"The best biography of any jazz musician that we have. Bird Lives! will stand for a long time as a major source of information and illumination not only of the great musician with whom it deals but of the entire jazz life in this society."--Ralph...

From the Clash to Los Crudos, skinheads to afro-punks, the punk rock movement has been obsessed by race. And yet the connections have never been traced in a comprehensive way.White Riot is the definitive study of the subject, collecting first-person...

Previously published as Invisible Republic and already considered a classic of modern American cultural criticism, this is an updated edition of Greil Marcus's acclaimed book on the secret music made by Bob Dylan and the Band in 1967, which introduced a...

One of The Telegraph's Best Music Books 2011 We live in a pop age gone loco for retro and crazy for commemoration. Band re-formations and reunion tours, expanded reissues of classic albums and outtake-crammed box sets, remakes and sequels, tribute albums...

It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation. Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert...

When we think of folk music, most of us picture Pete Seeger singing "This Land is My Land" or Joan Baez singing "Barbara Allen." But this stimulating Very Short Introduction throws open the doors on a remarkably diverse musical genre, in a wide-ranging...

From the mind of brilliant historian Robin Kelley comes the first full biography of legendary jazz musician Thelonious Monk, including full access to the family's archives, dozens of interviews, and an afterword for Monk’s 2017 centennial.Thelonious Monk...

Pavement wrapped up at Easley Recording in Memphis. They mixed the tracks and recorded overdubs in New York. They took a step back and assessed the material. It was a wild scene. They had fully fleshed-out songs and whispers and rumors of half-formed...

Praised as "suave, soulful, ebullient" (Tom Waits) and "a meticulous researcher, a graceful writer, and a committed contrarian" (New York Times Book Review), Elijah Wald is one of the leading popular music critics of his generation. In The Blues, Wald...

Perhaps the finest soul singer of the rock era-but equally at home singing blues and jazz -- Etta James is one of the great women of American music. In Rage to Survive she tells her mesmerizing tale in her uniquely big, bold, and unrepentant voice...

"May be the best book ever written about jazz."―David Thomson, Los Angeles TimesIn eight poetically charged vignettes, Geoff Dyer skillfully evokes the music and the men who shaped modern jazz. Drawing on photos, anecdotes, and, most important, the way...

How Aussies came to belong to the hip-hop nation.Ian Maxwell's sophisticated story of Australia's hip-hop scene follows the lives of a small, influential group of rappers from Sydney's Westside in the early 1990s. Maxwell conveys the excitement of the...

Greil Marcus, author of Mystery Train, widely acclaimed as the best book ever written about America as seen through its music, began work on this new book out of a fascination with the Sex Pistols: that scandalous antimusical group, invented in London in...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A “perceptive, entertaining, and often touching” (Salon) memoir of one woman’s love affair with an up-and-coming Bob Dylan, and an intimate reflection of 1960s subculture at its most creative“[A] rollicking homage to a revolutionary...

A bewitching memoir about the lures, torments, and rewards of making and performing music in the indie rock worldDean Wareham's seminal bands Galaxie 500 and Luna have long been adored by a devoted cult following and extolled by rock critics. Now he...

This vivid celebration of blues and early rock 'n' roll includes some of the first and most illuminating profiles of such blues masters as Muddy Waters, Skip James, and Howlin' Wolf; excursions into the blues-based Memphis rock 'n' roll of Jerry Lee...

Now in trade paperback: “The definitive guide to musical enjoyment” (Forum).In this fascinating analysis of how to listen to both contemporary and classical music analytically, eminent American composer Aaron Copland offers provocative suggestions that...

"A fascinating and genuinely accessible guide....Educating, enjoyable, and delightfully unscary."—Classical Music What if Bach and Mozart heard richer, more dramatic chords than we hear in music today? What sonorities and moods have we lost in playing...

To absorb Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash is to be taken on a wild voyage with a cast of downtrodden revolutionaries. Despite this notion, the epic themes of the Pogues' second full length record have been overlooked by both critics and biographers in favor of...

"In the absence of love, there is loneliness, sorrow and desperation. And that's where I come in." --Greg Dulli, introducing "When We Two Parted" onstage in San FranciscoLike no record before or since, Gentlemen is fraught with the...