Author: Richard Winston Publisher: Xlibris Corporation ISBN: 1462844855 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 324
Book Description
Suddenly I saw a pale gray shape dart in front of my car. At first I thought it was just a large dog, thin and long-legged. Trapped between the high wall on the left and the unbroken row of parked cars to the right, the animal ran at a relaxed canter directly down the center of the road a few feet in front of me. I slowed even more. The beast was caught in the headlights and I saw it was no neighborhood pooch out for a midnight stroll. It was a coyote and it was hunting.
Author: Sebastian Farr Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc. ISBN: 1728278600 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 203
Book Description
"A one-of-a-kind treat from the golden age."— Kirkus Reviews From music conductor turned crime fiction novelist, Sebastian Farr, comes an epistolary tour de force that hits the perfect murderous crescendo for music and crime fiction aficionados alike. During a performance of Strauss' tone poem 'A Hero's Life', the obnoxious conductor, Sir Noel Grampian, is shot dead in full view of the Maningpool Municipal Orchestra. He had many enemies, musicians and music critics among them, but to be killed in mid flow suggests an act of the coldest calculation. Told through the letters of Detective Inspector Alan Hope to his wife, he puzzles over his findings, and other documents such as the letters of members of the orchestra and musical notation holding clues to the crime. This addition to the Crime Classics series is an immersive musical mystery, featuring diagrams of the orchestra arrangement and four pages of musical notation with relevance to the plot. First published in 1941 but out-of-print since, this is by a lost writer of the genre, Sebastian Farr (a pseudonym for Eric Walter Blom), a prolific Swiss-born and British-naturalised music lexicographer, music critic and writer.
Author: Mary Hughes Publisher: Entangled: Select Otherworld ISBN: 1640632298 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 358
Book Description
Rock-star music director, spy, and deadly vampire Dragan Zajicek takes the podium of a small orchestra near Chicago as a cover to investigate rumors of a monstrous, impossible-to-defeat vampire known as the Soul Stealer. There Dragan meets gorgeous-but-doesn’t-know-it flutist Raquel “Rocky” Hrbek who is investigating the monster vampire herself. Cruelty made Rocky a shy shadow of herself, except for when performing on her flute. So when shockingly virile, filthy rich, gorgeous Dragan inexplicably pays attention to her, it threatens her protective shell . After a tragedy killed his family, Dragan walled off his heart, threw out rules and went rampaging with the bad boys. Rocky’s sweet nature threatens to shatter his hard-won defiance. Yet as they track down the rumors the two are drawn closer—until the Soul Stealer appears and zeroes in on Rocky. Now she and Dragan must find a way to destroy an indestructible creature before Rocky is utterly consumed and Chicago is bathed in blood. Each book in the Biting Love series is a standalone story that can be enjoyed in any order. Series Order: Book #1: Bite My Fire Book #2: Biting Nixie Book #3: The Bite of Silence novella Book #4: Biting Me Softly Book #5: Biting Oz Book #6: Beauty Bites Book #7: Downbeat Book #8: Assassin’s Bite Book #9: Passion Bites
Author: Frederick J. Spencer, M.D. Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi ISBN: 1628469234 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 447
Book Description
When a jazz hero dies, rumors, speculation, gossip, and legend can muddle the real cause of death. In this book, Frederick J. Spencer, M.D., conducts an inquest on how jazz greats lived and died pursuing their art. Forensics, medical histories, death certificates, and biographies divulge the way many musical virtuosos really died. An essential reference source, Jazz and Death strives to correct misinformation and set the story straight. Reviewing the medical records of such jazz icons as Scott Joplin, James Reese Europe, Bennie Moten, Tommy Dorsey, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Wardell Gray, and Ronnie Scott, the book spans decades, styles, and causes of death. Divided into disease categories, it covers such illnesses as ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), which killed Charlie Mingus, and tuberculosis, which caused the deaths of Chick Webb, Charlie Christian, Bubber Miley, Jimmy Blanton, and Fats Navarro. It notes the significance of dental disease in affecting a musician's embouchure and livelihood, as happened with Joe “King” Oliver. A discussion of Art Tatum's visual impairment leads to discoveries in the pathology of what blinded Lennie Tristano. Heavy drinking, even during Prohibition, was the norm in the clubs of New Orleans and Kansas City and in the ballrooms of Chicago and New York. Too often, the musical scene demanded that those who play jazz be “jazzed.” After World War II, as heroin addiction became the hallmark of revolution, talented bebop artists suffered long absences from the bandstand. Many did jail time, and others succumbed to the ravages of “horse.” With Jazz and Death, the causes behind the great jazz funerals may no longer be misconstrued. Its clinical and morbidly entertaining approach creates an invaluable compendium for jazz fans and scholars alike.
Author: Tracy Fessenden Publisher: Penn State Press ISBN: 027108720X Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 219
Book Description
Soulful jazz singer Billie Holiday is remembered today for her unique sound, troubled personal history, and a catalogue that includes such resonant songs as “Strange Fruit” and “God Bless the Child.” Holiday and her music were also strongly shaped by religion, often in surprising ways. Religion Around Billie Holiday examines the spiritual and religious forces that left their mark on the performer during her short but influential life. Mixing elements of biography with the history of race and American music, Tracy Fessenden explores the multiple religious influences on Holiday’s life and sound, including her time spent as a child in a Baltimore convent, the echoes of black Southern churches in the blues she encountered in brothels, the secular riffs on ancestral faith in the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, and the Jewish songwriting culture of Tin Pan Alley. Fessenden looks at the vernacular devotions scholars call lived religion—the Catholicism of the streets, the Jewishness of the stage, the Pentecostalism of the roadhouse or the concert arena—alongside more formal religious articulations in institutions, doctrine, and ritual performance. Insightful and compelling, Fessenden’s study brings unexpected materials and archival voices to bear on the shaping of Billie Holiday’s exquisite craft and indelible persona. Religion Around Billie Holiday illuminates the power and durability of religion in the making of an American musical icon.
Author: Walter van de Leur Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 135137317X Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 161
Book Description
Jazz and Death: Reception, Rituals, and Representations critically examines the myriad and complex interactions between jazz and death, from the New Orleans "jazz funeral" to jazz in heaven or hell, final recordings, jazz monuments, and the music’s own presumed death. It looks at how fans, critics, journalists, historians, writers, the media, and musicians have narrated, mythologized, and relayed those stories. What causes the fascination of the jazz world with its deaths? What does it say about how our culture views jazz and its practitioners? Is jazz somehow a fatal culture? The narratives surrounding jazz and death cast a light on how the music and its creators are perceived. Stories of jazz musicians typically bring up different tropes, ranging from the tragic, misunderstood genius to the notion that virtuosity somehow comes at a price. Many of these narratives tend to perpetuate the gendered and racialized stereotypes that have been part of jazz’s history. In the end, the ideas that encompass jazz and death help audiences find meaning in a complex musical practice and come to grips with the passing of their revered musical heroes -- and possibly with their own mortality.
Author: Douglas H. Daniels Publisher: Beacon Press ISBN: 9780807071250 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 556
Book Description
He was jazz's first hipster. He performed in sunglasses and coined and popularized phrases like "that's cool" and "you dig?" He always wore a suit and his trademark porkpie hat. He influenced everyone from B. B. King to Stan Getz to Allen Ginsberg, creating a lyrical style of playing that forever changed the sound of the tenor saxophone. In this groundbreaking biography of Lester Young (1909-1959), historian Douglas Daniels brings to life the man and his world, and corrects a number of misconceptions. Even though others have identified Young as a Kansas City musician, Daniels traces his roots to the blues of Louisiana and his early years traveling with his father's band and the legendary Oklahoma City Blue Devils. Later we see the jazz culture of New York in the early 1940s, when Young was launched to national and international fame with the Count Basie Orchestra and began to accompany his close friend Billie Holiday. After a year spent in an Army prison on a conviction for marijuana use, Young made changes in his music but never lost his sensitivity or soul. The first ever to gain access to Young's family and many musicians who performed with him, Daniels reconstructs the world in which Young lived and played: the racism that he and other black musicians faced, the feeling of home and family that they created together on the road, and what his music meant to black audiences. Young emerges as a kind friend, a loving parent, and a gentle and sensitive man who had, in the words of Reginald Scott, "the saddest eyes I ever saw
Author: Richard Winston
Author: Sebastian Farr
Author: María Jimena Duzán
Author: Frank Alkyer
Author: Mary Hughes
Author: Frederick J. Spencer, M.D.
Author: Tracy Fessenden
Author: Walter van de Leur
Author: Douglas H. Daniels
Author: 