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An anthology of hip hop art & graphics compiled by designer Cey Adams – from street art, to snapshots of the NYC underground from the end of the 60s through the 80s, pivotal album cover art, hip hop in the worlds of advertising and film, fashion and more! Loads of classic hip hop imagery, iconography, art and design! Includes a forward by Russell Simmons and an intro by Bill Adler. Paperback, 187 pages.

A great overview of exotic music in all its forms – not just the familiar American variant of the postwar years, but also a strong look at Italian exotica too! The book was originally penned in Italian, and has a good ear for the kind of unusual soundtrack and sound library material that always get us going – but also brings those recordings into context with larger strands of exotica, both vocal and instrumental. There's plenty here to please soundtrack, jazz, and vocal fans too – and the book even features some listening suggestions at the end. 361 pages, softcover.

The All Music Guide Required Listening collection of essential classic rock – featuring 1000 album reviews from the excellent All Music Guide reviewers – from the uber-legendary likes of Dylan, Springsteen, The Beatles, Hendrix and the like – to just as important and less mainstream celebrated greats like The Move, The Pretty Things, Grin, Tommy Bolin and so many more! Paperback, 271 pages.

A guide to essential Old School Rap & Hip Hop from team at the indespensible All Music Guide – featuring more than 500 music reviews of important records by Grandmaster Flash, Run-DMC, NWA, Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, Public Enemy and so much more – plus reviews on soul and funk LPs that were instrumental in the creation of hip hop, from ESG, The Emotions, Gil Scott-Heron, Marva Whitney and many more! The book is divided into 2 parts, The Roots Of Rap and Digging In The Crates, and organized alphabetically. Paperback, 166 pages, with several reviews per page.

The massive All Music Guide To Rock – The Definitive Guide To Rock, Pop And Soul (3rd Edition) – featuring reviews of thousands and thousands albums as rated and reviewed by the exceptional All Music Guide writers! The book is an encyclopedia of pop music from the 50s to the early 00s – and an very, very good one – we find the All Music Guide an indispensable reference around here, and this is a great one to have on the shelf! 14,000 reviews of albums by more than 2000 artists. Amazing! Paperback, 1399 pages.

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.

The Beach Boys – day by day, year by year, presented in a very compelling diary format that really gets past some of the overblown mythos about the group! Author Badman goes for a "just the facts" sort of approach – and lists key days in the group's career from the 60s onward – with most of the details given to important stretches before 1970, but some key information from later decades too. Each entry is dated, with specific information on what the Beach Boys were involved in on that day – recording, rehearsing, touring, etc – with a surprising amount of vintage photos and other bits to support the text. Perhaps most compelling is the book's frequent use of Musicians Union sheets for recording sessions – listing session players and their details (including, oddly, social security numbers!) – which really helps illuminate the way that the records were being made. 399 pages, softcover, with black and white images.

A treasure trove of 50s romance comics – brought together in a great-looking package, with helpful framing from author Michael Barson! The core material is great – way more than the soppy romance stories you might think – and instead some really compelling work that really gets at the worries and anxieties of America in the post-war years. Sure, there's certainly tales of gals looking for love in all the wrong places – but you'd also be amazed at how much of this stuff offers up a larger comment on society as well – penned with surprisingly thoughtful prose, and illustrated with relatively mature images too. If we had one complaint, it would be that Barson doesn't give us enough detail about the artists and writers of the material – but that's only because the whole thing's so beautiful, we want to know more! 208 pages, softcover, in full color.

A great look at the never-ending genius of the legendary Steve Ditko – one of the greatest comic book artists of all time, and someone who's given us decades of enjoyment! This beautiful oversized book is a great companion to all the vintage Ditko material that's been reissued in recent years – and features a brilliantly-illustrated bio of Steve – with loads of images from his work at Marvel, Charlton, DC, Warren, and on his own – plus a key look at the influence of Ayn Rand on Ditko's images and ideas. A very hefty book, filled with color images – hardcover, and oversized!

A cool little book that's partly an introduction to jazz – but more like a cool collection of sidebars from longer articles – offering up interesting slices that really help you understand the music! The book is roughly chronological, but served up with lots of images and smaller text pieces – sometimes a focus on a specific artist, sometimes a smaller genre – often with additional notes off to the side that help illuminate things! The volume is unusual, but surprisingly helpful too – and even offers up some recommendations for CD listening as well. 276 pages, with color and black and white images.

The life of Billie Holliday! Billie is one of the most fascinating singers in American musical history, both for her beautiful, amazing voice and for the life she led. Even the story behind this book about her life is fascinating! In the 70s, Billie Holliday was interviewed extensively for an intended biography by Linda Keuel, but she passed away in 1978 before her book about Billie could come out. Author Jula Blackburn mined the audio recordings of those interviews for this one – a biography that highlights Billie's strength and encourage. Paperback, 354 pages

A great look at one of the more modern sides of our fair city – a beautiful book that focuses on the Lake Shore Drive apartments of architect Mies Van Der Rohe! Mies had a huge influence on the city's look in the postwar years – and some of his most striking creations are a set of apartment buildings at the cusp of Lake Shore as it hugs the shore of Lake Michigan – beautifully modern buildings that still have a tremendous sense of form, style, and purpose all these many years later – captured here in an array of well-done black and white photographs that showcase the buildings inside and out. The book offers shots both inside and out, as well as architectural plans and other images too – and also features notes in German and English. 90 pages, hardcover, and done with a sharp sense of style!

A heavy-duty, lavishly-illustrated ode to the art of Louis Armstrong! It's not a biography – but a beautiful, 250+ page collection of photographs, movie stills, Satchmo's own hand-written letters, collage art and more! It's been put together by Steven Brower, with a forward by Hilton Als – and it's a wonderful tribute to Armstrong – and a very unique, personal look at his life and career. It's been compiled from tape-box collages, scrapbooks, photographs, manuscripts, and other archived materials from the Louis Armstrong House Museum, at Queens College – and what a treasure trove this is!

A range of essays on the music, influence, and cultural significance of the late John Coltrane – easily one of the key forces to have shaped our taste here at Dusty Groove! The book offers a number of differing perspectives, some with an academic tone, some a bit more political – and overall, the writings definitely live up to the spirit promised in the title! Articles include "A Look At Late John Coltrane" by Salim Washington, "When Bar Walkers Preach" by Tommy Lott, "Freedom Is A Constant Struggle" by Tammy Kernodle, "John Coltrane As The Personification Of Spirituality In Black Music" by Anthony Brown, "In His Own Words – Coltrane's Responses To Critics" by Leonard L Brown, "John Coltrane & The Practice Of Freedom" by Herman Gray, and a few interviews with Billy Taylor, Yusef Lateef, and Olly Wilson – and a special coda, "George Russell on John Coltrane". 235 pages, paperback.

Author Mick Brown chronicles the fascinating, tragic world of the Phil Spector – the most fascinating figure in American pop music history – thanks to both his unrivaled genius and artistry, his fabled reclusiveness and ultimately, real life crime noir tragedy. From his epic work with the Ronettes, the Righteous Brothers, The Beatles, The Ramones and the many less iconic artists, to the recluse years and the bizarre shooting in his home, this is richly researched, very well done bio by Brown. Engrossing and briskly readable, even as a fairly hefty girth, Hardcover, more than 500 pages.

An absorbing biography of one legendary French singer Edith Piaf – one of the most alluring voices of the past century – and superbly written by Carolyn Burke! Edith Piaf lived as fascinating of a life as any international icon we can think of – musical or otherwise – and Burke does a terrific job of of telling her story in a way that chronicles her artisty on a deeper level. There's no way to tell the Piaf story without covering the more sensational aspects of it – but we're just as enthusiastic to read about her vocal and lyrical craft. Burke manages to make the story of Piaf the artist and it's a very, very engrossing one at that!

Charles Burns in a beautiful format – an oversized, nicely-bound edition that makes his work here feel like the glory days of Raw Comics! The story is quite dark – the first chapter of a new story line from Burns – and the images have this really unsettling way of turning a corner just when you least expect it – sometimes without telegraphing their shift – thanks partly to that retro aesthetic that's used throughout. Oversized, full color, and with a great hardcover jacket!

Somebody's finally gone out and written a book about one subject we can really get behind – the Record Store – and not only that, they've done a beautiful job with the entire package too! The book takes a look at the importance of the record store – not just historically, but culturally as well – with an especially important focus on the need for stores in the digital age, as a way of keeping both the music, and interest in the music, alive and well for generations to come! As you might guess from the subtitle, authors Calamar and Gallo have a bit of an agenda in their portrait – but they really pave the way with some great recollections of record stores past, incredible bits not just from folks who owned and worked in stores, but also from famous shoppers, artists, and collectors too. And even cooler, the book is filled with lots of great photographs – wonderful images of old stores in color and black and white, plus lots of great sidebar bits that help draw a focus on key issues in record retail. If you, like us, get a bit of a rush every time you walk into a record store, then you'll be sure to get an equal rush from this book – a wonderful tome that's one we can send home to our parents, and finally show them we've got a career worth a bit of respect! 238 pages, hardcover, and really beautifully done.

Amazing images from the Santeria underground in contemporary Cuba – the rich spiritual culture that's persisted for decades – and, if anything, has gotten only stronger through a rich network of local practice and dedicated spirituality! The photographs here are all in brilliant black and white – shot both behind the scenes, and at public festivals – and accompanied by notes and writing in both English and Spanish. The oversized book is 158 pages, with very good paper stock – a heavy coffee-table tome on the topic!

Urban radio from the inside – the third volume in Marcus Chapman's very detailed memoirs – covering his important late 90s years at Chicago's WGCI! Unlike other books of this nature, which are usually just history – and ancient history at that – Chapman's volume really digs deep, not just into specifics of life in the radio business, but in the music business in general – with many very personal stories, and a fair bit of editorializing as well! The detail that Chapman uses is wonderful – really recreating this key period in urban radio in ways we might not have expected – and usually with a level of class and consideration that goes way past the sexy image on the cover. 283 pages, softcover.

One of the most heartbreaking stories we've ever read from Daniel Clowes – penned with a sense of pathos we never would have expected during his Ghost World years! The book has a great format – long sideways, like a newspaper comic strip – and Clowes' pages alternate between panel narratives and rectangular close ups – all delivered in vivid color, and that increasingly tight line he's been using in later years. The whole thing's as striking as the cover – and the book is 78 pages, full color, and hardcover.

A unique account of the oft-told history of Chess Records by author Rich Cohen – focusing on the business acumen the the Chess Brothers, and the brazen approach that brought the music of juke joints to the mainstream. Cohen doesn't pull any punches when it comes to the exploitational side of the Chess story, telling the story of the Chess Brothers and the artists that changed music forever, with a focus on the facsinating and complicated business behind it. Hardcover, 220 pages.

A heavily detailed story of the great Nina Simone – her really unique place in music and American society – with a strong focus on the boundaries she broke and bridges she burned! Author Nadine Cohodas wrote a previous book on Dinah Washington, and does an even better job here with Simone – really laying out the complexity of the woman and her music, but in ways that never over-sensationalize any of the key historical details either. There's a pacing here that really shows Nina's strong commitment over the years – and the heavy notes in the back show that Cohodas really did her research. 448 pages, hardcover, with black and white images.

Amazing images from the universe of Sun Ra – a mixture of rare photographs and mural images painted by Aye Aton – sometime percussionist with the Arkestra, and a heck of a great painter too! The book begins with these stunning full color photographs of Ra on the set of Space Is The Place – images from 1972 that echo the cover of the album of the same name, but which feature a costumed Ra in a number of different settings – including a few parking lot shots that make him look like a true visitor from the cosmos, briefly walking on our planet! The bigger second half of the book features photographs of murals painted by Aton (who's also known as Robert Underwood) – all of them spacey and trippy, and in a similar spirit to the Saturn Records album covers – except these were all painted on walls and ceilings, in very vivid colors. Aye painted many images in the Arkestra commune in Philly – and other paintings appear to be from the south side of Chicago – and all work here is seen by the wider public for the first time ever. Archivist John Corbett provides an essay with the book to situate the work – and the whole thing's a vivid visual treat for any fan of Sun Ra!

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!

One of the first great adventure strips of the 30s – presented here in a beautiful oversize volume! Roy Crane's artwork on Captain Easy is tremendous – a magnificently thin line at times, yet full of rich feeling that's augmented by the coloring of the strip – often almost water-color like, with echoes of Frank King's Sunday strips – and set up in these really inventive panel breakdowns that really shift from the usual grid style of the time! The blend almost makes the whole thing feel like an action-based take on the Sunday page style of Gasoline Alley or Polly & Her Pals from the 20s – with all the wonderful images and over-the-top graphic quality that might imply. 128 pages, full color, and in these cool heavy cardboard covers!

One of the first great adventure strips of the 30s – presented here in a beautiful oversize volume! Roy Crane's artwork on Captain Easy is tremendous – a magnificently thin line at times, yet full of rich feeling that's augmented by the coloring of the strip – often almost water-color like, with echoes of Frank King's Sunday strips – and set up in these really inventive panel breakdowns that really shift from the usual grid style of the time! The blend almost makes the whole thing feel like an action-based take on the Sunday page style of Gasoline Alley or Polly & Her Pals from the 20s – with all the wonderful images and over-the-top graphic quality that might imply. 140 pages, full color, and in these cool heavy cardboard covers!

A chronicle of African American Singing & Praying Bands in Maryland and Delaware – stirring spiritual music with roots in the Chesapeak Bay of the nineteenth century – and still thrives! It includes the first-person histories of the singers, players and prayers, musical annotion and photos. Text by Jonathan C David and some great b&w photography by Richard Holloway. Paperback, 231 pages. Comes with a CD of field recordings, too – audio snapshots of hymns, prayers, praise and services.

A wonderful memoir from the glory days of the Italian soundtrack scene – penned by Franco De Gemini (aka "The Man With The Harmonica"), and filled with loads of color photos and images of albums! Franco's memoirs are often quite personal – at a level that sheds tremendous new light into the workings of the Italian scene back in these days, and filled with loads of great asides and stories that are as compelling as the historical details themselves. The book is heavy on text, but features many images in color – including a huge section in the back that offers cover images for dozens of classic albums on the Beat label! CD features 19 of the funkiest, grooviest tracks ever from Beat – titles by Armando Trovajoli, Franco Micalizzi, Alessandro Alessandroni, Roberto Pregadio, and many others – and the book is over 200 pages, softcover, and very nicely done! (Note: This is a second edition of the book From Beat To Beat – reprinted with a new title, and 24 more pages of material.)

Just in case you thought all the backstage and tour bus action in the 70s was exaggerated, Pamela Des Barres comes along to show you that things were even wilder than you thought! The book is maybe a bit more freewheeling than some of her other volumes – as Pamela brings together stories from other groupies of her generation – told in their own words, but reworked a bit to really give them punch – in this volume filled with dirty details from the likes of Cherry Vanilla, Gail Zappa, Cynthia Plaster Caster, Dee Dee Keel, Cassandra Peterson, and other legendary names from the backroom! Maybe the most gossipy book the Chicago Review Press has ever released – and almost 400 pages in length.

Vintage images from Japanese movie posters – almost all of them hand-painted for the local market, and quite different than more famous images that circulated worldwide! The work here often has a warm, painterly quality – which really personalizes the presentation of the films, especially given the lack of English language on the posters. Films featured are both American and Japanese movies – and while the book is especially heavy on work from the 50s and 60s, there's a few images from other years as well. Full color, paperback, and 96 pages in all.

The remarkable story behind one greatest and most successful soul albums of all time – Aretha Franklin's I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You – the deepest account on the making of the album we've ever come across! Author Matt Doblin tells the story with loads of fresh interviews, including producer Jerry Wexler, some of the Muscle Shoals session players and others in Aretha's crew of musician, providing a rich backstory on a monumental moment in modern music. Paperback, 256 pages.

Cultural historian Alice Echols explores the massive shifts in American culture during and as impacted by the disco era – not only in fashion and record sales – but the racial, sexual and behavioral landscape at large! Echols is a biographer and historian, but she's also former disco deejay, with insights both academic and deeper felt. The book is smartly and exaustively researched, but is more importantly accessibly readable. Hardcover, 338 pages.

We love The Creation, but never knew their full story until now – a really compelling tale that not only gets at the greatness of their music in the 60s, but which also explains why they never reached the sort of fame they deserved! The story here is incredibly detailed – not just fan fluff pulled from vintage music mags, but well-researched information, fleshed out by surviving group members, producers, and key contemporaries and later influences too – plenty of details that will have you going back to your Creation records and hearing them all over again in a very different light! The book is almost 400 pages, with some black and white photos, and a helpful discography at the back.

Tough, dirty and stylish late 50s short stories by the great Harlan Ellison – who would go on to be hailed as one of great science fiction and suspense writers in print, film and television – but working here as a very young man, under pseudonyms, on seedy crime and pulp stories! It's gritty, yet charmingly trashy stuff – with story titles that let you know what you're in for here – including Dead Wives Don't Cheat, God Bless The Ugly Virgin, Gang Girl, Portrait Of The Artist As A Zilch Writer, An Episode Of Sunbathers and more. A treasure trove, rescued from pulp obscurity by Kick Books! Paperback, 174 pages.

Amazing early work from Bill Everett – easily one of our favorite artistic talents of the Golden Age – famous for creating Sub Mariner, but seen here in a host of other rare work that's never been collected before! Everett's name was associated with Marvel/Timely for decades – but the work here was done for the competing Hillman and Centaur imprints – often with a sense of darkness that's really wonderful – that kind of un-fixed approach to comic art that can make some early Golden Age work so startling, even after all these years. Everett was a hell of a drafstman, even at this early point – and many of the stories have these slightly creepy vibes that come through in both the art and rough stories – similar to Bill's brilliance on Sub Mariner at the start, but different too. The book is mostly in color, and features a bit of additional text – 238 pages, hardcover, and mighty nice!

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.

Kim Fowley, an author? Stranger things have happened – and given Fowley's penchant for putting his finger in just about every pie that came within reach, the whole thing's no surprise at all! The book is a stunning account of Fowley's important years in the music business – working in the sometimes lowest reaches of the LA scene, yet sometimes hitting the highest heights too – all told in really interesting detail, with a pacing that's completely unique! At lots of points, it kind of feels like Kim's telling you the story of his life over a few dozen drinks at the bar – with all the tangents you might expect – but at other times, there's this lucidity that's right in line with the Fowley genius in the studio – that way of being and going crazy while still holding all your cool – summed up perfectly in these few lines near the end of the book: "Well this is my version of what happened to me. I don't know if it really happened or not, but I think it did. I'm holding back a lot of stuff because it's too overwhelming in its darkness and it would be a sad read."

If you liked the first volume of this essential book, you'll love this revised edition – because it's almost 3 times bigger, and stuffed with great new features! The book's a lifetime labor of love for Freddy Fresh – an extensive discography that's got to be the most definitive book on early hip hop we've ever seen! The vintage of the titles listed in the book is 1979 to 1994 – and as Freddy says in the preface, there's a few records listed that may fall outside the rap genre or that time span, including some disco and electro numbers – but that's okay by us! The book's got tons of label scans – plus entries listed alphabetically by label and then in order by catalog number – and this exhaustive project reads like your dream want-list for years and years to come. Plus, in addition to the label and record listings, there's appendices with old school flyer scans, top picks from DJs and producers all over the globe, lists of resources for finding records and Freddy's own personal lists for records, including his "5 star" rated records, and songs and singles arranged by topic. An absolute must-have for any die hard fan of hip hop! Revised edition is 3 times bigger than the first one – 740 pages, with over 1500 new photos, and also features an updated section on bootlegs vs originals, New York City record store photos, info on overseas labels, an Ebay auction guide, a comprehensive cross-index, and lots more great bits.

A cool German book with a great sense of global street culture – photos from around the world, brought together with a National Geographic brand, but much grittier than anything we ever remember seeing in the magazine! The hefty tome is almost 400 pages, in full color, and is filled with images of global graffiti, underground art, skateboard culture, gang symbols, street festivals, t-shirts, and many other modes of expression – more than enough to save you an around the world trip to view local street culture. Notes are in German, but the book is mostly photos – and those are all pretty darn great!

A remarkable collection of a half century of writings on James Brown – from a Variety piece way back in 1959 up to a Rolling Stone profile from 2006 – edited by Nelson George & Alan Leeds and featuring work items from trades, newspaper and magazine profiles, select liner notes and much more! It's an impressive presentation with diverse voices, from cultural watchdogs such as Chuck D and Robert Christgau, and an impressive variety of sources all around and throughout the decades. Paperback, 318 pages.

A much-needed second volume of Vinyl Lives – especially since they left Dusty Groove out of the first book! This time, they correct their mistake with a nice long look at our store – plus other chapters in equally important record retailers – including Jerry's in Pittsburgh, Criminal in Atlanta, Electric Fetus in Minneapolis, and Leopold's in Berkeley! We're mighty happy to be in such illustrious company – and the book also features a few other stores, plus interviews with key collectors – really nice words from folks who really take their vinyl seriously. Book is 252 pages, softcover.

A beautiful collection of early 30s newspaper strips penned by Floyd Gottfredson – early daily comics starring Mickey Mouse, but offering up a very different version of the character than on the screen! The format does a great job of tying Mickey to some of the other comic stars of the time – and as many of these strips are in a longer-form narrative mode, with as much adventure as humor, there's more parallels here to strips like The Gumps, Gasoline Alley, and Thimble Theater than you might expect. Gottfredson's line work is wonderful – clean and lean, with that edgey early version of Mickey that disappeared later on – presented here in sparkling black and white, in a hardcover volume that's almost 300 pages in length!

A beautiful collection of early 30s newspaper strips penned by Floyd Gottfredson – early daily comics starring Mickey Mouse, but offering up a very different version of the character than on the screen! The format does a great job of tying Mickey to some of the other comic stars of the time – and as many of these strips are in a longer-form narrative mode, with as much adventure as humor, there's more parallels here to strips like The Gumps, Gasoline Alley, and Thimble Theater than you might expect. Gottfredson's line work is wonderful – clean and lean, with that edgey early version of Mickey that disappeared later on – presented here in sparkling black and white, in a hardcover volume that's almost 300 pages in length! Also features bonus essays – and some color material too.

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 cool little guide to all things club jazz – put together by Shuya Okino of Kyoto Jazz Massive, and featuring both record listings and writings! The record listing section is a fair bit smaller than other Japanese books like this that we stock – about 40 pages that show how you might build a club set from one key record, with suggested segues for the tunes before and after. The remaining 200 pages of the book is an extended essay, in Japanese, written by Okino – telling his thoughts and concepts of what Club Jazz should be. Given that he's been lecturing around Tokyo these days on the topic, you can bet that he's got plenty to say – but we warned, you must read Japanese to enjoy the bulk of this book!

An incredible look at the all-too-short life and music of Sam Cooke – put together by Peter Guralnick with an amazing amount of historical detail, and an even more important love of Cooke's music! The book is to Cooke what Guralnick's earlier writings were to Elvis Presley – a much deeper look at the man than had ever before been published – put together with an keen understanding for the music and its contribution to the world around it. Guralnick follows Cooke's key years with a great amount of detail – presenting incredible research, along with a wealth of vintage photos, but in ways that always read with far more depth than typical music history. A whopping 749 pages, softcover, with lots of photos!

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 life story of Buddy Guy – one of the the key blues figures to come out of our Windy City home! David Ritz helps shape the story, but the book is definitely in Buddy's own words – which vividly paint a picture of both the Chicago scene, and the growing global world that began to appreciate the talents of Guy and his contemporaries – as well as a myriad of little trials and tribulations that show that the road to fame was never an easy one for Buddy – even after he thought that he'd made it! The book is a very lively read, but also has some heft too – and is 276 pages, hardcover, with some black and white images.

The sensational early 70s document of the big city pimp culture by writer Susan Hall & photgrapher Bob Adelman! It features fascinating interviews with "professional gentleman of leisure" Silky and his "wives" – and filled with jaw dropping b&w photography. A year in the life! Hardcover, 192 pages.

A great compendium of album and 45 cover art for always fun to look at, often horrible to listen to records released by actors, athletes and other celebrities! Feast upon the cover art for records by Don Johnson, Morton Downey Jr, The Chicago Bears, John Schneider, Alyssa Milano, Eddie Murphy, David Hasselhoff, The Brady Bunch, Ed McMahon, Goldie Hawn, Anthony Quinn, John Davidson, Mister Rogers and many more. Paperback, 127 pages.

A great revolution in record cover art – the early 90s rise of the hand-made package in the punk rock underground! 7" singles were a key force in punk and other underground styles of the time – and these small pressings were often hand-assembled by the bands themselves – sometimes printed one by one, or hand-stickered – sometimes glued together from other images, and sometimes made from old record covers themselves! The approach also infected a lot of album cover art of the time too – in ways that would make even multiple copies of a record seem very individual – thanks to the variations in the packaging. This well-done book lovingly documents this moment in musical packaging – and has a look that's quite like the records themselves – a beautiful approach to the cover and binding which really lives up to the full color images inside. 142 pages, hardcover.

A cinematic effort from Gilbert Hernandez – a standalone graphic novel that expands on the story of one of the characters from his Palomar epic – but with a gritty sort of vibe that really matches the cover! The shift is a nice one – as Hernandez works in an even more visually-focused style here – without dialogue in a number of scenes, and often hitting the pacing of a b-movie thriller! 120 pages, black and white, and with a nice sort of oversized crime novel feel.

A cool sci-fi story from two of the three brothers who created Love & Rockets – a tight little tale about robot culture, with a vibe that's like some of the best work from the early years of the magazine! The drawings here are most strongly in the famous style of Gilbert Hernadez, but you can also feel the influence of Mario as well – and the high-quality printing has the black and white images really popping off the page, wrapped up in a nice color hardcover! 126 pages, with bonus notes as well.

The Byrds went through many many changes during their legendary run in the late 60s – some of which are documented on their rich body of recorded work, lots more of which you'll find in this thick volume of historical detail! The book offers a day by day, year by year existence of the group – from the key years 1965 to 1973, with details on when they were recording, playing live, or just hanging out – but all in very surprising detail that goes way beyond any simple sort of "diary". We're not sure how Christopher Hjort got his hands on all this information, but he really paints a vivid picture of the lives of these rock and roll stars at the time – in ways that really help illuminate their musical changes too! 336 pages, softcover, oversize, with lots of photos and images!

A beautiful book that documents the overlooked legacy of Brion Gysin – contemporary and collaborator of William S Burroughs and other important beat figures – but also an artist with a vision that goes way beyond that initial moment! The book brings together a wealth of images of Gysin's creations – his paintings, photos, printed work, and even instructions for building your own version of his legendary dream machine – alongside historical details on Brion and key moments of his life, plus reflections on his importance by John Giorno, Genesis P Orridge, and others. A hefty museum book – 196 pages, full color, and hardcover!

An amazing guide to some of the hippest jazz ever released – a wealth of great albums from the 50s and 60s – not just from the US, but from England, Italy, Germany, and many other global locales! As with other volumes in this series, the discography focuses on rare bits that have a strong current appeal – the kind of older jazz albums that have inspired current players and producers – and which are readily changing hands for big dollars in the collectors market. Most of the text here is in Japanese, but the book features color covers of hundreds of albums – plus track listings, players, and dates. Like other Japanese discographies, the book's a great guide to get you digging even deeper – and it's filled with loads of titles we'd never seen before at all!

A brilliant look at the early days of the comic book industry – a very well-written history that intermingles economic history and personal biography – in ways that really get at the complexity of the early days of comics! Gerard Jones covers a wide range of roots at the start of the book – then really zeroes in on a few key figures who help give structure to his portrait of the young comic book industry – the team of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who created Superman; and the businessmen Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz, who moved from sleazy pulp to mainstream fame with their work at DC Comics. Jones introduces a number of other figures along the way – and does a brilliant job of laying out the landscape of youth in the depression and World War years – and he really illuminates darker corners of this history, and gets way way past some of the over-told chestnuts of the early years, to link the growth of the industry to the rise of corporate-owned culture in the 60s and beyond. 384 pages, hardcover, with some black and white images.

A very cool book – not just a biography on Quincy Jones, but one that's filled with photos, letters, and other things from his personal collection – plus some very cool "artifacts" as well! The volume's put together like a mini-museum of Q's life – and features pull-out treasures from different periods of his life – little surprises that are hidden in envelopes and jackets, to be discovered as you turn the page – making the reading of the book almost like an archeological dig into Jones' rich career! The artifacts are reproduced wonderfully – record covers, letters, and lots more – all in full color, in this oversized book that's every bit as visually enjoyable as an old Quincy Jones record! 140 pages, hardcover – but with lots more inside to expand the page count too.

A wonderful tribute to the Impulse Records label – one that's put together with as much graphic sensitivity as you'll find on the company's album covers of the 60s! The book is incredibly well researched – both from archival material and over 50 interviews with artists and producers associated with the label – and these writings are interspersed with a wealth of great images, including album covers, session photos, and vintage advertisements! There's also a full discography in the back, and a very helpful index – and at 338 pages, the book is a wealth of information. Hardcover, and a bargain at this price!

The heady life and even hipper music of Sly Stone – told here by an author who managed to get Stone's participation on the project! The book focuses most strongly on Sly's rise to fame and key late 60s/early 70s years – a time when his records not only changed the face of soul music, but also had a pretty big influence on rock as well. Kaliss also follows Stone through some of his more obscure years, and captures him during his recent comeback moment, too – although we'll be the first to admit that the vintage bits are the most interesting. The book features introductions from Stone and George Clinton, plus a nice photo section in the middle. 210 pages, hardcover.