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Enrich your holiday celebrations as you discover the incredible stories and the inspiration behind the Christmas songs you know and love.
Jingle Bells Mary
Did You Know?
The First Noel
O Holy Night
Silver Bells
White Christmas
The songs that you've sung since you were a child continue to bring Christmas to life each year. Now, you'll learn how your favorite Christmas songs came to be. Stories
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"Alice Randall, award-winning professor, songwriter, and author with a "lively, engaging, and often wise" (The New York Times Book Review) voice, offers a lyrical, introspective, and unforgettable account of her past and her search for the first family of Black country music. Country music had brought Randall and her activist mother together and even gave Randall a singular distinction in American music history: she is the first Black woman to cowrite...
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"There is no shortage of ways to describe Taylor Swift. Singer-songwriter. Trailblazer. Mastermind. The Beatles of her generation. From her genre-busting rise in country music as a teen to the economic juggernaut that is the Eras Tour, she has blazed a path that is uniquely hers. But, how exactly, has she managed to scale her success-multiple times-while dominating an industry that cycles through artists and stars as if they were fashion trends? How...
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Embark on a complex and inspiring journey through the last 101 years as told through some of the most memorable hits and the artists behind them. Noah Lefevre, creator of Polyphonic, explores how our favorite music does more than entertain. From Aretha Franklin carving out her own space in what had been considered a man's world by reworking the chauvinistic lyrics to the 1967's hit “Respect,” to Doja Cat's successful backlash against toxic fans...
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Believing that every great song has a fascinating backstory, Myers brings to life five decades of music through oral histories of forty-five transformative songs woven from interviews with the artists who created them.From "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" by Lloyd Price to "Losing my religion" by R.E.M., leading artists reveal the emotions, inspirations, and techniques behind their influential works. The result is a love letter to the songs that have defined generations....
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Memphis means music. That relationship was solidified in 1909 when W. C. Handy wrote the song �Mr. Crump� and later published it as the �Memphis Blues.� As Handy�s songs were sung and played in streets and music halls, a spotlight began to shine on a new mecca for innovation in music�Memphis, Tennessee. Memphis Music: Before the Blues surveys the people, music, and events that contributed to the rich musical life that emerged against the...
12) Country music
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The rich and colorful story of America's most popular music and the singers and songwriters who captivated, entertained, and consoled listeners throughout the 20th century--based on the upcoming eight-part film series to air on PBS in September 2019
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"Few things frightened conservative white Protestant parents of the 1950s and the 1960s more than the thought of their children falling prey to the "menace to Christendom" known as rock and roll. The raucous sounds seemed tailor-made to destroy the faith of their young and, in the process, undermine the moral foundations of the United States. Parents and pastors launched a crusade against rock music, but they were fighting an uphill battle. Salvation...
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While on a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, journalist and novelist Paul Hemphill wrote of that pivotal moment in the late sixties when traditional defenders of the hillbilly roots of country music were confronted by the new influences and business realities of pop music. The demimonde of the traditional Nashville venues (Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, Robert's Western World, and the Ryman Auditorium) and first-wave artists (Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, and Lefty...
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Ed Ward covers the first half of the history of rock & roll in this sweeping and definitive narrative—from the 1920s, when the music of rambling medicine shows mingled with the songs of vaudeville and minstrel acts to create the very early sounds of country and rhythm and blues, to the rise of the first independent record labels post-World War II, and concluding in December 1963, just as an immense change in the airwaves took hold and the
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"The greatest popular songs, whether it's Aretha Franklin singing "Respect" or Bob Dylan performing "Blind Willie McTell," have a way of embedding themselves in our memories. You remember a time and a place and a feeling when you hear that song again. In Holding the Note, David Remnick writes about the lives and work of some of the greatest musicians, songwriters, and performers of the past fifty years"-- Provided by publisher.
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"In a dim clearing off a county road in Kentucky sits a sagging outdoor stage buried in moss and dead leaves. It used to be the centerpiece of carnival-like Sunday afternoons where local guitarists, fiddlers and mandolin players hammered out old mountain ballads while legends from the dawn of country music performed their classic hits. Most of the musicians who showed up have long since passed, but Nashville stars Ricky Skaggs and Marty Stuart survive....
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Jazz is a uniquely American art form, one of America's great contributions to not only musical culture, but world culture, with each generation of musicians applying new levels of creativity that take the music in unexpected directions that defy definition, category, and stagnation. Now you can learn the basics and history of this intoxicating genre in an eight-lecture series that is as free-flowing and original as the art form itself. You'll follow
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"The essential oral history of hip-hop, from its origins on the playgrounds of the Bronx to its reign as the most powerful force in pop culture--from the award-winning journalist behind All the Pieces Matter, the New York Times bestselling oral history of The Wire. The music that we would later know as hip-hop was born at a party in the Bronx in the summer of 1973. Now, fifty years later, it's the most popular genre in America and its electric impact...
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"Voices isn't just illuminating and thought–provoking and clever; it is exciting." —Roddy Doyle, author of The Commitments
A personal exploration of what singing means and how it works, Voices is a book about our deepest, most telling relationships with music. Nick Coleman examines the act of singing not as a performance, but as a close, difficult moment of hopeful connection. What does it do to us, emotionally...
A personal exploration of what singing means and how it works, Voices is a book about our deepest, most telling relationships with music. Nick Coleman examines the act of singing not as a performance, but as a close, difficult moment of hopeful connection. What does it do to us, emotionally...