Books — All Formats  

A pretty well-done look at the effect of recording technology on music in the 20th century – with an especially strong focus on the way that classical has been shaped by the evolution in sound! Author Arved Ashby definitely writes here from an academic perspective, but has a way of making the information really come alive – even if, like us, you don't have a great understanding of the artists and works involved – but have an ear that's been trained on a lifetime's worth of records! There's plenty of pop reference points too – crucial to an understanding of the way that technical shifts impacted all sorts of music – and the book features a huge section of notes at the back as well. 316 pages, softcover.

Amazing work from the great Roy Crane – one of the most important newspaper strip artists of the 20th Century! The book features the initial few years of Buz Sawyer – a new project that Crane did for William Randolph Hearst after leaving behind his very successful Wash Tubbs & Captain Easy strip – and the volume features beautiful black and white reproductions of over two years' worth of daily strips, plus cool color fold-out pages of Sunday pages as well! Crane's penmanship is amazing – tight, yet full of feeling and energy – and definitely at a level that wins him comparisons to Milt Caniff, Alex Raymond, and other contemporary greats. Over 206 pages, and very nicely done!

Tony Fletcher's impressive, sprawling look at the street music fom New York – one that covers the heart of the 20th century! Fletcher has penned the kind of far-reaching tome hear that truly commands respect – covering 50 years of NYC music from the early days of 78s to the punk & disco 70s vinyl – covering jazz, Tin Pin Alley songwriting, Broadway, boogie, mambo, glam rock and everything in between. Paperback, 476 pages.

The story of the Creole Band – the 7-piece group that took to touring the US in the 1910s – and thusly introduced a lot of people to the pioneering strains of New Orleans-style jazz to heck of a lot people for the very first time – and planting seeds for much of the jazz music to come! Author Lawrence Gushee details how the band's runs through the vaudeville circuit brought pivotal, early instrumental jazz styles to much wider audiences than ever before. As widely known as it is that early 20th Century New Orleans style music paved the way for jazz, it's pretty remarkable to read how important this one group was to the entire culture!

The history of Harlem in the 20th Century – told through a wealth of vintage images and newspaper snippets – all laid out beautifully to present a vivid portrait of this uniquely American community! The subject matter varies a lot, especially as the years go by – and by taking straight snippets from the press, Allon Schoener manages to present Harlem's history through a shifting set of lenses – portrayals of the community that change greatly over the space of decades – showing a growing voice and empowered sense of identity, even as struggles increase and get more mainstream attention. The oversize book is softcover, 258 pages, and has almost as many vintage images as it does text!

Yeah, THIS is the Nick Tosches we want! Tosches has a way of chronicling the diseased, mobbed up underbelly of the 20th Century music rackets that's simply unrivaled – it's gut level brilliant and street smart writing like no one does anymore. Save The Last Dance For Satan is a more fleshed out and newly spun continuation of material published more than a decade ago as Hipsters And Hoodlums in Vanity Fair (boy, mainstream magazine content sure has changed a bunch since 2000) – chronicling the sleaze and criminality at the core of the 50s & 60s music biz. It's great! His best stuff has often read with the sweaty, intoxicating allure of seedy pulp storytelling, so it's with the utmost pleasure to see his work put out by Kicks Books - which literally puts Tosches' work in just that kind of old school hip pocket paperback! He joins Andre Williams (whose "Jailbait" single is mentioned early in this book as the badass antidote to mid 50s candy-coated rock & roll that it most certainly was) and Sun Ra at Kicks. A couple of Tosches' more recent books have been a tough slog – more about his own near obsessive search for impossibly hidden subjects than anything else – but this slim 120 page tome is the opposite – it has us slobbering for more!

The amazing story of Ahmet Ertegun – the driving force behind Atlantic Records, and a crucial figure in popular music in the 20th Century! Ahmet's story is the stuff of legend – and this book delivers the whole thing in stunning detail – from Ertegun's early years as the child of the Turkish ambassador, to his adolescent love of jazz and blues, to his launching Atlantic with his brother – initially to dominate the field of rhythm and blues, then jazz and soul, then even mainstream rock and roll! The hefty book is over 400 pages in length, and features a handful of black and white images too.

A beautiful book on five key forces in American advertising of the 20th Century – and one with an especially strong focus on the important work of the Mad Men generation! The lavish book is filled with full color images, printed on heavy paper in an oversized format – and interspersed with details on the careers of each of the five ad men named in the title – Leo Burnett, David Ogilvy, Marcel Bleustein Blanchet, Bill Bernbach, and Albert Lasker – each given their own section in the book, laid out to show an aesthetic progression up through the 70s. The presentation is wonderful – like finding a pile of old magazines to pore through, and about the same size as well – and the full color book is 140 pages, with heavy stock paperback covers.

The Science Fiction Poetry of Sun Ra – complete and unabidged – in a great, kinda old school hip pocket paperback-styled tome from Kicks Books! As revered as Sun Ra is, was, and will forever be as one of the great avant garde bandleaders and all around musical innovators of the 20th Century, his work as an Afro-futurist poet is overlooked. This book aims to change that, but not in a precious way at all. It's sort of presented as a fun little pulp paperback. Includes a nice forward by Amiri Baraka and an intro by science fiction historian Bhob Stewart, who does a terrific job of detailing Ra's 60s poetry and his quite genuine relevence in that realm! Paperback, 124 pages.

Finally – a chance for American listeners to get a look into the life of Serge Gainsbourg – served up here in a massive biography on one of the greatest singer/songwriters of the 20th Century! The book is way more than we could have hoped for – not a sensational fluff piece on Serge, as has been written in the past overseas – but a really thoughtful, well-researched culled from extensive interviews with a huge number of Gainsbourg's contemporaries! The book features loads of lyrical translations, a few black and white photos, and most importantly, almost 600 pages of great biographical details.