Author: Billy Vera Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation ISBN: 1617136948 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 291
Book Description
(Book). Although he's a showbiz lifer, Billy Vera is cut from a wholly different cloth than his peers. If an artist is measured by their devotion to their craft, Harlem to Hollywood may be the purest treatise on the subject ever produced. All the better, it's also an astounding story. Born into a white, suburban family, Vera fell for black music as a child and started down a winding performer's path that would buoy him the rest of his life. In the sixties, Vera paid his bills by songwriting (for other artists) through the day and playing mobbed up clubs at night. By 1967, as Newark burned on the other side of the Hudson, he and gospel singer Judy Clay, the first interracial duet to perform at the Apollo, tore the house down with a little ditty he wrote for himself: "Storybook Children," a commercial hit produced by Atlantic Records. Through the seventies, popular taste shifted drastically. As blue-eyed soul went out of fashion, Vera, like many other musicians, found himself scrounging for survival gigs, but one crucial difference set him apart: he abstained from the drugs and drink that fueled and eventually claimed so many of his contemporaries. As that decade sputtered to a close, a woman by the name of Dolly Parton recorded Vera's "I Really Got the Feeling" and hit number one on the charts. Riding the tide of this unexpected attention, Vera hightailed it to Los Angeles, formed a new band, Billy and the Beaters, and charted twice before the close of 1981 with songs from their eponymous album recorded live at the Roxy. Five years later, one of these minor hits, "At This Moment," was featured in several episodes of NBC's Family Ties . The song rocketed up the charts and a 42-year-old Vera found himself with his very own number one single. Nine visits to Carson and an American Bandstand appearance later, Vera tasted many other flavors of success: acting both on- and off-camera, producing records, and reissuing his own work. Today, with a star on the Hollywood Walk and Fame and a Grammy in tow, he's finally prepared to share his journey (did we mention that he's also a photographer and music historian who documented every step of career?). To sit down with Billy Vera is to take a personalized tour through nearly fifty years of entertainment history. Won't you come along for the ride?
Author: Norman K Denzin Publisher: SAGE ISBN: 9780803975453 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
In this insightful book, one of America's leading commentators on culture and society turns his gaze upon cinematic race relations, examining the relationship between film, race and culture. Acute, richly illustrated and timely, the book deepens our understanding of the politics of race and the symbolic complexity of segregation and discrimination.
Author: Billy Vera Publisher: Bookbaby ISBN: 9781098345112 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 218
Book Description
A Dollop of Toothpaste is the fourth book by singer, actor, music historian Billy Vera and is his first novel. In it, he uses his years of experience in the often treacherous world of show business to tell the story of guitarist Johnny Santoro, his 98 year old uncle Nicky, head of the New Orleans Mafia, his best friend Pete and his young lover Paulette. Our story begins on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and the destruction of a major US city by enemies unknown. Uncle Nicky sees this as an opportunity to bring the mob back to its rightful place in US politics and seeks help from Paulette's 33rd degree Freemason father to seat a President of his choosing. This is a book filled with authenticity, from the music, the food, the dialects and in the locations rarely seen in other books. It is also about Love, of friends, of two unlikely lovers and the love of three very different families and how they converge.
Author: Will Hermes Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 0374533547 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 385
Book Description
This title provides a group portrait of some of the greatest musicians of the 20th century, including Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, Grandmaster Flash and Bob Dylan.
Author: Billy Vera Publisher: RPM ISBN: 9781947026360 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 177
Book Description
Launched by legendary music industry executive Art Rupe in the mid-1940s, the Los Angeles-based Specialty Records emerged as one of the most important independent labels for African-American music in the twentieth century. Recognizing that competing with major record companies was a losing battle, Rupe headed to Central Avenue, the center of L.A.'s black community, where he spent $200 on what were then known as "race records." He carefully analyzed each, developing his own formula for a successful venture. Soon, Specialty was scoring R&B hits with artists such as Roy Milton, Camille Howard, Jimmy and Joe Liggins, and Percy Mayfield. Drawn to the music of New Orleans, Rupe went on to sign Lloyd Price, who topped the charts with "Lawdy Miss Clawdy." It was through Price that Specialty acquired its best-known artist, Little Richard. After "Tutti Frutti" exploded in 1955, Richard and the label scored a string of successes with "Long Tall Sally," "Lucille," "Keep A Knockin'," "Good Golly Miss Molly," and more. In addition to R&B and the emerging sounds of rock 'n' roll, Rupe was particularly drawn to the sounds of the church. Black gospel music was an essential element of his company, with a roster that included stars of the genre, such as Sam Cooke's Soul Stirrers, Sister Wynona Carr, Brother Joe May, Alex Bradford and the Bradford Specials, and others. From behind-the-scenes producers Robert "Bumps" Blackwell, J.W. Alexander, Harold Battiste, and Sonny Bono, to R&B recording stars Floyd Dixon, Guitar Slim, Jesse Belvin, Larry Williams, and Don and Dewey, this is the story of the legendary Specialty Records.
Author: Gerd Gemünden Publisher: Berghahn Books ISBN: 0857450662 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 206
Book Description
With six Academy Awards, four entries on the American Film Institute's list of 100 greatest American movies, and more titles on the National Historic Register of classic films deemed worthy of preservation than any other director, Billy Wilder counts as one of the most accomplished filmmakers ever to work in Hollywood. Yet how American is Billy Wilder, the Jewish émigré from Central Europe? This book underscores this complex issue, unpacking underlying contradictions where previous commentators routinely smoothed them out. Wilder emerges as an artist with roots in sensationalist journalism and the world of entertainment as well as with an awareness of literary culture and the avant-garde, features that lead to productive and often highly original confrontations between high and low.
Author: Debby Applegate Publisher: Doubleday ISBN: 0385534760 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 609
Book Description
The compulsively readable and sometimes jaw-dropping story of the life of a notorious madam who played hostess to every gangster, politician, writer, sports star and Cafe Society swell worth knowing, and who as much as any single figure helped make the twenties roar—from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Most Famous Man in America. "A fast-paced tale of … Polly’s many court battles, newspaper headlines, mobster dealings and society gossip…. A breathless tale told through extraordinary research.” —The New York Times Book Review Simply put: Everybody came to Polly's. Pearl "Polly" Adler (1900-1962) was a diminutive dynamo whose Manhattan brothels in the Roaring Twenties became places not just for men to have the company of women but were key gathering places where the culturati and celebrity elite mingled with high society and with violent figures of the underworld—and had a good time doing it. As a Jewish immigrant from eastern Europe, Polly Adler's life is a classic American story of success and assimilation that starts like a novel by Henry Roth and then turns into a glittering real-life tale straight out of F. Scott Fitzgerald. She declared her ambition to be "the best goddam madam in all America" and succeeded wildly. Debby Applegate uses Polly's story as the key to unpacking just what made the 1920s the appallingly corrupt yet glamorous and transformational era that it was and how the collision between high and low is the unique ingredient that fuels American culture.
Author: Billy Vera
Author: Norman K Denzin
Author: Billy Vera
Author: Will Hermes
Author: Billy Vera
Author: Gerd Gemünden
Author: Debby Applegate
Author: Joe Queenan
Author: Paul Whiteman
Author: Harry Brandt