Books about Ragtime from Amazon.com

Simla 1922. While the rest of India bakes in the hot season, up in the pine-scented coolness of the Himalayan hills the English have recreated a vision of home. Here are half-timbered houses, amateur theatricals, gymkhanas and a glittering vice-regal court for the socialites. The summer capital of the British Raj is fizzing with the energy of the jazz age. It is toward this country that detective Joe Sandilands is heading as the guest of the governor of Bengal. But when Joe's travelling companion, a Russian opera singer, is shot dead at his side on the road to Simla, he finds himself plunged into a murder investigation. As Joe begins to unravel the mystery which has its roots in the aftermath of the First World War, he discovers that behind the sparkling facade of Simla lies a trail of murder, vice and blackmail.


From the Paperback edition..
Price: $6.89 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Joe Gans captured the world lightweight title in 1902, becoming the first black American world title holder in any sport. Gans was a master strategist and tactician, and one the earliest practitioners of "scientific" boxing. As a black champion reigning during the Jim Crow era, he endured physical assaults, a stolen title, bankruptcy, and numerous attempts to destroy his reputation. Four short years after successfully defending his title in the 42-round "Greatest Fight of the Century," Joe Gans was dead of tuberculosis.

This biography features original round-by-round ringside telegraph reports of his most famous and controversial fights, a complete fight history, photographs, and early newspaper drawings and cartoons..
Price: $35.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

There were but four major galaxies in the early jazz universe, and three of them--New Orleans, Chicago, and New York--have been well documented in print. But there has never been a serious history of the fourth, Kansas City, until now.
In this colorful history, Frank Driggs and Chuck Haddix range from ragtime to bebop and from Bennie Moten to Charlie Parker to capture the golden age of Kansas City jazz. Readers will find a colorful portrait of old Kaycee itself, back then a neon riot of bars, gambling dens and taxi dance halls, all ruled over by Boss Tom Pendergast, who had transformed a dusty cowtown into the Paris of the Plains. We see how this wide-open, gin-soaked town gave birth to a music that was more basic and more viscerally exciting than other styles of jazz, its singers belting out a rough-and-tumble urban style of blues, its piano players pounding out a style later known as "boogie-woogie." We visit the great landmarks, like the Reno Club, the "Biggest Little Club in the World," where Lester Young and Count Basie made jazz history, and Charlie Parker began his musical education in the alley out back. And of course the authors illuminate the lives of the great musicians who made Kansas City swing, with colorful profiles of jazz figures such as Mary Lou Williams, Big Joe Turner, Jimmy Rushing, and Andy Kirk and his "Clouds of Joy."
Here is the definitive account of the raw, hard-driving style that put Kansas City on the musical map. It is a must read for everyone who loves jazz or American music history..
Price: $11.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $8.97 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Titles are: Back to Before * Buffalo Nickel Photoplay, Inc. * Gliding * Goodbye, My Love * Make Them Hear You * New Music * Our Children * Ragtime * Sarah Brown Eyes * Till We reach That Day * Wheels of a Dream * Your Daddy's Son. ?.
Price: $11.93 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Pianists and vocalists alike will enjoy the great song hits of this golden age—from the ragtime show-stoppers of Irving Berlin to the lowdown blues of W.C. Handy and other blues masters .
Price: $18.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The three years from 1909 to 1911 were busy ones in Richmond, what with the misadventures of Adon A. Yoder, a muckraking pamphleteer who gets beaten up, sued and thrown in jail; the organizing of women like Lila Meade Valentine to fight for their right to vote; the art of sculptor Ferruccio Legnaioli; the novels of Ellen Glasgow, Mary Johnston and James Branch Cabell; increased restrictions against African Americans; a public spectacle surrounding the murder trial of Henry Clay Beattie Jr.; exotic flying machines and automobile endurance contests; and the recording of Polk Miller and his Old South Quartette.

Join local author Harry Kollatz Jr. (True Richmond Stories) as he revives the city of a century ago for a tour of Richmond in ragtime..
Price: $16.23 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Add to your repertoire and reinforce your technique with this collection of blues songs. Bring these songs to life by listening to the recordings on the companion CD, which features short versions of each piece, played slowly and up to tempo. Includes full guitar parts in standard notation with chords, accompanying parts, and tablature, as well as detailed notes on song origins and arrangements..
Price: $8.19 [Notify me when price goes down.]

By using Scott Joplin's life as a window onto American social and cultural development at the turn of the century, this biography dramatizes the role of one brilliant African American musician in defining the culture of a still-young nation.

"Dancing to a Black Man's Tune renders Scott Joplin as a man and an artist whose musical genius served as his weapon in the struggle toward a whole America. Susan Curtis's book is more than biography, more than cultural history. It is a skillfully interwoven telling of Joplin's story within the mosaic of America's social and cultural evolution at the turn of the century."--John Hope Franklin

"If one is to know American culture and the place and 'trials and tribulations' of African American music in setting the foundation and flavor of American music, Dancing to a Black Man's Tune is, to date, the primary source."--Journal of American History.
Price: $14.51 [Notify me when price goes down.]