Examines the history of hip-hop and rap, noting its beginning in 1970s New York, how it gained in popularity over the decades, and its rise to global sensation in the twenty-first century.

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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Presents the history of rock 'n' roll music in ten songs recorded between 1956 and 2008. Explores the background of each song, and its impact on the music world.

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....

Presents a history of R&B music in the United States, profiles the genre's most notable past and present stars, and features song and album suggestions.

"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...

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...

"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....

Presents the history of hip-hop including, how it evolved from folktales, spirituals, and poetry, to the showmanship of James Brown, to the culture of graffiti art and breakdancing that formed around the art form.

"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...