "I now stand at the gateway to my fortune," Mozart wrote in a letter of 1790. He had entered into the service of Emperor Joseph II of Austria two years earlier as Imperial-Royal Chamber Composer--a salaried appointment with a distinguished title and few obligations. His extraordinary subsequent output, beginning with the three final great symphonies from the summer of 1788, invites a reassessment of this entire period of his life. Readers will gain a new appreciation and understanding of the composer's works from that time without the usual emphasis on his imminent death. The author discusses the major biographical and musical implications of the royal appointment and explores Mozart's "imperial style" on the basis of his major compositions--keyboard,chamber, orchestral, operatic, and sacred--and focuses on the large, unfamiliar works he left incomplete. This new perspective points to an energetic, fresh beginning for the composer and a promising creative and financial future.By Tom Nolan. 2010
"The two sides of Shaw . . . are at the center of . . . [this] compulsively readable biography."--Daniel…
Akst, Wall Street Journal During America's Swing Era, no musician was more successful or controversial than Artie Shaw: the charismatic and opinionated clarinetist-bandleader whose dozens of hits became anthems for "the greatest generation." But some of his most beautiful recordings were not issued until decades after he'd left the scene. He broke racial barriers by hiring African American musicians. His frequent "retirements" earned him a reputation as the Hamlet of jazz. And he quit playing for good at the height of his powers. The handsome Shaw had seven wives (including Lana Turner and Ava Gardner). Inveterate reader and author of three books, he befriended the best-known writers of his time. Tom Nolan, who interviewed Shaw between 1990 and his death in 2004 and spoke with one hundred of his colleagues and contemporaries, captures Shaw and his era with candor and sympathy, bringing the master to vivid life and restoring him to his rightful place in jazz history. Originally published in hardcover under the title Three Chords for Beauty's Sake.