American Entertainment History

Tulsa, Oklahoma might not be the first place mentioned when people talk about American music history. But this bustling city has a rich and diverse legacy that spans genres, generations and cultures. Tulsa Sounds: Contributions to American Music takes you into the stories behind the songs, the artists and the venues that made Tulsa not only a musical hot spot but influenced social, cultural and political change in the city as well as the nation. There is Leon Russell and his contributions to rock and roll. There are the toe-tapping pioneers of Western Swing, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.

An epic, mesmerizing oral history of Hollywood and Los Angeles from the author of the contemporary classic Edie Jean Stein transformed the art of oral history in her groundbreaking book Edie: American Girl, an indelible portrait of Andy Warhol “superstar” Edie Sedgwick, which was edited...

New York City Blues: Postwar Portraits from Harlem to the Village and Beyond offers a deep dive into the blues venues and performers in the city from the 1940s through the 1990s. Interviews in this volume bring the listener behind the scenes of the daily and performing lives of working musicians, songwriters, and producers. The interviewers capture their voices—many sadly deceased—and reveal the changes in styles, the connections between performers, and the evolution of New York blues.

Doty Meets Coyote is an audio tapestry of traditional and original Native American stories from the American West told by master storyteller Thomas Doty. It is Thomas Doty's work as a storyteller not only to perpetuate the Old Time myths with integrity but to add new stories to the collective basket of folklore, just as tellers before him have done for centuries. Storytelling is an ancient tradition as well as a living art.

Even 150 years later, we are haunted by the Civil War---by its division, its bloodshed, and perhaps, above all, by its origins. Today, many believe that the war was fought over slavery. This answer satisfies our contemporary sense of justice, but as Gary W. Gallagher shows in this brilliant revisionist history, it is an anachronistic judgment.

Bob Dylan is many things to many people. Each Bob Dylan joins a collective cast that has made up his persona for more than 50 years. No version of Dylan turns out uncomplicated, but the postmillennial manifestation seems peculiarly contrary - a tireless and enterprising antiquarian; a creator of singular texts and sounds through promiscuous poaching; an artist of innovation and uncanny renewal. The collection of essays does justice to this difficult Bob Dylan by examining his method and effects through a disparate set of viewpoints.

In this lively and enlightening study, Kathleen B. Casey explores the ways in which the gender- and race-bending spectacles of vaudeville dramatized the economic, technological, social, and cultural upheaval that gripped the United States in the early 20th century. She focuses on four key performers: Eva Tanguay, Julian Eltinge, Lillyn Brown, and Sophie Tucker.

Only one performance style has dominated the lexicon of the casual moviegoer: "Method acting." The first reception-based analysis of film acting, Imagining the Method investigates how popular understandings of the so-called Method—what its author Justin Rawlins calls "methodness"—created an exclusive brand for white, male actors while associating such actors with rebellion and marginalization. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book maps the forces giving shape to methodness and policing its boundaries.

A Companion to Martin Scorsese is a comprehensive collection of original essays assessing the career of one of America's most prominent contemporary filmmakers....

An inspiring, revelatory exploration of the genesis and impact of the fabled Elephant 6 collective and the baffling exodus of its larger-than-life luminary, Neutral Milk Hotel frontman Jeff Mangum Years after its release, Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea remains one of the...

It is the story of the embrace of risk and substance. In so doing, Chris Jones makes the point that the theatre thrived by finally figuring out how to embrace the bold statement and insert itself into the national conversation - only to find out in 2016 that a hefty sector of the American public had not been listening to what it had to say. Chris Jones was in the theatres when and where it mattered.

How did the newspaper, music, and film industries go from raking in big bucks to scooping up digital dimes? Their customers were lured away by the free ride of technology. Now, business journalist Robert Levine shows how they can get back on track. On the Internet, “information wants to be...

Back in print after two decades, the story of Hollywood’s most exclusive hotel and its star-studded guest list Raymond Sarlot bought the Chateau Marmont in 1975, but what was originally a business purchase became a love affair as he delved into the hotel’s incredible history. From its perch...

A reissue of Sammy Davis Jr.’s 1965 autobiography, Yes I Can chronicles this entertainment icon’s rise to stardom, and his career-spanning pursuit of racial justice, with a new foreword by Questlove. “I had to prove I was somebody. And I knew the only way to do that was to show the world...

Music composed for television had, until recently, never been taken seriously by scholars or critics. Catchy TV themes, often for popular weekly series, were fondly remembered but not considered much more culturally significant than commercial jingles. Yet noted composers like John Williams, Henry Mancini, and Jerry Goldsmith learned and/or honed their craft in television before going on to major success in feature films.

Benjamin Franklin is renowned for his landmark inventions, including bifocals, the Franklin stove, and the lightning rod. Yet his own favorite invention is unknown to the general public. The glass armonica, the first musical instrument invented by an American, was constructed of stacked glass bowls and played by rubbing one's fingers on the rims. It was so popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries that Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, and Strauss composed for it. In Angelic Music, Corey Mead describes how Franklin's instrument fell out of popular favor.

Guthrie kept moving throughout his life, making friends, soaking up influences, and writing about his experiences. Along the way, he produced more than 3,000 songs, as well as fiction, journalism, poetry, and visual art, that gave voice to the distressed and dispossessed. In this insightful audiobook, Will Kaufman examines the artist’s career through a unique perspective: the role of time and place in Guthrie’s artistic evolution.

DESPRE AUDIOBOOK. Iată cum o cultură marginală, considerată încă "tânără“ după aproape 50 de ani de afirmare, inspiră o carte atât de bogată în informații. Ce-i drept, autorii au îndrăznit, iar îndrăzneala le-a fost răsplătită: fie că vorbim despre concertul lui Slick Rick din Roxbury, fie despre vizita la studioul RJam, aceștia au documentat fenomenul din interior, dezbrăcat de orice aparență sau prejudecată. Porniți într-o misiune eminamente imposibilă, autorii reușesc totuși să se apropie de esența rapului.

In Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams, Donald Bogle tells - for the first time - the story of a place both mythic and real: Black Hollywood. Spanning 60 years, this deliciously entertaining history uncovers the audacious manner in which many Blacks made a place for themselves in an industry that originally had no place for them. Through interviews and the personal recollections of Hollywood luminaries, Bogle pieces together a remarkable history that remains largely obscure to this day.

The Provincetown Players created a revolution in American theatre, making room for truly modern approaches to playwriting, stage production, and performance. In Staging America, Jeffery Kennedy gives the unabridged story in a meticulously researched and comprehensive narrative that sheds new light on the history of the Provincetown Players. At the center of the study is an extensive account of the career of George Cram Cook, the Players' leader and artistic conscience, as well as one of the most significant facilitators of modernist writing in early twentieth-century American literature.