Jazz is a uniquely American art form, one of America's great contributions to not only musical culture, but world culture, with each generation of musicians applying new levels of creativity that take the music in unexpected directions that defy definition, category, and stagnation. Now you can learn the basics and history of this intoxicating genre in an eight-lecture series that is as free-flowing and original as the art form itself. You'll follow

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"Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton is best-known for two songs covered by white rock 'n' roll stars (Elvis Presley, "Hound Dog"; Janis Joplin, "Ball 'n' Chain") but she is unquestionably one of the great blueswomen of her generation. She embodies some of the clichés of the blues, too: Born in the South, raised in the church, appropriated by white performers, hard drinking, relatively early death, big nickname, buried in an indigent's grave. Lynnée...

Features rare and memorable film performances of the greatest performers like Bessie Smith, Son House, Jimmy Rushing, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters, Big Joe Turner, T-Bone Walker, and B.B. King. Follows the music's many tributaries as blues flows into the sophisticated jazz of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie, the rhythm and blues of Louis Jordan and Dinah Washington, and the rock 'n' roll of Chuck Berry and...

Este libro es tanto una guía turística como una crónica periodística amena y convincente por las variadas historias de pueblos, ciudades y también de personajes que fueron los artífices de la música popular estadounidense que creció en las riveras del Misisipi. Desde el góspel y los espirituales negros pasando por el blues, el jazz, y rhythm and blues hasta el soul, el country o el rock. Un viaje excepcional que nos lleva desde Memphis y...

All prior histories on the blues have alleged it originated on plantations in the Mississippi Delta. Not true, says author Chris Thomas King. In The Blues, King present facts to disprove such myths. For example, that as early as 1900, the sound of the blues was ubiquitous in New Orleans. The Mississippi Delta, meanwhile, was an unpopulated sportsman's paradise—the frontier was still in the process of being cleared and drained for cultivation. Moreover,...