Music & Movies

In 1910, the Tuxedo Jazz Band played its first show at the Tuxedo Dance Hall in Storyville under Oscar Celestin. The popular ensemble went on to play all over New Orleans, as well as across the South and the nation. In 1953, it became the first jazz band...

An American institution, Sun Records has a history with many chapters -- its Memphis origins with visionary Sam Phillips, the breakthrough recordings of Elvis Presley, and the studio's immense influence on the sound of popular music. But behind the...

In 1966, journalist Charles Suhor wrote that New Orleans jazz was ready for its new Golden Age. Thomas W. Jacobsen's The New Orleans Jazz Scene, 1970-2000 chronicles the resurgence of jazz music in the Crescent City in the years following Suhor's...

An introductory guide to the mbira: the spiritual traditions, historical perspectives, and practical applications of a sacred Zimbabwean instrument. In this accessible overview steeped in history and tradition, teacher and student Māhealani Uchiyama...

The Matachines dance is a ritual drama performed on certain saint's days in Pueblo Indian and Mexicano/Hispano communities along the upper Río Grande valley in New Mexico and elsewhere in the American Southwest. It derives from a genre of medieval...

In the months before she died, Florence Ballard, the spunky teenager who founded the most successful female vocal group in history--the Supremes--told her own side of the story. Recorded on tape, Flo shed light on all areas of her life, including the...

Huddie Ledbetter (1889-1949), known to millions of fans simply as Leadbelly, was arguably the most famous black singer in American history. His close musical associations included such towering figures as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Woody Guthrie, Pete...

Blues legend B.B. King spent his life sharing the music of his soul, which shone relentlessly through hardship and triumph alike.Born on a cotton plantation in 1925, the man born Riley B. King would grow up to be one of the most influential blues...

Blues is a language--one which has evolved its own rules and which is the sole property of a culture always forced to the periphery of white society. As such it is a political language. Whether it is passed as a legacy from African village to Mississippi...

Leonard Feather's autobiography is also the story of jazz over the last half-century. Since arriving in New York from London in 1935, he has managed to distinguish himself as a producer, composer, pianist, and one of the music's most acute critics. He...

The last few years have witnessed an enormous resurgence in the popularity of jazz, after some lean times in the sixties when many potential jazz fans turned to rock. Now the pendulum is on the backswing, and vintage and modern jazz as well as jazz rock...

The Jazz Guitar Handbook is a step-by-step guide to jazz guitar playing. It takes you from the basics through to advanced harmony and soloing concepts, and teaches you the music theory a jazz guitarist needs to know. Along the way it covers a wide range...