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Books — Recently Added

XA special selection of disc guides and discographies, music history, record art books, graphic novels, and some nicely-priced remainders!


Duke University Press, 2021. New Copy
A huge book on the equally-huge creative legacy of bassist William Parker – a musician who first arose in the loft jazz scene in New York during the 70s, but who's gone on to be one of its greatest surviving players, and one who's transformed the inspirations of that world into so many ... Book
Duke University Press, 2021. New Copy
A beautiful look at imagined communities in many forms – tracing a legacy through black intellectual life of the 19th century to creative production of the 20th and beyond – with a special focus on the creations of Sojourner Truth, Sun Ra, Octavia Butler, Alice Coltrane, Rebecca Cox ... Book
Duke University Press, 2001. New Copy
A long-overdue moment of exposure for pianist Horace Tapscott – one of the greatest creative forces in west coast jazz in the 60s, 70s, and 80s – but an artist whose genius was often kept away from the limelight! That hardly seemed to matter to Tapscott, though – as his legacy is ... Book
Fantagraphics, 2022. New Copy
A massive look at the art behind the music of the great Sun Ra – a selection of images that are almost as important as his sonic creations – given that so many of his records were issued in very small pressings, and often had covers that were handmade! As collectors know, so many of ... Book
Corbett vs. Dempsey, 2023. New Copy
A long-overdue document of the artistic activity of Roscoe Mitchell – best known to most as a key member of both the AACM and Art Ensemble Of Chicago as a jazz musician, but a surprisingly accomplished painter too! Mitchell's artistic career is captured here in both distant chapters – ... Book
Wax Poetics, 2007. New Copy
The first 5 issues of the legendary Wax Poetics – the one-and-only genius publication dedicated to the art of crate-digging, aka funky soul & hip hop vinyl archeology – collected in this massive hardcover tome! Anthology Vol 1 tackles the essential chore of bringing those earliest ... Book
Duke University Press, 1997. New Copy
A wonderful biography of one of the most colorful and significant figures in modern music. There's no need for us to go into the impact Sun Ra's music has made in the realm of the sort of records our pages are filled with – in spite of the mainstream musical audience's ignorance of his vast ... Book
Princeton Architectural Press, 2005. New Copy
We're not normally ones to ooh and ah over hotels – but they do tend to be some of our favorite semi-public spaces in big cities, and this wonderful book looks at a time when lodging was really stepping up to the next level – as firms like Schultze & Weaver were redesigning hotels ... Book
Gingko Press, 2014. New Copy
Beautiful work from artist Ian Johnson – portraits of famous jazz, funk, and soul artists from the 50s through the 70s – served up in a mix of pencil and color, often with a very unique style! The cover image only hints at the pages within – which are often more detailed and ... Book
Little Brown, 2020. New Copy
Peter Guralnick has written some mighty big, career-defining books on key figures in music – but from the start, we've always loved his shorter pieces the best – the kind of work we first fell in love with in books like Sweet Soul Music and Lost Highway! And if you dig his shorter ... Book
Los Angeles County Museum Of Art/Delmonico, 2018. New Copy
A really cool book, and one that looks at the phenomenon of 3D in two different ways – hence the title! The book comes with two sets of viewers – one with thick, clear magnifying lenses, to be used with old stereographic photographs – the other with one red and one blue lens, to ... Book
V&A (UK), 2012. New Copy
A richly-detailed look at England's Ambassador magazine of the postwar years – a publication devoted to promoting the rise of the British cloth industry, but which had an approach that made it much more like a fashion magazine overall! The book is lovely – heavy, oversize, and ... Book
Norton, 2016. New Copy
Italy was hit hard in the postwar years – as you've no doubt seen in the urban landscapes of neo-realist directors from the time – but the city of Rome was one of the first places to really bounce back, and was ablaze with new cultural activity during the 50s! The story of that scene ... Book

David Lynch & Kristine McKenna

Room To Dream (hardcover)
Random House, 2018. New Copy
From our perspective in the 21st Century, the film career of director David Lynch is the stuff of legend – long and loudly hailed – yet for the man himself, the road to success was a long one – and even along the way, Lynch struggled with countless creative difficulties and ... Book
Laurence King (UK), 2003. New Copy
A smallish book, but one that's overflowing with great images – material from the 20s through the 60s that show a huge development in graphic design on the American scene – modern images for a modern generation – served up here in a host of vintage ads, magazine covers, posters, ... Book
Pantheon, 2017. New Copy
One of the greatest writers on singers presents his essential collection of albums from the 20th century – all served up with the kind of loving detail that's always made the prose of Will Friedwald so great! Will's written the book on Frank Sinatra – literally – and on Tony ... Book
Faber & Faber (UK), 2018. New Copy
Scott Walker started out as a pop star singing other peoples' lyrics – then he stunned the world when he went solo, and started to create some really amazing songs of his own! The Walker-penned contributions on the first few solo albums are still some of the most revelatory pop of the late ... Book
Liveright, 2015. New Copy
A hefty book on the great Otis Redding – one of the best soul singers of all time, even though he left this planet all too soon! Redding's career on record was less than a decade long, but marked by a huge amount of work – not just time in the studio, with the legendary Stax Records ... Book
WW Norton, 2009. New Copy Book
We're not usually fans of books on a single album – but in this case, we gladly make an exception – as the creation and circulation of Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue is definitely powerful enough to fill volumes of writing! Author Richard Williams does a great job of exploring this crucial ... Book
Carlton (UK), 2018. New Copy
An album-by-album, song-by-song look at David Bowie in the 70s – in a book that almost offers up album reviews for each Bowie classic, but then breaks the albums down into songs – and has a lengthy passage on each! Some sections are the story behind the song, others deal more with the ... Book

Johnny Otis

Listen To The Lambs
University Of Minnesota Press, 1968. New Copy
A fascinating slice of work from the legendary Johnny Otis – the longtime LA bandleader who had such a strong role in the worlds of jazz, soul, and R&B – and who also turns out to be a hell of a writer too! The book is Otis' answer to the Watts riots of 1965 – a mixture of ... Book

Renee Hytry Derrington

Formica Forever
Metropolis, 2013. New Copy
Formica may seem like an everyday surface to some – but at the time of its creation, it was a pretty revolutionary development – one that allowed household and business spaces to step free from longer-term care – giving the workers and residents lots more time to pursue their ... Book
Wolke Verlag (Germany), 2022. New Copy
A stunningly beautiful book, and one that's a very fitting tribute to the legendary jazz label that it covers – Germany's FMP Music, easily one of the most important avant jazz labels of all time! The book is huge – oversize, and hundreds of pages – and it's filled with as many ... Book
Corbett vs. Dempsey, 2021. New Copy
An incredible package – one that brings together four rare publications by Sun Ra – printed words that are every bit as groundbreaking as his music – and which together represent the farther-flung corners of his vast cultural enterprise! The set represents each of the texts in ... Book
Delmonico, 2022. New Copy
An incredible book put together with the Academy of Motion Pictures film museum – and one that's much richer than anything you'd expect to find in the gift shop! The book is a beautiful balance of academic writing, history, and countless images – with an initial set of essays on black ... Book
Rittor (Japan), 2019. New Copy
An even-better volume of this amazing publication – a true treasure trove for fans of all things funky – and one of the coolest books of rare records we've ever seen! The Japanese book is a dictionary of rare groove classics from the 60s and 70s – listing hundreds of rare albums ... Book
Soul Jazz (UK), 2013/2022. New Copy
A really wonderful little book – way more than the usual record cover package, and instead a helpful tome that's full of historical details too! Punk 45 features life-sized replicas of a range of key punk 45s – pick sleeve singles and rare indie pressings, mixed with initial releases ... Book

Karl Berger

Music Mind Experience
Wolke Verlag (Germany), 2022. New Copy
Most folks know Karl Berger as a key figure in avant jazz – a pianist, vibist, composer, and key part of the Creative Music Studio – all aspects of his life he's approached with a strongly spiritual sensibility – one that gets much more deeply extracted here in this book! Berger ... Book
Soberscove, 2020. New Copy
One of the most unique books we've ever gotten from John Corbett – an author who's given us some fantastic music writing over the years! This book is completely different – not written, but "salvaged" – as the contents are a lost manuscript from the early 30s – ... Book

AB Spellman, Larry Neal, & Amiri Baraka, eds

Cricket – Black Music In Evolution 1968/1969
Jihad/Blank Forms, 2022. New Copy
A beautiful recreation of this legendary and short-lived publication – a key voice from the black underground of the late 60s – and one that was a very different look at jazz than the mainstream world of Downbeat! Amiri Baraka was one of the founders and editors, and issued the ... Book
1984, 2019. New Copy
A fascinating look at a world of cinema from the last 20 years of the past century – served up in a host of rare newspaper ads that were painstakingly collected by the author! Yet Michael Gingold isn't just some guy who snipped his way through the paper for decades – as he also ... Book

Tsunao Kadowaki

New Age Music Disc Guide
Du Books (Japan), 2021. New Copy
A book with "new age" in the title – but one that offers up a lot more than just a listing of big 80s albums on the Windham Hill label! Instead, author Tsunao Kadwaki digs deep into a rich well of acoustic, ambient, electronic, and meditative sounds – first beginning in the ... Book
Du Books (Japan), 2023. New Copy
A Japanese book, but one with a very deep dive into urban soul from the 70s onward – mostly American and European records that together represent a whole new wave of cool, sophisticated R&B! This isn't the deep soul of the 60s – although many of the singers still have a wonderful ... Book
University Of Texas Press, 2016/2022. New Copy
A great book that looks not just at the music of Sun Ra, but also the theory behind it – the special take on reality, and interstellar philosophy that made Ra as important a thinker as he was a musician! The music is approached from a theoretical framework that's extremely illuminating ... Book
Duke University Press, 2022. New Copy
The birth of hip hop on the streets and in the clubs of New York City has been well documented over the years – but once the music got going, the airwaves of the city were an equally important force in spreading the music – and this well-done book is the first time that anyone's really ... Book
University Of Chicago, 2019. New Copy
A tremendous achievement from music writer Aaron Cohen – a book that finally gets at the deeper, richer story of Chicago soul – the spirit of empowerment and pride that have always made us so honored to be part of the Windy City legacy! Cohen picks up where other soul writers have left ... Book
Almighty & Insane Books, 2022. New Copy
A wonderful look at a lost, secret side of the house music scene in Chicago – rare flyers and posters that were used to draw people into the sort of underground events that really helped the music blossom in the Windy City – maybe the only lasting document of musical moments that built ... Book
Modern Art Museum Of Fort Worth/Delmonico, 2018. New Copy
A huge overview of the work of artist Laurie Simmons – a photographer who's best known for working in miniature and conflicting spatial scales – but one who's also presented here with a variety of projects from across her career! The big/little shots are in great array here – as ... Book
Duke University Press, 2022. New Copy
Maybe the best book so far in the recent run of work from musician/author David Grubbs – a volume that follows a similar pattern to the previous longform works The Voice In The Headphones and Now That The Audience Is Assembled – but one that has a very different vibe overall! The ... Book
1984, 2019. New Copy
A hell of a great idea for a book – a collection of newspaper ads for horror films from the 90s and 00s – served up with page after page of striking images, as well as text from the author about each film, and snippets of press reviews from the time! The book is a beautiful tribute to ... Book
Laurence King, 2015. New Copy
A book on children's books that's as lovely as the topic that it covers – full color, and presented with these vivid pages that offer up all sorts of reproductions of the contents of the books themselves! The approach is wonderful – as the books covered stretch back to the start of the ... Book

A Alyce Claerbaut/David Schlesinger

Strayhorn – An Illustrated Life (hardcover)
Bolden, 2015. New Copy
A beautiful tribute to one of the greatest composers of the 20th Century – Duke Ellington's longtime musical partner, the mighty Billy Strayhorn! The book presents Billy's life and music in a really great format – using songs as sidebars amidst the larger text – which is then ... Book
Modern Library, 2009. New Copy
An inspirational tome from trumpet great and Jazz At Lincoln Center artistic director Wynton Marsalis, with co-author and historian Geoffrey C. Ward – delivering the positive message of America's definitive music! Marsalis draws from lessons learned from a lifetime in jazz music and details ... Book
Damiani, 2017. New Copy
Cars, in New York City, and nothing else at all – just page after page of cars parked on the street – presented in a fascinating array of full color images! Some cars get a whole page to themselves, some are arrayed in grids – old cars, new cars, fancy cars, and beat up cars ... Book
Chartwell Books (UK), 2008/2016. New Copy
A lavish book on the music and life of Prince – presented here in a big new volume that's been updated in the time since his untimely early passing! The book is huge – more of a coffee table volume in size, but still filled with very dense writing as well – in chapters that ... Book

Max Allan Collins

Skim Deep
Hard Case Crime, 2020. New Copy
A great return to form for the Nolan character by Max Allan Collins – a master international thief who gets the chance to live again in a book that offers up perfect pulp presentation for the story! Like others in the Hard Case Crime series, the book has a way of really getting past the ... Book
Duke University Press, 2022. New Copy
An essential look at black voices within music criticism – one that features articles from the 60s up to the present, plus individual sections that look at important black musical writers and publications that supported their work! Editor Willard Jenkins presents the whole thing almost like ... Book
Abrams, 2004. New Copy
Maybe the largest book we've ever seen to focus on the artwork of Robert Rauschenberg – a huge volume that's overflowing with full color images – and which traces a lineage of creative activity that's much longer than we would have guessed! The book's divided up into chapters on so ... Book
Soul Jazz (UK), 2014. New Copy
Way way way more than just another book of album cover images – and instead, a stunningly huge volume that offers up key images from the disco generation, plus a wealth of knowledge and information too! The book really lives up to the "encyclopedic" promise of its title – as ... Book
Duke University Press, 2022. New Copy
The rise of punk is usually tied to the scene of the Sex Pistols and others up in London – but right from the start, there was plenty happening up in Leeds – a scene that gave the world Gang Of Four, The Mekons, Soft Cell, Scritti Politti, and other key acts from the end of the 70s! ... Book
 
Updated March 20, 2023


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