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In this star-studded autobiography, Clive Davis shares a personal, candid look into his remarkable life and the last fifty years of popular music as only a true insider can. Davis' career has spanned more than forty years, and he has discovered, signed, or worked with a staggering array of artists: Whitney Houston, Janis Joplin, Simon and Garfunkel, Barry Manilow, Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Dionne Warwick, Carlos Santana, The Grateful Dead, Alicia Keys,...
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The flowering of the Jazz Age is a tale of two great cities, Chicago and New York, and two extraordinary artists whose achievements spanned nearly three-quarters of a century. Louis Armstrong was a fatherless waif who grew up on the rough streets of New Orleans, developing his extraordinary gifts before moving to Chicago, where his transcendent sound inspired a new generation of musicians. Duke Ellington, raised in middle-class comfort, outgrew the...
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As the Depression dragged on, jazz came as close as it ever would to being America's popular music. Now it was often called swing, and, as this program illustrates, it became the defining music of a generation. Suddenly, jazz bandleaders were the new matinee idols, with Benny Goodman hailed as the "King of Swing," while teenagers jitterbugged just as hard to the music of his rivals: Tommy Dorsey, Jimmie Lunceford, Glenn Miller, and the mercurial Artie...
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The social tensions underlying America's postwar prosperity were reflected in the broken rhythms and dissonant melodies of bebop-and in the troubled life of Charlie Parker. Nicknamed "Bird," Parker demonstrated ideas and techniques as overwhelming for musicians of his generation as Louis Armstrong's had been a quarter-century before. But Parker wasn't the only bebop innovator. Dizzy Gillespie tried to popularize the new sound by adding showmanship...
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With signature songs like Dancing in the Street, Jimmy Mack, and Heat Wave, Martha Reeves was one of Motown’s singing icons at the peak of her career. In this program from Tony Brown's Journal, Reeves talks about how her life and her music have changed over the decades and discusses her influence on the world’s aspiring performers.
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The story of jazz begins in New Orleans, 19th-century America's most cosmopolitan city. Here, in the 1890s, African-American artists created a new music out of ragtime syncopations, Caribbean rhythms, marching band instrumentation, and the soulful feeling of the blues. This program introduces the pioneers of this revolutionary art form: half-mad cornet player Buddy Bolden, pianist Jelly Roll Morton, clarinet prodigy Sidney Bechet, trumpet virtuoso...
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Robert Pinsky, Poet Laureate of the United States for an unprecedented third term, finds his inspiration in common things, transforming the culturally unpoetic into masterpieces of verbal expression. In this program, Bill Moyers and Mr. Pinsky discuss topics including his love of the English language, the pervasive influence of history, and the flourishing of poetry on the Internet. Readings by Mr. Pinsky feature "ABC," "Ginza Samba," "Poem with Refrains,"...
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The word "prodigy" might have been coined expressly for Wynton Marsalis, who won Grammy Awards for both jazz and classical music at the age of 22. This stylishly produced program opens at Wynton's studio in New York City, where he talks about his philosophy, his compositional methods, and his laid-back yet demanding approach to working with other musicians. Halfway through, the program shifts to his swinging hometown of New Orleans, where he reflects...
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This program showcases the work of New York post-modern choreographer John Jasperse. "When Jasperse makes a new work, it should be seen: end of story," says Claudia La Rocca of The New York Times. The program features excerpts from Jasperse's latest work Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat Out Lies which was recorded in 2010 at the Joyce Theater in New York. The work, co-commissioned by The Joyce Theater and the Forsythe Company is...
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With farms and factories falling victim to the Great Depression, jazz was one of the few American industries poised for explosive growth. This program explores the art form during the first half of the decade, a period in which New York City usurped Chicago as America's jazz capital, Louis Armstrong revolutionized Broadway song craft, and Chick Webb forged his big-band sound at the Savoy Ballroom. Viewers also learn of pianists Fats Waller and Art...
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"This meditation on cinema's past from Decasia director Bill Morrison pieces together the bizarre true history of a long-lost collection of 533 nitrate film prints from the early 1900s. Located just south of the Arctic Circle, Dawson City was settled in 1896 and became the center of the Canadian Gold Rush that brough 100,000 prospectors to the area. It was also the final stop for a distribution chain that sent prints and newsreels to the Yukon. The...
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In the world of antiques, sheet music is classified under the category of "ephemera," which are printed or paper items that were originally expected to have only a short-term usefulness or popularity . Vintage sheet music has two natures. The basic function is to pass along the musical ideas of a composer the actual transcription of a piece or solo. A secondary feature, and the main one for collectors, is the visual impact of the cover. Sheet music...
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From the Publisher: Here is the first major survey of Broadway musical theatre stars, telling the life stories of 40 stage luminaries from Al Jolson, Fanny Brice and Gwen Verdon, to Nathan Lane, Patti Lupone and Audra McDonald. Author Robert Viagas describes each star's most important stage roles as well as the triumphant, tragic, inspiring, and cautionary tales of how they achieved-and maintained-their status as top Broadway stars.