Music & Movies

Before Elvis Presley and rock-'n'-roll, another King ruled the roost of American popular music. His name was Benny Goodman and his domain, the gilded age of Swing. Benny's concerts, records, and radio shows catapulted the hot and controversial sounds of...

The bebop era was a period in time where African descendants took European musical instruments and bent them to their well so that these European instruments told the story of African Americans in a uniquely African American voice. In Swing, Hard Bop,...

For a brief time in a Europe threatened and then occupied by Nazi Germany, jazz was heard as ubiquitously as rock ' n' roll is today. In a personal search for the story of that time, Mike Zwerin spent two years traveling across Europe talking with...

Not only biography, but also one of the earliest American attempts to trace the development of jazz.--from the foreword by Dan Morgenstern The first autobiography of a jazz musician, Louis Armstrong's Swing That Music is a milestone in jazz literature...

Book of the Week, Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) Children's Book Award Notable, International Reading Association (IRA) Original Art Show, Society of Illustrators Youth List, Collaborative Summer Library ProgramSearching his Harlem...

Few American superstar stories are richer, wilder, or more excessive than Rick James's. He played in a band with Neil Young, spent years in jail, produced his first album (which was then picked up by Motown) with money from shadowy sources, crossed rock...

Art Pepper (1925-1982) was called the greatest alto saxophonist of the post-Charlie Parker generation. But his autobiography, Straight Life, is much more than a jazz book--it is one of the most explosive, yet one of the most lyrical, of all...

Kim Osorio had a front-row seat for the biggest beefs, battles, and blow-ups in hip-hop. As the first female editor-in-chief of The Source, she had come up. From her corner office, Kim got the goods on hip-hop's hottest names: Jay-Z, Nas, 50 Cent, Lil'...

The ultimate love letter to the world's most magical plant: Weed. Best-selling author, rapper, chef, and television star Action Bronson is a marijuana superhero, and Stoned Beyond Belief is his masterpiece. This is an exploration of every corner of the...

Hailed as the greatest guitarist since Hendrix, virtuoso Stevie Ray Vaughan forged a distinctive style out of blues, rock and roll and R&B roots. A genuine guitar hero who crafted his attack in countless pass-the-hat jams in Austin bars and ended his...

(Guitar Book). Bassist James Jamerson was the embodiment of the Motown spirit and groove the invisible entity whose playing inspired thousands. His tumultuous life and musical brilliance are explored in depth through hundreds of interviews, 49...