Books — Recently Added

Way more than most jazz singers of her generation, Nina Simone has had continuing impact and interest well into the 21st Century – an artist whose music and message continues to resonate with younger generations, and whose legacy is kept alive by projects on a variety of different fronts! ... Book

A book that's way more than just a history of female singers – as it traces a legacy of black women vocalists in the 20th century, but with an ear towards the way that shifts in style and performance helped shape a larger cultural understanding as well! The role of voice was initially in ... Book

A fascinating look at the long legacy of live recordings of the Grateful Dead – initially a small community within the group's fan culture, now an industry unto itself – and one that's kept the groups revenues flowing for many years after their demise! The book really digs deep, and is ... Book

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

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

A very cool book by a pair of authors who also gave us a killer volume on the rise of the full length album in the hi-fi generation – exploring a similar period here, but with an ear towards records that promoted big dance styles of the time! The book is overflowing with full color ... Book

A stunning volume that may well serve as the greatest introduction to Japanese jazz records we've ever seen – a huge, full-color book that features hundreds of rare Japanese-only releases, most in 12" square pages that replicate the original size of the cover too – along with label ... Book

The story of a legendary New York nite spot – served up in a really wonderful way! The Pyramid was a gritty bar in the East Village in the 80s – a small spot, but one that served as a real crossroads for music, performance, and gender identity – a place that was experienced by ... Book

A really cool book of rare jazz posters – most of them from the 70s, with images of posters from the US, EU, and Japan! The collection within is great – and there's so many unusual images that differ nicely from more iconic album covers – which are then mixed with more familiar ... Book

A really beautiful portrait of a really beautiful musician – the late great Arthur Russell, a New York talent whose groundbreaking work touched so many different scenes in the 80s, before he was taken away from our planet all too soon! Russell's music has lived on and flourished in recent ... Book

A beautiful book of images – not just for record lovers, but for all fans of sonic delights – as the author starts from the earliest days of recorded sound, then moves up through decades of representation – following images of record players, radios, cassette tapes, albums, 78 ... Book

A guide to classical records, of sorts – but one that features older albums all picked by the well-known Japanese writer Haruki Murakami! Murakami is well-known as a lifetime lover of music, which comes through in his fiction, and which is almost more foregrounded in his essays – a ... Book

The EP is a very special sort of record – not a single, but also not a full LP – and instead this package often features a short but powerful burst of creativity – almost as if the artist had just put out a small release with all their best tracks at the time, instead of coming up ... Book

Dusty Groove owes plenty to the world of college radio – and in fact, our store grew out of long years of experience on a college station on the south side of Chicago – so we're extra-pleased not just to see a really comprehensive book on the glory days of college radio, but also one ... Book

A well-done guide to the legendary years of city pop music in Japan – and one that's got way more than the hundred albums hinted at by the title! The book follows the format of other Japanese disc guides – with images of key records in the genre, mostly presented in full color – ... Book

A really fantastic set of photographs taken from the American road of the late 60s and early 70s – images collected on road trips by artist Jim Dow, who's got an especially strong eye for the sorts of things that might not stand the test of time! The images here are mostly of signs – ... Book

French jazz giant Barney Wilen is on the cover – and this issue of Jazz Critique looks at key records on the European scene from the postwar years onward! Given that "swing" is the mode here, there's not really any avant records – and instead the issue offers up a discography ... Book

The title might seem a bit obscure, but it refers to the way that photographer Thomas Barrow worked magic on the negatives for each of these beautiful photos – images taken in the 70s and 80s in obscure spots in the west, which then bear an "X" or other mark on the negative, which ... Book

Beautiful black and white images from the East Harlem scene of the postwar years – material shot by New York photographer Leo Goldstein to partly document the new wave of Puerto Rican immigrants in the neighborhood, as maybe one of the first efforts to establish a Nuyorican sense of identity! ... Book

A really no-holds-barred look at contemporary hip hop – one that focuses on the way the music continually deals with topics of death, and in a way that's very different than more mainstream concepts that would be found in white America. The author uses Afropessimism and black moralism to ... Book