Music & Movies

The Godfather of Soul, Mr. Dynamite, The Hardest Working Man in Show Business--a legend of popular music whose influence and appeal reaches audiences to this day--gets the graphic novel treatment. Born in the South during the height of segregation, James...

In this remarkable book, Douglas Wolk brings to life an October evening in 1962, at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem - an evening at the height of Cold War tensions. In great detail, Wolk pieces together what took place (and what was recorded) that night,...

The emergence of Jack Teagarden as an important jazz stylist was a significant feature of the '20s jazz scene. He brought a maturity to the sound of the trombone and until late in his life played with a laconic grace that few, if any, on his instrument...

From a Los Angeles hospital bed, equipped with little more than a laptop and a stack of records, James J Dilla Yancey crafted a set of tracks that would forever change the way beatmakers viewed their artform. The songs on Donuts are not hip hop music as...

An exclusive behind-the-scenes look at life in the rap world, from the woman at the heart of the Nas/Jay-Z feud--one of the biggest beefs in hip-hop. Carmen Bryan is no stranger to the rap world. Not only did she work at Def Jam and Capitol Records but...

This star-studded tribute traces the struggles and triumphs of the Afro-American superstars of music and film over the last century. Among the many artists featured are: Whitney Houston, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Cab...

Richard Wesley was witness to a revolution. As both a celebrated participant and eager student of the Black Theater Movement in the late 1960s, he became part of a seismic force in American culture, breaking down barriers and helping to disrupt the...

Christopher R. Weingarten provides a thrilling account of how the Bomb Squad produced such a singular-sounding record: engineering, sampling, scratching, constructing, deconstructing, reconstructing - even occasionally stompingon vinyl that sounded too...

Soul is the most powerful expression of American music--a distinct combination of roots, migration, race, culture, and politics packaged together for your dancing pleasure. But if you thought the sounds of Motown or Stax Records died along with 8-tracks...

(REH Publications). Expand your playing and your imagination with these revolutionary intervallic lines by jazz great Joe Diorio! Topics include: designs of tonality, designs of diatonic harmonies, designs for the diminished scales, designs for dominant...

In 2004, the Academy Award-nominated movie Hotel Rwanda lionized hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina for single-handedly saving the lives of all who sought refuge in the Hotel des Milles Collines during Rwanda's genocide against the Tutsi in 1994. Because of...

By 1940 the big band sound had grown stale, and jazz musicians began to search out new sounds and styles. At the Harlem nightclub Minton's Playhouse, a small group of musicians -- John Birks, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Beau Hawkins, and Thelonious Monk,...