Author: Ace Atkins Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 9780312971922 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 308
Book Description
"... Ahmad has created a novel that looks at race and culture and the changing face of America. It's a story that's easy to devour but hard to forget... " - Richmond Times-DispatchRanjit Singh, a former Indian Army Captain trying to escape a shameful past, lives with his family among the migrant workers of Martha's Vineyard, working as a caretaker of the vacation homes of the rich and powerful. Needing a place to stay, Ranjit moves his family into an empty Senator's home. Happily, but illegally ensconced in the house, he tries to forget his brief affair with Anna, the wife of an African-American senator, and focus on providing for his family. But one night, their idyll is shattered when mysterious armed men break into the house, looking for an antique porcelain doll. Forced to flee, Ranjit is pursued and hunted by unknown forces, and becomes drawn into the Senator's shadowy world. To save his family and solve the mystery of the doll, he must join forces with Anna, who has her own dark secrets. As the past and present collide, Ranjit must finally confront the hidden event that destroyed his Army career and forced him to leave India.Tightly plotted, action-packed, smart and surprisingly moving, The Caretaker takes us from the desperate world of migrant workers to the elite African-American community of Martha's Vineyard, and a secret high-altitude war between India and Pakistan.
Author: Adam Gussow Publisher: UNC Press Books ISBN: 1469633671 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 417
Book Description
The devil is the most charismatic and important figure in the blues tradition. He's not just the music's namesake ("the devil's music"), but a shadowy presence who haunts an imagined Mississippi crossroads where, it is claimed, Delta bluesman Robert Johnson traded away his soul in exchange for extraordinary prowess on the guitar. Yet, as scholar and musician Adam Gussow argues, there is much more to the story of the devil and the blues than these cliched understandings. In this groundbreaking study, Gussow takes the full measure of the devil's presence. Working from original transcriptions of more than 125 recordings released during the past ninety years, Gussow explores the varied uses to which black southern blues people have put this trouble-sowing, love-wrecking, but also empowering figure. The book culminates with a bold reinterpretation of Johnson's music and a provocative investigation of the way in which the citizens of Clarksdale, Mississippi, managed to rebrand a commercial hub as "the crossroads" in 1999, claiming Johnson and the devil as their own.
Author: Martin Mordecai Publisher: Scholastic Inc. ISBN: 0545298970 Category : Juvenile Fiction Languages : en Pages : 267
Book Description
"An utterly gorgeous, magical story, rendered with sheer grace and honesty. This book will transport you." -- Daniel Jose Older, New York Times bestselling author of Shadowshaper Way up in the misty island mountains of Jamaica live eleven-year-old twins Pollyread and Jackson Gilmore. Pollyread is smart as a whip and tart as a lime. Jackson's sweet as a mango. Both of them know all the rules of their village -- and how to break them.Then a young thug named Jammy sweeps in to stir up the twins' world. He even seems to be targeting their family. But are Pollyread's smart mouth and Jackson's steadiness enough to take him on -- or will Jammy and his secret change the Gilmore family forever?
Author: Mezz Mezzrow Publisher: New York Review of Books ISBN: 1590179455 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 465
Book Description
Hailed as an “American counter-culture classic,” this “funny” and candid musical memoir offers a delicious glimpse into the 1930s jazz scene (The Wall Street Journal) Mezz Mezzrow was a boy from Chicago who learned to play the sax in reform school and pursued a life in music and a life of crime. He moved from Chicago to New Orleans to New York, working in brothels and bars, bootlegging, dealing drugs, getting hooked, doing time, producing records, and playing with the greats, among them Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, and Fats Waller. Really the Blues—the jive-talking memoir that Mezzrow wrote at the insistence of, and with the help of, the novelist Bernard Wolfe—is the story of an unusual and unusually American life, and a portrait of a man who moved freely across racial boundaries when few could or did, “the odyssey of an individualist . . . the saga of a guy who wanted to make friends in a jungle where everyone was too busy making money.”
Author: Michael Mahin Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 148144350X Category : Juvenile Nonfiction Languages : en Pages : 50
Book Description
An Ezra Jack Keats Book Award Winner A New York Times Best Illustrated Book An NPR Best Book of the Year A Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book A Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner A picture book celebration of the indomitable Muddy Waters, a blues musician whose fierce and electric sound laid the groundwork for what would become rock and roll. Muddy Waters was never good at doing what he was told. When Grandma Della said the blues wouldn’t put food on the table, Muddy didn’t listen. And when record producers told him no one wanted to listen to a country boy playing country blues, Muddy ignored them as well. This tenacious streak carried Muddy from the hardscrabble fields of Mississippi to the smoky juke joints of Chicago and finally to a recording studio where a landmark record was made. Soon the world fell in love with the tough spirit of Muddy Waters. In blues-infused prose and soulful illustrations, Michael Mahin and award-winning artist Evan Turk tell Muddy’s fascinating and inspiring story of struggle, determination, and hope.
Author: Edward Komara Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 0810889226 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 319
Book Description
Search the Internet for the 100 best songs or best albums. Dozens of lists will appear from aficionados to major music personalities. But what if you not only love listening to the blues or country music or jazz or rock, you love reading about it, too. How do you separate what matters from what doesn’t among the hundreds—sometimes thousands—of books on the music you so love? In the Best Music Books series, readers finally have a quick-and-ready list of the most important works published on modern major music genres by leading experts. In 100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own, Edward Komara, former Blues Archivist of the University of Mississippi, and his successor Greg Johnson select those histories, biographies, surveys, transcriptions and studies from the many hundreds of works that have been published about this vital American musical genre. Komara and Johnson provide a short description of the contents and the achievement of each title selected for their “Blues 100.” Entries include full bibliographic citations, prices of copies in print, and even descriptions of specific editions for book collectors. 100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own also includes suggested blues recordings to accompany each recommended work, as well as a concluding section on key reference titles—or as Komara and Johnson phrase it: “The Books behind the Blues 100.” 100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own serves as a guide for any blues fan looking for a road map through the history of—and even history of the scholarship on—the blues. Here Komara and Johnson answer the question of not only what is a “blues” book, but which ones are worth owning.
Author: Hal Leonard Corp. Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation ISBN: 145848954X Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 851
Book Description
(Fake Book). Since the 1970s, The Real Book has been the most popular book for gigging jazz musicians. Hal Leonard is proud to publish completely legal and legitimate editions of the original volumes as well as exciting new volumes to carry on the tradition to new generations of players in all styles of music! All the Real Books feature hundreds of time-tested songs in accurate arrangements in the famous easy-to-read, hand-written notation. 300 blues essentials are included in this collection: All Your Love (I Miss Loving) * Baby Please Don't Go * Big Boss Man * Blues Before Sunrise * The Blues Is Alright * Boom Boom * Born Under a Bad Sign * Cheaper to Keep Her * Come on in My Kitchen * Crosscut Saw * Damn Right, I've Got the Blues * Dust My Broom * Every Day I Have the Blues * Evil * Five Long Years * Further on up the Road * Gangster of Love * Give Me Back My Wig * Good Morning Little Schoolgirl * Got My Mo Jo Working * Have You Ever Loved a Woman * Hide Away * How Long, How Long Blues * I Ain't Got You * I Got Love If You Want It * I'm Tore Down * I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man * It Hurts Me Too * Juke * Key to the Highway * Killing Floor * Let Me Love You Baby * Look on Yonder's Wall * Mama Talk to Your Daughter * Master Charge * Messin' with the Kid * My Babe * Phone Booth * Pride and Joy * Reconsider Baby * Rock Me Baby * Rock Me Right * Smokestack Lightning * Somebody Loan Me a Dime * Statesboro Blues * (They Call It) Stormy Monday (Stormy Monday Blues) * Sweet Home Chicago * Texas Flood * The Things That I Used to Do * The Thrill Is Gone * Wang Dang Doodle * and more.
Author: John A. Williams Publisher: Open Road Media ISBN: 1504033051 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 343
Book Description
A black musician arrested by Nazis in 1930s Germany endures the horrors of the Dachau death camp in this harrowing novel based on historical fact A self-proclaimed “gay negro” from New Orleans, Clifford Pepperidge made his name in the smoky nightclubs of Harlem in the 1920s, playing piano alongside Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, and other jazz greats. A decade later, he thrills crowds nightly in the cabarets of Weimar Berlin. But dark days are on the horizon as the Nazi Party rises to power. Arrested by Hitler’s Gestapo during a roundup of homosexuals, Clifford finds himself placed in “protective custody” and transported to a concentration camp. Stripped of his dignity and his identity, and plunged into a nightmare of forced labor, starvation, and abuse, he seeks escape in his music. When a camp SS officer and jazz aficionado recognizes Clifford, the gentle musician learns just how far a desperate man will go in order to survive. Shining a light on a little-known aspect of the Holocaust, Clifford’s Blues is a disturbing portrait of a dark era in world history and a poignant celebration of the resilience of the human spirit and the power of music.
Author: Sheree Thomas Publisher: Third Man Books ISBN: 9781734842272 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 404
Book Description
Trouble the Waters gathers the tidal force of bestselling, renowned writers from Lagos to New Orleans, Memphis to Copenhagen, Northern Ireland and London, offering extraordinary speculative fiction tales of ancient waters in all its myriad forms. Meet techno savvy water spirits, bayou saints and sirens, robots and river rootwomen, a pod of joyful space whales, and a castle of water-born terrors and mysteries. Including work by Nalo Hopkinson, Jaquira Diaz, Andrea Hairston, Linda D. Addison, Rion Amilcar Scott, Marie Vibbert, Maurice Broaddus, and other breakout beautiful voices, these stories and poems celebrate the most vital of elemental forces, water.
Author: Ace Atkins
Author: Adam Gussow
Author: Martin Mordecai
Author: Mezz Mezzrow
Author: Michael Mahin
Author: Edward Komara
Author: Hal Leonard Corp.
Author: Julie Danneberg
Author: John A. Williams
Author: Sheree Thomas