Blood, Sweat, and My Rock 'n' Roll Years

Blood, Sweat, and My Rock 'n' Roll Years
Author: Steve Katz
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2015-05-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 149301742X

On paper Steve Katz’s career rivals anyone’s except the 1960s’ and ’70’s biggest stars: the Monterey Pop Festival with the legendary Blues Project, Woodstock with Blood, Sweat & Tears, and even producing rock’s most celebrated speed addict, Lou Reed. There were world tours, and his résumé screams “Hall of Fame” — it won’t be long before BS&T are on that ballot. He has three Grammies (ten nominations), three Downbeat Reader’s Poll Awards, three gold records, one platinum record, and one quadruple platinum platter (the second Blood, Sweat & Tears album), not to mention three gold singles with BS&T. All together, he’s sold close to 29 million records. He had affairs with famous female folk singers, made love to Jim Morrison’s girlfriend Pam when Jim was drunk and abusive, partied with Elizabeth Taylor and Groucho Marx, dined with Rudolf Nureyev, conversed with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Tennessee Williams, hung out with Andy Warhol, jammed with everyone from Mose Allison to Jimi Hendrix, and was told to get a haircut by both Mickey Spillane and Danny Thomas. But his memoir is more Portnoy’s Complaint than the lurid party-with-your-pants-down memoir that has become the norm for rock ’n’ roll books. It’s an honest and personal account of a life at the edge of the spotlight—a privileged vantage point that earned him a bit more objectivity and earnest outrage than a lot of his colleagues, who were too far into the scene to lay any honest witness to it. Set during the Greenwich Village folk/rock scene, the Sixties’ most celebrated venues and concerts, and behind closed doors on international tours and grueling studio sessions, this is the unlikely story of a rock star as nerd, nerd as rock star, a nice Jewish boy who got to sit at the cool kid’s table and score the hot chicks.

Levon

Levon
Author: Sandra B. Tooze
Publisher: Diversion Books
Total Pages: 467
Release: 2020-08-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1635767024

The life of the legendary drummer and singer is explored through extensive research and personal interviews with family, friends, and fellow musicians. In the Arkansas Delta, a young Levon Helm witnessed “blues, country, and gospel hit in a head-on collision,” as he put it. The result was rock 'n' roll. As a teenager, he joined the raucous Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, then helped merge a hard-driving electric sound with Bob Dylan's folk roots, and revolutionized American rock with the Band. Helm not only provided perfect “in the pocket” rhythm and unforgettable vocals, he was the soul of The Band. Levon traces a rebellious life on the road, from being booed with Bob Dylan to the creative cauldron of Big Pink, the Woodstock Festival, world tours, The Last Waltz, and beyond with the man Dylan called “one of the last true great spirits of my or any other generation.” Author Sandra B. Tooze digs deep into what Helm saw as a devastating betrayal by his closest friend, Band guitarist Robbie Robertson—and Levon’s career collapse, his near bankruptcy, and the loss of his voice due to throat cancer in 1997. Yet Helm found success in an acting career that included roles in Coal Miner’s Daughter and The Right Stuff. Regaining his singing voice, he made his last decade a triumph, opening his barn to the Midnight Rambles and earning three Grammys.

Listen to Classic Rock!

Listen to Classic Rock!
Author: Melissa Ursula Dawn Goldsmith
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2019-11-22
Genre: Music
ISBN:

Listen to Classic Rock! Exploring a Musical Genre provides an overview of this diverse and complex musical genre for scholars of classic rock and curious novices alike, with a focus on 50 must-hear musicians, songwriters, bands, and albums. Listen to Classic Rock! Exploring a Musical Genre explores in detail the genesis, evolution, and proliferation of classic rock. It begins with a background on the development of classic rock and its subgenres. Next, an A to Z listing of artists (musicians, songwriters, and bands), albums, important concerts, and songs; a chapter on classic rock's impact on popular culture; a chapter on classic rock's legacy; and a bibliography. This organization gives readers the choice of starting from the beginning to learn how classic rock and each of its subgenres emerged after rock and roll or skip ahead to a specific artist, recording, or song in the Must-Hear Music section. This volume stands out from other resources on classic rock for its listening-centered approach. Most books on classic rock focus on trivia, history, terminology, or criticism. It also explores the sound of the music of important artists and offers musical analyses that are accessible to upper-level high school and lower-level undergraduates while at the same time maintaining the interest of classic rock aficionados and scholars.

Whole World in an Uproar

Whole World in an Uproar
Author: Aaron Leonard
Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2023-01-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1914420934

How the radical music of the 1960s was birthed amid unprecedented upheaval and systemic repression. Seventy years since the radical music of the 1960s first hit the airwaves, the anthems of the era continue to resonate with our current times. Through studying these musicians and the political contexts in which their pioneering songs were birthed; amidst paranoia, psychedelic delusions, desire and civil unrest; Aaron Leonard’s Whole World in an Uproar is an important new critical history of countercultural music from the Summer of Love to the unwelcome arrival of Bob Dylan.

Talkin' Greenwich Village

Talkin' Greenwich Village
Author: David Browne
Publisher: Hachette Books
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2024-09-17
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0306827654

The definitive history of the rise and heyday of the revolutionary Greenwich Village music scene, based on new research and first-hand interviews with many of its legendary performers Although Greenwich Village encompasses less than a square mile in downtown New York, rarely has such a concise area nurtured so many innovative artists and genres. Over the course of decades, Billie Holiday, the Weavers, Sonny Rollins, Dave Van Ronk, Ornette Coleman, Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Phil Ochs, and Suzanne Vega are just a few who migrated to the Village, recognizing it as a sanctuary for visionaries, non-conformists, and those looking to reinvent themselves. Working in the Village’s smokey coffeehouses and clubs, they chronicled the tumultuous Sixties, rewrote jazz history, and took folk and rock & roll into places they hadn’t been before. Based on over 150 new interviews (Judy Collins, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, Eric Andersen, Suzzy and Terre Roche, Suzanne Vega, Steve Forbert, Arlo Guthrie, John Sebastian, Shawn Colvin, the members of the Blues Project, and more), previously unseen documents, and author David Browne’s longtime immersion in the scene, Talkin’ Greenwich Village lends the saga the epic, panoramic scope it’s long deserved. It takes readers from the Fifties jamborees in Washington Square Park and into landmark venues like Gerde’s Folk City, the Gaslight Café, and the Village Vanguard, onto Dylan’s momentous arrival and returns, the no-holds-barred Seventies years (West Village discos, National Lampoon’s Lemmings), and the folk revival of the Eighties (Vega’s enduring “Tom’s Diner”). In eye-opening fashion, Browne also details the often-overlooked people of color in the Sixties folk clubs, reveals how the FBI and city government consistently kept their eyes on the community, unearths the machinations behind the infamous “beatnik riot” in Washington Square Park, and tells the interconnected tales of Van Ronk, the seminal band the Blues Project, and the beloved sister trio, the Roches. In also recounting the racial tensions, crackdowns, and changes in New York and music that infiltrated the neighborhood, Talkin’ Greenwich Village is more than just vivid cultural history. It also speaks to the rise and waning of bohemian culture itself, set to some of the most enduring lyrics, melodies, and jazz improvisations in American music.

My Greenwich Village

My Greenwich Village
Author: Terri Thal
Publisher: McNidder & Grace
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2023-09-27
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0857162497

Terri Thal was very much a part of the folk music world in 1960s Greenwich Village, New York. Few people know that she was 21-year-old Bob Dylan's first manager prior to his contract with Albert Grossman and Columbia Records. She also managed musician Dave Van Ronk (who was her husband), and others to include the Roche sisters, Paul Geremia and The Holy Modal Rounders. She booked performances at coffee houses, clubs and basket houses. On 6 September 1961, she recorded a set from a young Bob at The Gaslight Café – it is the first known live recording of his original songs - known to Dylan fans as the First Gaslight Tape! Terri took this 'audition' tape to clubs to try to get him gigs – and she still owns the original reel-to-reel tape! She had many friends in Greenwich Village including Suze Rotolo and a number of seminal 1960s folk musicians. When Dave Van Ronk first saw young Bob performing in a club in Greenwich Village he said 'I just heard this kid who's a fucking genius. You've got to hear him.' Within a few days I heard him play and agreed with Dave. Bob Dylan asked me, 'Would you get me gigs?' Terri Thal has two passions: folk music and social justice. This is a personal story of the world of folk music in 1960s New York written by a Jewish woman from Brooklyn who, although not a musician, was an intrinsic part of this scene. Terri describes Greenwich Village as a community that was supportive, musically exciting and one in which people had fun.Terri tells us what it was like to hang out in the Village coffee houses, to host folk singers like Tom Paxton and Phil Ochs who hung out at her apartment, and to be a manager. We hear her view and involvement of the 1960s socialist organizations, and how she later merged her professional work in not- for-profit agencies.

Dirty Blvd.

Dirty Blvd.
Author: Aidan Levy
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2015-10-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1613731094

American Jewish Year Book 2016

American Jewish Year Book 2016
Author: Arnold Dashefsky
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 828
Release: 2017-02-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3319461222

The American Jewish Year Book, now in its 116th year, is the annual record of the North American Jewish communities and provides insight into their major trends. Part I presents a forum on the Pew Survey, “A Portrait of American Orthodox Jews.” Part II begins with Chapter 13, "The Jewish Family." Chapter 14 examines “American Jews and the International Arena (April 1, 2015 – April 15, 2016), which focuses on US–Israel Relations. Chapters 15-17 analyze the demography and geography of the US, Canadian, and world Jewish populations. In Part III, Chapter 18 provides lists of Jewish institutions, including federations, community centers, social service agencies, national organizations, synagogues, Hillels, day schools, camps, museums, and Israeli consulates. In the final chapters, Chapter 19 presents national and local Jewish periodicals and broadcast media; Chapter 20 provides academic resources, including Jewish Studies programs, books, articles, websites, and research libraries; and Chapter 21 presents lists of major events in the past year, Jewish honorees, and obituaries. An invaluable record of Jewish life, the American Jewish Year Book illuminates contemporary issues with insight and breadth. It is a window into a complex and ever-changing world. Deborah Dash Moore, Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of History and Judaic Studies, and Director Emerita of the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan A century from now and more, the stately volumes of the American Jewish Year Book will stand as the authoritative record of Jewish life since 1900. For anyone interested in tracing the long-term evolution of Jewish social, political, religious, and cultural trends from an objective yet passionately Jewish perspective, there simply is no substitute. Lawrence Grossman, American Jewish Year Book Editor (1999-2008) and Contributor (1988-2015)

Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards

Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards
Author: Al Kooper
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2008-02-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1617745367

A rock 'n roll classic back in print updated and revised. One of the funniest rock memoirs ever Al Kooper's legendary Backstage Passes is available again] Al's quirkly life from would'be teenage rocker to crashing Bob Dylan's recording session an