January 4, 2010
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Available 12/02/09 in Hardcover
Amazon Best Books of the Month, December 2009
Crafted with a musician’s ear and an historian’s eye, Pops is a vibrant biography of the iconic Louis Armstrong that resonates with the same warmth as ol’ Satchmo’s distinctive voice. Wall Street Journal critic Terry Teachout draws from a wealth of previously unavailable material — including over 650 reels of Armstrong’s own personal tape recordings — to create an engaging profile that slips behind the jazz legend’s megawatt smile. Teachout reveals that the beaming visage of “Reverend Satchelmouth” was not a mark of racial subservience, but a clear symbol of Louis’s refusal to let anything cloud the joy he derived from blowing his horn. “Faced with the terrible realities of the time and place into which he had been born,” explains Teachout, “he didn’t repine, but returned love for hatred and sought salvation in work.” Armstrong was hardly impervious to the injustices of his era, but in his mind, nothing was more sacred than the music. –Dave Callanan
Louis Armstrong was the greatest jazz musician of the twentieth century and a giant of modern American culture. He knocked the Beatles off the top of the charts, wrote the finest of all jazz autobiographies–without a collaborator–and created collages that have been compared to the art of Romare Bearden. The ranks of his admirers included Johnny Cash, Jackson Pollock and Orson Welles. Offstage he was witty, introspective and unexpectedly complex, a beloved colleague with an explosive temper whose larger-than-life personality was tougher and more sharp-edged than his worshipping fans ever knew.
Wall Street Journal arts columnist Terry Teachout has drawn on a cache of important new sources unavailable to previous Armstrong biographers, including hundreds of private recordings of backstage and after-hours conversations that Armstrong made throughout the second half of his life, to craft a sweeping new narrative biography of this towering figure that shares full, accurate versions of such storied events as Armstrong’s decision to break up his big band and his quarrel with President Eisenhower for the first time. Certain to be the definitive word on Armstrong for our generation, Pops paints a gripping portrait of the man, his world and his music that will stand alongside Gary Giddins’ Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams and Peter Guralnick’s Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley as a classic biography of a major American musician.
December 13, 2009
R. Kelly is writing more chapters, only this time, it’s not for his “Trapped” saga, but for a new memoir.
The 42-year-old singer, writer and producer says in a statement issued Wednesday that he is working on an autobiography with David Ritz that will “tell it like it is.”
He has a lot to talk about. He’s one of the best-selling recording artists in history but also one of the most controversial.
The book promises to go through all his drama, including child pornography charges that ended with an acquittal.
The autobiography is untitled right now, just like his new CD. It’s scheduled for release by Tavis Smiley’s SmileyBooks in 2011.
Yahoo! News
October 27, 2009
Through the Wire: Lyrics & Illuminations
by Kanye West
illustrated by Bill Plympton
Atria
Available 11/10/09
This is a rare partnership between two geniuses at the top of their crafts — Kanye West, who was named “the smartest man in hip-hop” by Time magazine, and Bill Plympton, an Academy Award-nominated animator, cartoonist, and illustrator.
Through the Wire is a graphic memoir that illustrates the lyrics of twelve Kanye West songs to tell his story, from his decision to drop out of college to pursue his dreams in music, through his days spent folding chinos at the Gap while struggling at night to make a name as a producer, through the pivotal car accident that eventually set him on the course to stardom and the epiphany of realizing exactly who he had become:
And anything that happens is for a reason…”
Plympton illustrates each of the songs in detail, his vision of Kanye’s world. The songs are annotated with explanations of the references in the songs, biographical components that illuminate the lyrics, and their meaning on a deeply personal level.
The result is a one-of-a-kind book that initially grabs you and stays with you forever.
October 27, 2009
Chronicle Books
Available 10/21/09
Photographer Todd Gray worked with Michael Jackson for several years before Jackson requested that he become his personal photographer, a relationship that would encompass the singer’s performances with the Jacksons through the release of his smash solo albums Off the Wall and Thriller. This collection of unseen, intimate, and joyful pictures of Michael taken over a span of 10 years reveal him at home, with his family and fans, in career-making live performances, and the on the “Beat It” video shoot. A young black man not much older than Jackson at the time they met, Gray brings unique insights to his time with the singer, contributing stories and context to the images, presenting a rare, intimate portrait of Jackson at a creative peak as he grew from a brilliantly talented young man into a pop icon.
August 1, 2009
Publisher: Atria; 1 edition (May 12, 2009)
Kiss The Sky tracks the life of Sophie “Sky” Lee, a thirtysomething black rock musician making a comeback in New York City in 2000. There are a few hitches to her plans: Sky’s guitarist is her mercurial, drug-abusing ex-husband; her manager is also her boyfriend; and Sky herself is frightened of the cost she’ll pay to reach the pinnacle of fame.
Add to that her struggles with religion, her family, and her meddling girlfriends and you have a book which blends substantial themes of love, faith, and longing with contemporary pop culture. Kiss the Sky also has a catalogue of music references on par with books like High Fidelity.
July 24, 2009
The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success, and Betrayal
by Mark Ribowsky
Da Capo Press
Available 06/25/09
Drawing on intimate recollections from friends, family, and Motown contemporaries, Mark Ribowsky charts the Supremes’ meteoric rise and bitter disintegration. He sheds light on Diana Ross’s relationship with Berry Gordy and her cutthroat rise to top billing in the group, as well as Florence Ballard’s corresponding decline. He also takes us inside the studio, examining how timeless classics were conceived and recorded on the Motown “assembly line,” and considers the place of Motown in an era of cultural upheaval, when not being “black enough” became a fierce denunciation within the black music industry.
April 29, 2009
Cooling Board: A Long Playing Poem
by Mitchell L.H. Douglas
Red Hen Press
Available 02/15/09
In the tradition of the Langton Hughes classic Montage of a Dream Deferred, Mitchell L. H. Douglas uses persona poetry to explore the personal and professional struggles of soul legend Donny Hathaway in his debut collection Cooling Board: a Long-Playing Poem. Evoking the sense of listening to a concept album, Douglas presents a narrative in two sides: side one focusing on Hathaway’s development as a young musician and subsequent rise to fame and side two bearing witness to the adversity that plagued his later years. Readers will see Hathaway as true to his family, true to his faith, and uncompromising in his quest for musical innovation.
In a nod to Hathaway’s legacy as a musical trailblazer, Douglas implements a significant poetic innovation in the format of the book. By including alternate versions or “takes” of poems throughout Cooling Board, the reader hears an echo of ideas that can be likened to an album with previously unreleased versions of popular songs. When the poems are revisited in alternate takes, new information emerges, and the reader is forced to consider new interpretations. Along the way, poems resembling liner notes and pop charts enhance the experience, never letting the reader forget that the heart of this ride is the music.
Above all, Douglas’ depiction of Hathaway gives readers the human side of a man who has remained a mystery in the 30 years since his death. Not only does the poet speak in the voices of Hathaway and his long-time collaborator Roberta Flack, the reader also hears the voices of those closest to Hathaway whom we are less familiar with: his mother, Drusella Huntley, his grandmother, Martha Crumwell—Hathaway’s earliest music teacher—and his wife, Eulaulah.
As the book’s first “Liner Notes” poem recognizes, “Cooling Board is about life lessons, the difficult things you don’t always get on the first take.” With Douglas as a guide versed in the power of possessing many tongues, Cooling Board captures its reader like the best Hathaway song: passionately, honestly, and with an undeniable sense of purpose.
February 2, 2009
The Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist
by Deirdre O’Connell
Available 02/05/09
The true story of a black musical savant in the era of slavery. Born into slavery in Georgia, Tom Wiggins died an international celebrity in New York in 1908. His life was one of the most bizarre and moving episodes in American history. Born blind and autistic-and so unable to work with other slaves-Tom was left to his own devices. He was mesmerized by the music of the family’s young daughters, and by the time he was four, Tom was playing tunes on the piano. Eventually freed from slavery, Wiggins, or “Blind Tom” as he was called, toured the country and the world playing for celebrities like Mark Twain and the Queen of England and dazzling audiences everywhere. One part genius and one part novelty act, Blind Tom embodied contradictions-a star and a freak, freed from slavery but still the property of his white guardian. His life offers a window into the culture of celebrity and racism at the turn of the twentieth century. In this rollicking and heartrending book, O’Connell takes us through the life (and three separate deaths) of Blind Tom Wiggins, restoring to the modern reader this unusual yet quintessentially American life.
January 19, 2009
A Girl Like Me by Ni-Ni Simone
(Dafina, 12/01/08, Paperback)
She’s got a voice like Keisha Cole, attitude to burn–and is the body-rockin’, Bebe-sporting girl everyone in her high school wants to be…or be with. But in real life, sixteen-year-old Elite has a crack-addicted mother, no father in sight, and is secretly raising her sister and two brothers on her own. Now a radio contest has put her up-close-and-personal with mega-hot singer Haneef and their chemistry is too sizzling for Elite to stop pretending. And as the clock ticks down fast for this ‘hood Cinderella, she has only one shot to save her family and make all of her dreams come true…
December 1, 2008
The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop–and Why It Matters
by Tricia Rose
Available December 2008
Hip-hop is in crisis. For the past dozen years, the most commercially successful hip-hop has become increasingly saturated with caricatures of black gangstas, thugs, pimps, and ‘hos. The controversy surrounding hip-hop is worth attending to and examining with a critical eye because, as scholar and cultural critic Tricia Rose argues, hip-hop has become a primary means by which we talk about race in the United States. In The Hip-Hop Wars, Rose explores the most crucial issues underlying the polarized claims on each side of the debate: Does hip-hop cause violence, or merely reflect a violent ghetto culture? Is hip-hop sexist, or are its detractors simply anti-sex? Does the portrayal of black culture in hip-hop undermine black advancement? A potent exploration of a divisive and important subject, The Hip-Hop Wars concludes with a call for the regalvanization of the progressive and creative heart of hip-hop. What Rose calls for is not a sanitized vision of the form, but one that more accurately reflects a much richer space of culture, politics, anger, and yes, sex, than the current ubiquitous images in sound and video currently provide.
