If It Swings, It's Music

If It Swings, It's Music
Author: Gabe Baltazar
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2012-05-17
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0824865707

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Hawai‘i’s legendary jazz musician Gabe Baltazar Jr. has thrilled audiences since the late 1940s with his powerful and passionate playing. In this, the first book on his life and career, Gabe takes readers through the highs, lows, and in-betweens on the long road to becoming one of the very few Asian Americans who has achieved worldwide acclaim as a jazz artist. At a young age Gabe was encouraged by his father, an accomplished musician, to take up the clarinet and saxophone. As a teenager during World War II, Gabe performed with the Royal Hawaiian Band but spent his weekends playing in swing bands. After establishing himself in the West Coast jazz scene, in 1960 he rose to prominence as lead alto saxophonist of the Stan Kenton Orchestra. Following a four-year stint with Kenton, Gabe worked as a valued studio musician, recording with Dizzy Gillespie, Oliver Nelson, and James Moody, among others. In 1969 he returned to Honolulu and went on to become Hawai‘i’s premier jazz artist, a role he admirably fulfilled for over forty years. Even into his eighties, Gabe remained active in jazz education and performed regularly. Gabe’s memorable encounters with some of the greatest names in jazz and popular entertainment will delight music fans, while readers of Hawai‘i and Asian-American life-writing will find in this work a fond record of days past told with humor and heart.

Swing That Music

Swing That Music
Author: Louis Armstrong
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 1993-08-22
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780306805448

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The first autobiography of a jazz musician, Louis Armstrong's Swing That Music is a milestone in jazz literature. Armstrong wrote most of the biographical material, which is of a different nature and scope than that of his other, later autobiography, Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans (also published by Da Capo/Perseus Books Group). Satchmo covers in intimate detail Armstrong's life until his 1922 move to Chicago; but Swing That Music also covers his days on Chicago's South Side with ”King” Oliver, his courtship and marriage to Lil Hardin, his 1929 move to New York, the formation of his own band, his European tours, and his international success. One of the most earnest justifications ever written for the new style of music then called ”swing” but more broadly referred to as ”Jazz,” Swing That Music is a biography, a history, and an entertainment that really ”swings.”

The Lady Swings

The Lady Swings
Author: Dottie Dodgion
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 413
Release: 2021-03-29
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0252052471

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Dottie Dodgion is a jazz drummer who played with the best. A survivor, she lived an entire lifetime before she was seventeen. Undeterred by hardships she defied the odds and earned a seat as a woman in the exclusive men’s club of jazz. Her dues-paying path as a musician took her from early work with Charles Mingus to being hired by Benny Goodman at Basin Street East on her first day in New York. From there she broke new ground as a woman who played a “man’s instrument” in first-string, all-male New York City jazz bands. Her inspiring memoir talks frankly about her music and the challenges she faced, and shines a light into the jazz world of the 1960s and 1970s. Vivid and always entertaining, The Lady Swings tells Dottie Dodgion's story with the same verve and straight-ahead honesty that powered her playing. A Variety Best Music Book of 2021

Swing

Swing
Author: Kwame Alexander
Publisher: Clarion Books
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2018-10-02
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0310761875

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In this YA novel in verse from bestselling authors Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess (Solo), which Kirkus called “lively, moving, and heartfelt” in a starred review, Noah and Walt just want to leave their geek days behind and find “cool,” but in the process discover a lot about first loves, friendship, and embracing life . . . as well as why Black Lives Matter is so important for all. Best friends Noah and Walt are far from popular, but Walt is convinced junior year is their year, and he has a plan that includes wooing the girls of their dreams and becoming amazing athletes. Never mind he and Noah failed to make their baseball team yet again, and Noah’s crush since third grade, Sam, has him firmly in the friend zone. While Walt focuses on his program of jazz, podcasts, batting cages, and a “Hug Life” mentality, Noah feels stuck in status quo … until he stumbles on a stash of old love letters. Each one contains words Noah’s always wanted to say to Sam, and he begins secretly creating artwork using the lines that speak his heart. But when his art becomes public, Noah has a decision to make: continue his life in the dugout and possibly lose the girl forever, or take a swing and finally speak out. At the same time, American flags are being left around town. While some think it’s a harmless prank and others see it as a form of protest, Noah can’t shake the feeling something bigger is happening to his community. Especially after he witnesses events that hint divides and prejudices run deeper than he realized. As the personal and social tensions increase around them, Noah and Walt must decide what is really important when it comes to love, friendship, sacrifice, and fate. Swing: is written by New York Times bestselling author and Newbery Medal and Coretta Scott King Award-winner Kwame Alexander Features a diverse array of characters and perspectives tackles the biggest social issues of today, including racial prejudice and Black Lives Matter is perfect reading for the classroom or community-wide discussions is a 2020 YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers contains original artwork tied to the story If you enjoy Swing, check out Solo by Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess.

Swing, that Modern Sound

Swing, that Modern Sound
Author: Kenneth J. Bindas
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2001
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1578063825

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How America invented swing, how swing energized America. It was for stage bands, for dancing, and for a jiving mood of letting go. Throughout the nation swing resounded with the spirit of good times. The swing era was America's segue into modernity. But this pop genre, for a decade America's favorite, arose during the worst of times, the Great Depression. From its peak in the 1930s until bebop, rhythm and blues, and country swamped it after World War II, swing defined an American generation and measured America's musical heartbeat. In its heyday swing reached a mass audience of very disparate individuals and united them. They perceived in the tempers and tempos of swing the very definition of modernity. What fed the music? And, in turn, what did the music feed? What social structures encouraged swing's creation, acceptance, and popularity? This book analyzes the cultural and historical significance of swing and tells how and why swing achieved its audience, unified its fans, defined its generation, and, after World War II, fell into decline. As it examines the role of race, class, and gender in the creation of this music, this book tells how the genre came to symbolize the modernist revolution taking place in America. The author was associate professor of history at Kent State University, Trumbull Campus, in Warren, Ohio, and the author of "All of This Music Belongs to the Nation: The WPA's Federal Music Project and American Society, 1935-1939."

Swing Changes

Swing Changes
Author: David Ware Stowe
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 1994
Genre: Big band music
ISBN: 9780674858268

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Drawing on memoirs, oral histories, newspapers, magazines, recordings, photographs, literature, and films, Stowe looks at New Deal America through its music and shows us how the contradictions and tensions within swing--over race, politics, its own cultural status, the role of women--mirrored those played out in the larger society.

Swing, Swing, Swing

Swing, Swing, Swing
Author: Ross Firestone
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 536
Release: 1993
Genre: Band musicians
ISBN: 9780393311686

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Before Elvis and rock & roll, Benny Goodman--the King of Swing--ruled American popular music. In this intimate biography, Firestone illuminates Goodman's enormous impact on American music and culture, offering a mesmerizing, behind-the-scenes look at this complicated, difficult jazz superstar. Photos.

Electro Swing

Electro Swing
Author: Chris Inglis
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2023-03-31
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1000849627

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Electro swing is a relatively recent musical style and scene which combines the music of the swing era with that of the age of electronic dance music. Chris Inglis considers key questions about electro swing’s place in contemporary society, including what it may mean for a contemporary genre to be so reliant upon the influences of the past; the different ways in which jazz may be presented to a modern audience; how one may go about defining jazz in today's postmodern world; and how this emergent genre may be analysed in terms of the wider issues of race and class consumption.

The Uncrowned King of Swing

The Uncrowned King of Swing
Author: Jeffrey Magee
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2005-01-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0190282363

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If Benny Goodman was the "King of Swing," then Fletcher Henderson was the power behind the throne. Now Jeffrey Magee offers a fascinating account of Henderson's musical career, throwing new light on the emergence of modern jazz and the world that created it. Drawing on an unprecedented combination of sources, including sound recordings and hundreds of scores that have been available only since Goodman's death, Magee illuminates Henderson's musical output, from his early work as a New York bandleader, to his pivotal role in building the Kingdom of Swing. He shows how Henderson, standing at the forefront of the New York jazz scene during the 1920s and '30s, assembled the era's best musicians, simultaneously preserving jazz's distinctiveness and performing popular dance music that reached a wide audience. Magee reveals how, in Henderson's largely segregated musical world, black and white musicians worked together to establish jazz, how Henderson's style rose out of collaborations with many key players, how these players deftly combined improvised and written music, and how their work negotiated artistic and commercial impulses. Whether placing Henderson's life in the context of the Harlem Renaissance or describing how the savvy use of network radio made the Henderson-Goodman style a national standard, Jeffrey Magee brings to life a monumental musician who helped to shape an era. "An invaluable survey of Henderson's life and music." --Don Heckman, Los Angeles Times "Magee has written an important book, illuminating an era too often reduced to its most familiar names. Goodman might have been the King of Swing, but Henderson here emerges as that kingdom's chief architect." --Boston Globe "Excellent.... Jazz fans have waited 30 years for a trained musicologist...to evaluate Henderson's strengths and weaknesses and attempt to place him in the history of American music." --Will Friedwald, New York Sun

The Swing Era

The Swing Era
Author: Gunther Schuller
Publisher: History of Jazz
Total Pages: 948
Release: 1989
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780195071405

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Focuses on the period in American musical history from 1930 to 1945 when jazz was synonymous with America's popular music.