Johnny Ace's career lasted barely eighteen months, yet musicians from Bob Dylan to Paul Simon have acknowledged their debt to him. This is the first comprehensive treatment of an enigmatic performer whose biggest hit, "Pledging My Love", would top the R&B charts and cross over to pop after he died playing Russian roulette in his dressing room between sets at a packed "Negro Christmas dance" in Houston.

Marian Anderson was a woman with two disparate voices. The first - a powerful, majestic contralto spanning four octaves - catapulted her from Philadelphia poverty to international fame. A second, softer voice emanated from her mere presence. This study of Anderson's life features separate appendices for Anderson's repertory and discography.

Interweaving photographs, concert programs, scores, and drawings with the texts of more than fifty interviews with family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues, Charles Ives Remembered is a vivid memory portrait of an enigmatic American composer, told in the voices of the people who knew him best.

Charles Ives (1874-1954) was publicly an insurance executive but privately a composer whose eccentric works and paradoxical life would intrigue, perplex, and inspire generations to come after him. Moving from Ives's childhood and years at Yale to his business and musical careers, the memories and...

Chosen Voices is the definitive survey of an often overlooked aspect of American Jewish history and ethnomusicology and an insider's look at a profession that is also a vocation.

Week after week, year after year, Jews turn to sacred singers for spiritual and emotional support. The job of the hazzan -- much more than the traditional "messenger to God" -- is deeply embedded in cultural, social, and religious symbolism, negotiated between the congregation and its chosen voices.

Drawing on archival sources, interviews with cantors, and photographs, Slobin traces the development of the...

A biography of Louis Prima, one of the most underrated jazz musicians and entertainers of the twentieth century. It explores Prima's ability to maintain a lifelong career, his knack for self-promotion, and how the cities in which he lived and performed - New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas - uniquely and indelibly informed his style.

For nearly a century, Juilliard has trained the artists who compose the elite corps of the performing arts community in the United States. This title affirms the school's artistic legacy of great performances as the one constant amid decades of upheaval and change. It takes us behind the scenes and into its practice rooms, studios, and offices.

Music has flourished in the Mormon Church since its beginning. In this book - now available in paperback - Michael Hicks examines the direction that music's growth has taken since 1830. He looks closely at topics including the denomination's first official hymnals; the views of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young on singing; the Mormon Tabernacle Choir; and the changing attitudes of church officialdom and laity toward popular and non-western music styles. It is the winner of the 1989 Award in Criticism, from the Association for Mormon Letters.

From the plaintive tunes of woe sung by exiled kings and queens of Africa to the spirited work songs and shouts of freedmen, this title traces the course of early black folk music in various its guises.

Colin McPhee was a performer, writer, and pioneer among Western composers in turning to Asia for inspiration. A close friend of Aaron Copland, Carlos Chavez, Henry Cowell, and Virgil Thomson, he played a vital role in new music activities in New York in the 1920s, but his most important accomplishments came from his devotion to the music of Bali. Carol Oja's Colin McPhee: Composer in Two Worlds traces his life, his influences on fellow musicians, and the profound experience of a composer striving to comprehend an entirely new musical language. with delicately layered textures and clangorous...

The intertribal pow-wow is the most widespread venue for traditional Indian music and dance in North America. Now in paperback, Tara Browner's Heartbeat of the People is an insider's journey into the dances and music, the traditions and regalia, and the functions and significance of these vital cultural events.