|
|
|
The American Songbook: The Singers, Songwriters & The Songs
Presented in the striking format of Ken Bloom’s successful Broadway Musicals, this rich visual history of popular song covers all of the prominent figures behind the music, in front of the bandstand, and on top of the piano. “The Singers” includes Louis Armstrong, Tony Bennett, Barbara Cook, Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Ella Fitzgerald, and dozens more; “ The Songwriters” features Harold Arlen, Hoagy Carmichael, Dorothy Fields, Stephen Foster, Richard Rodgers, Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, and a host of others; a lively section discusses the Big Bands; and a decade-by-decade insert puts the entire history of popular music in perspective through words and pictures. Each one of the more than 200 listings in the book features the artist’s personal and professional history, great songs, and important contributions, plus photos (many rare), record covers, anecdotes, quotes, and more. Sidebars and features throughout cover topics of interest—everything from Arrangers, Vocal Groups, and Keepers of the Flame to Tin Pan Alley, Parodists, and Classical Crossovers—making this the most thorough survey of its kind. Throughout, all of the great songs are discussed—literally hundreds of songs, from “Stardust” to “My Funny Valentine” to “White Christmas.” Illustrated biographies, discographies, chronologies, and indices make The American Songbook a full-fledged reference as well as a pictorial feast..
Price: $8.29
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Stage Writers Handbook: A Complete Business Guide for Playwrights, Composers, Lyricists and Librettists
A left-brained book for right-brained people. Or maybe it's the other way around. Subtitled A Complete Business Guide for Playwrights, Composers, Lyricists, and Librettists, the book sets out clearly and straightforwardly what to expect, what your responsibilities are, what your rights are, how much to charge for your services and how to protect yourself as a professional theater writer today. It's all here: copyrights, agents, contracts, script approval, credits, royalties . . . all the stuff that could make you--or break you..
Price: $6.85
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Various Positions: A Life of Leonard Cohen (Jewish Life, History, and Culture)
From reviews of the hardcover edition: "[Various Positions is] more a literary than a rock bio—quiet of tone, serious without being worshipful Drawing on Cohen's own archives, Nadel plots aspects of Cohen's life—Zen, love affairs, drug use—against the evolution of his writing. He fashions a biography that is revealing but also mindful of its subject at his best." —Booklist "An excellent biography, one that manages to be both thoroughly scholarly and genuinely entertaining at the same time." —Montreal Gazette "An honest and sympathetic biography." —New York Times Book Review "The most authoritative work yet on the 'poet laureate of pessimism.'" —Library Journal
Known as the "Prince of Bummers," Leonard Cohen is a multi-talented poet, singer-songwriter, novelist, and Zen Buddhist whose career has spanned more than forty years and inspired countless other artists. In this critically acclaimed biography originally published in 1996 by Pantheon Books, Ira Nadel draws on extensive interviews with Cohen, as well as excerpts from his unpublished letters, journals, notebooks, songs, and other writings, to offer a full portrait of this enigmatic man and his artistic career. A new concluding chapter brings Cohen's story up-to-date, including the release of the albums Dear Heather, Ten New Songs, The Essential Leonard Cohen, and Blue Alert, as well as the publication of Book of Longing and the screening of the documentary film Leonard Cohen, I'm Your Man. .
Price: $15.77
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Lyricist's Notebook
Here’s a great new journal designed for the introspective poet or the accomplished singer-songwriter. Our musical journals have been strong sellers (The Musician’s Notebook sold more than 100,000 copies), and this handsome parchment lyricist’s diary promises to follow suit. There’s plenty of space for penning soulful lyrics, with inspiration and commiseration in the form of quotes from artists, writers, and musicians, such as Leonard Bernstein, Gilda Radner, and Ernest Hemingway. .
Price: $2.55
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Songwriters On Songwriting
In these fifty-two interviews, the greatest songwriters of our time go straight to the source of the magic of songwriting by offering their thoughts, feelings, and opinions on their art. Representing almost every genre of popular music, from folk to Tin Pan Alley to jazz, from blues to pop rock, these are the figures who have shaped American music as we know it. Here they share their secrets and personal methods for converting inspiration into song: Robbie Robertson of the Band an Tom Petty talk about working with Bob Dylan; Dylan himself, in his only in-depth interview in more than ten years, says that the world doesn’t need any new songs; R.E.M. name their favorite R.E.M. songs; Madonna describes collaborating with Prince; Sammy Cahn talks about writing standards for Sinatra; Pete Seeger recounts hitting the road with Woody Guthrie; Frank Zappa admits to loving ”Louie Louie”; Todd Rundgren explains how he dreams his songs; and, in the book’s most extensive interview, Paul Simon delves into his opus from ”The Sound of Silence” to ”Graceland.” And almost all of them express delight at being able to talk about the mechanics of music itself, something that they have rarely been asked to discuss. Here expanded with new interviews with Burt Bacharach, Laura Nyro, Yoko Ono, Leonard Cohen, Graham Nash, Jackson Browne, Richard Thompson, and many others, Songwriters on Songwriting is a rare volume: one of the best books on the craft of musicmaking, an informative source for musicians and songwriters, and an invaluable historical record of the popular music of this century. .
Price: $9.00
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Portrait of Johnny: The Life of John Herndon Mercer
An intimate biography of the great songwriter, this is also a deeply affectionate memoir by one of Johnny Mercer’s best friends “Moon River,” “Laura,” “Skylark,” ”That Old Black Magic,” “One for My Baby,” “Accentuate the Positive,” “Satin Doll,” “Days of Wine and Roses,” “Something’s Gotta Give”—the honor roll of Mercer’s songs is endless Both Oscar Hammerstein II and Alan Jay Lerner called him the greatest lyricist in the English language, and he was perhaps the best-loved and certainly the best-known songwriter of his generation. But Mercer was also a complicated and private man. A scion of an important Savannah family that had lost its fortune, he became a successful Hollywood songwriter (his primary partners included Harold Arlen and Jerome Kern), a hit recording artist, and, as co-founder of Capitol Records, a successful businessman, but he remained forever nostalgic for his idealized childhood (with his “huckleberry friend”). A gentleman, a nasty drunk, funny, tender, melancholic, tormented—Mercer was a man immensely talented yet plagued by self-doubt, much admired and loved but never really understood. In music historian and songwriter Gene Lees, Mercer has his perfect biographer, who deals tactfully but directly with Mercer’s complicated relationships with his domineering mother; his tormenting wife, Ginger; and Judy Garland, who was the great love of his life. Lees’s highly personal examination of Mercer’s life is sensitive as only the work of a friend of many years could be to the conflicts in Mercer’s nature. And it is filled with insights into Mercer’s work that could come only from a fellow lyricist (whose own lyrics were much admired by Mercer). A poignant, candid, revelatory portrait of Johnny..
Price: $8.94
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
|
|
|