The definitive account of Louis Armstrong - his life and legacy - during the most creative period of his career. Thomas Brothers picks up where he left off with the acclaimed Louis Armstrong's New Orleans, following the story of the great jazz musician into his most creatively fertile years in the 1920s and early 1930s, when Armstrong created not one but two modern musical styles. Brothers wields tremendous skill in making the connections between history and music accessible to everyone.

The first book dedicated solely to exploring his creative work, Man in the Music guides us through an unparalleled analysis of Jackson’s recordings, album by album, from his trailblazing work with Quincy Jones to his later collaborations with Teddy Riley, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, and Rodney Jerkins. Drawing on rare archival material and on dozens of original interviews with many who helped bring the artist’s music into the world, Jackson expert and acclaimed cultural critic Joseph Vogel reveals what gave rise to an immortal body of work.

For almost 30 years as label boss, producer and talent conductor at XL Recordings, Richard Russell has discovered, shaped and nurtured the artists who have rewritten the musical dictionary of the 21st century, artists like The Prodigy, The White Stripes, Adele, M.I.A., Dizzee Rascal and Giggs. Growing up in north London in thrall to the raw energy of 80's US hip hop, Russell emerged as one part of rave outfit Kicks Like a Mule in 1991 at a moment when new technology enabled a truly punk aesthetic on the fledgling free party scene.

In her bestselling autobiography, Bedsit Disco Queen, Tracey Thorn recalled the highs and lows of a 30-year career in pop music. But with the touring, recording and extraordinary anecdotes, there wasn't time for an in-depth look at what she actually did for all those years: sing. She sang with warmth and emotional honesty, sometimes while battling acute stage fright.

For generations the electric guitar has been an international symbol of freedom, danger, rebellion, and hedonism. In Play It Loud, Brad Tolinski and Alan di Perna bring the history of this iconic instrument to roaring life. It's a story of inventors and iconoclasts, of scam artists, prodigies, and mythologizers as varied and original as the instruments they spawned. Play It Loud uses 12 landmark guitars - each of them artistic milestones in their own right - to illustrate the conflict and passion the instruments have inspired.

In this first of a groundbreaking multivolume set, THE MCCARTNEY LEGACY, VOL 1: 1969-73 captures the life of Paul McCartney in the years immediately following the dissolution of the Beatles, a period in which McCartney recreated himself as both a man and a musician. Informed by hundreds of interviews, extensive ground up research, and thousands of never-before-seen documents THE MCCARTNEY LEGACY, VOL 1 is an in depth, revealing exploration of McCartney’s creative and personal lives beyond the Beatles.

“Playing changes”, in jazz parlance, has long referred to an improviser’s resourceful path through a chord progression. Playing Changes boldly expands on the idea, highlighting a host of significant changes - ideological, technological, theoretical, and practical - that jazz musicians have learned to navigate since the turn of the century. Nate Chinen, who has chronicled this evolution firsthand throughout his journalistic career, vividly sets the backdrop, charting the origins of jazz historicism and the rise of an institutional framework for the music.

In How to Listen to Jazz, award-winning music scholar Ted Gioia presents a lively introduction to one of America's premier art forms. He tells us what to listen for in a performance and includes a guide to today's leading jazz musicians. From Louis Armstrong's innovative sounds to the jazz-rock fusion of Miles Davis, Gioia covers the music's history and reveals the building blocks of improvisation. A true love letter to jazz by a foremost expert.

Nearly 20 years in the making, Can't Buy Me Love is a masterful work of group biography, cultural history, and musical criticism. That the Beatles were an unprecedented phenomenon is a given. Here Jonathan Gould seeks to explain why, placing the Fab Four in the broad and tumultuous panorama of their time and place, rooting their story in the social context that girded both their rise and their demise.

Written by award-winning jazz historian Ted Gioia, this comprehensive guide offers an illuminating look at more than 250 seminal jazz compositions. In this comprehensive and unique survey, here are the songs that sit at the heart of the jazz repertoire, ranging from "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "Autumn in New York" to "God Bless the Child," "How High the Moon," and "I Can't Give You Anything But Love." Gioia includes Broadway show tunes written by such greats as George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, and classics by such famed jazz musicians as Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, and John Coltrane.

Utilizing his incomparable career and inspired collaborations with Talking Heads, Brian Eno, and many others, David Byrne taps deeply into his lifetime of knowledge to explore the panoptic elements of music, how it shapes the human experience, and reveals the impetus behind how we create, consume, distribute, and enjoy the songs, symphonies, and rhythms that provide the backbeat of life. Byrne’s magnum opus uncovers thrilling realizations about the redemptive liberation that music brings us all.

George Harrison and Eric Clapton shared a legendary and tumultuous friendship that shaped not only their respective lives and careers, but the shifting face of rock itself in the early 1970s. All Things Must Pass Away traces that friendship from its earliest roots in 1964, when Beatles-averse blues-rocker Eric met George backstage at the Hammersmith Odeon, through the messy trials of Clapton's affair with Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd, to the turn of the century, as the two elder statesmen of rock traded honors during Harrison's final days.

Sound Pictures traces the story of the Beatles' breathtaking artistic trajectory after reaching the creative heights of Rubber Soul. As the bandmates engage in brash experimentation both inside and outside the studio, Martin toils along with manager Brian Epstein to consolidate the Beatles' fame in the face of growing sociocultural pressures, including the crisis associated with the "Beatles are more popular than Jesus" scandal. Meanwhile, he also struggles to make his way as an independent producer in the highly competitive world of mid-1960s rock 'n' roll.

Listen to This, which takes its title from a beloved 2004 essay in which Ross described his late-blooming discovery of pop music, showcases the best of Ross’s writing from more than a decade at The New Yorker. These pieces, dedicated to classical and popular artists alike, are at once erudite and lively.

More than 30 years after disbanding in 1980, Led Zeppelin continues to be celebrated for its artistic achievements, broad musical influence, and commercial success. The band's notorious exploits have been chronicled in bestselling books; yet none of the individual members of the band has penned a memoir nor cooperated to any degree with the press or a biographer.

More than 30 years after disbanding in 1980, Led Zeppelin continues to be celebrated for its artistic achievements, broad musical influence, and commercial success. The band's notorious exploits have been chronicled in bestselling books; yet none of the individual members of the band has penned a memoir nor cooperated to any degree with the press or a biographer.

Ben Greenman, New York Times best-selling author, contributing writer to The New Yorker, and owner of thousands of recordings of Prince and Prince-related songs, knows intimately that there has never been a rock star as vibrant, mercurial, willfully contrary, experimental, or prolific as Prince. Uniting a diverse audience while remaining singularly himself, Prince was a tireless artist, a musical virtuoso and chameleon, and a pop-culture prophet.

Write Songs Right Now is a hands-on, step-by-step guide to creating original pop songs - an approach that been road-tested by thousands of Alex's students and coaching clients in New York City, some of whom have gone on to achieve great success. With insight, enthusiasm, and humor, Alex guides listeners through the process of brainstorming for ideas, crafting effective lyrics, and putting those lyrics to music.

The Rest Is Noise takes the listener inside the labyrinth of modern music, from turn-of-the-century Vienna to downtown New York in the '60s and '70s. We meet the maverick personalities and follow the rise of mass culture on this sweeping tour of 20th-century history through its music.

Thelonious Monk is the critically acclaimed, gripping saga of an artist's struggle to "make it" without compromising his musical vision. It is a story that, like its subject, reflects the tidal ebbs and flows of American history in the 20th century. To his fans, he was the ultimate hipster; to his detractors, he was temperamental, eccentric, taciturn, or childlike. His angular melodies and dissonant harmonies shook the jazz world to its foundations, ushering in the birth of "bebop" and establishing Monk as one of America's greatest composers.

The year that changed everything for the Beatles was 1966 - the year of their last concert and of Revolver, their first album created to be listened to rather than performed. This was the year the Beatles risked their popularity by retiring from live performances, recording songs that explored alternative states of consciousness, experimenting with avant-garde ideas, and speaking their minds on issues of politics, war, and religion. Music journalist and Beatles expert Steve Turner investigates the enormous changes that took place in the Beatles' lives and work during 1966.

In her bestselling autobiography, Bedsit Disco Queen, Tracey Thorn recalled the highs and lows of a 30-year career in pop music. But with the touring, recording and extraordinary anecdotes, there wasn't time for an in-depth look at what she actually did for all those years: sing. She sang with warmth and emotional honesty, sometimes while battling acute stage fright.

From the beloved host and creator of NPR's All Songs Considered and Tiny Desk Concerts comes an essential oral history of modern music, told in the voices of iconic and up-and-coming musicians, including Dave Grohl, Jimmy Page, Michael Stipe, Carrie Brownstein, Smokey Robinson, and Jeff Tweedy, among others - published in association with NPR Music.

With more than 90 million records sold and eight Grammy Awards throughout its 40-year history, Earth, Wind & Fire has staked its claim as one of the most successful, influential, and beloved acts in music history. Now, for the first time, its dynamic lead singer, Philip Bailey, chronicles the group's meteoric rise to stardom and his own professional and spiritual journey. Never before had a musical act crossed multiple styles and genres with a quixotic blend of astrology, universalism, and Egyptology as Earth, Wind & Fire (EWF) did when it exploded into the public's conscience during the 1970s.

An exploration of all aspects of the Abba member’s lives and careers. Amazingly detailed, it examines the group member’s family backgrounds, the pre-Abba days, the legendary 70s, the marriages, the divorces, the business ups and downs, and the post-Abba solo careers.

On New Year's Eve, 1970, Paul McCartney told his lawyers to issue the writ at the High Court in London, effectively ending The Beatles. You might say this was the last day of the pop era. The following day, which was a Friday, was 1971. You might say this was the first day of the rock era. And within the remaining 364 days of this monumental year, the world would hear Don McLean's "American Pie", The Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar", The Who's "Baba O'Riley", Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven", and more.

From behind the walls of a handful of well-hidden, unlikely recording studios in the Los Angeles area, legends-in-waiting created masterpiece albums. It was a time of astonishing creativity and unprecedented fame and fortune. It was also a time of unfettered excess that threatened to unravel everything along the way. With access that only a longtime music business insider can provide, Kent Hartman packs Goodnight, L.A. with never-before-told stories about the most prolific time and iconic place in rock 'n' roll history.

From our talent-rich neighbor to the north comes this biography of one of the most successful Canadian rock bands, The Tragically Hip, which announced a year-long tour after sharing the news of lead singer Gord Downie’s inoperable cancer. Now available to US listeners, The Never-Ending Present details what led up to the memorable night when music fans all over the world watched Downie’s heroic final performance.

For almost a century, Americans have been losing their hearts and losing their minds in an insatiable love affair with the American musical. It often begins in actors and reaches its passionate zenith when it comes time for love, marriage, and children, who will start the cycle all over again. Americans love musicals. Americans invented musicals. Americans perfected musicals. But what, exactly, is a musical?

If you were a fan of popular music in the 1960s and early '70s, you were a fan of the Wrecking Crew - whether you knew it or not. On hit record after hit record by everyone from the Byrds, the Beach Boys, and the Monkees to the Grass Roots, the 5th Dimension, Sonny & Cher, and Simon & Garfunkel, this collection of West Coast studio musicians from diverse backgrounds established themselves as the driving sound of pop music - sometimes over the objection of actual band members....