3 comments about Dialogues in Swing: Intimate Conversations With the Stars of the Big Band Era.

1. If you love big band music [like I do], then you gotta buy this book. "Dialogues in Swing; Intimate Conversations with the Stars of the Big Band Era." details conversations with some of the biggest and baddest musicans of their time and is a book you'll read again and again.



2. I'm 75. During the 30's and 40's I danced to and enjoyed the "big Bands." This book, by Fred Hall, includes great conversations with many of the leaders. You learn how they got started, problems they had, who was easy to work for, who was a tyrant. You learn that there were great bands BEFORE the Big Bands of the 40's (Jimmy Lunceford for one). Every successful leader had a mentor and it's interesting to see who mentored who.



3. I literally devoured this book in one sitting! It takes you into the hearts and minds of the giants of the swing era -- Artie Shaw, Woody Herman, Bob Crosby, the Glenn Miller band . Plus top singers Peggy Lee, Mel Torme, Dick Haymes, Jo Stafford and the Andrews Sisters. Intimate portraits revealed by interviews. Fascinating and filled with little known facts of how these personalities lived and worked. I enjoyed it so much that I'll re-read it soon.

2 comments about Swing Shift: "All-Girl" Bands of the 1940s.

1. My Grandmother was part of an all-girl band during this era, and still plays strong today. She was contacted to participate in the making of this book and thus my interest in reading the work was peaked. However, I soon realized there is so much more the book offers. Starting with a detailed historical description of the way African-American women were treated, the book moves on to cover a wide variety of trials women went through to get their music heard. I highly recommend the book for anyone interested in Jazz, in history, in women's study, or in just understanding the power of music, of voice, and of struggle throughout the ages of this society.



2. This book is a fascinating and unique book on jazz, gender, and race. Thoroughly researched and beautifully written, Swing Shift documents the central position black and white women musicians played in the Swing Era and World War II. Sherrie Tucker combines oral histories with archival research, producing a stunning record of what history books can be and what jazz women are. Most amazing is the author's analysis of race and racism as structuring aspects of the music industry, jazz history, and contemporary accounts of the 1940s. Swing Shift is the most accomplished book on women, music, and race that I have ever read; it is a gift as remarkable, talented, honest, funny, and captivating as the women musicians Dr. Tucker researched and loves.

2 comments about The Herb Ellis Jazz Guitar Method : Swing Blues.

1. This is a book for beginners who are intrested in Jazz guitar solo and comping on blues by Herb Ellis Method. It introduce it's Shape System which is simply how to play scale and chord arpeggio by shape.

   The materials are few in this book. It mentioned only 1.how to paly Maj and 7 chords/scale/Arpeggio. 2.1 baisc progression and changes. 3. examples - 3 blues(solo) songs.

   Though m/dim/m7b5/... could be derived from the same concept, this book only introduce how to play chord/scale/arpeggio 'by shape' over Maj and Seven.

   For beginner this is a guide for chord/scale system. For people who already knew chord/scale system this book is nothing new, except the 3 improvised solo. "Joe Pass on Guitar" has more stuff in similar topics. Recommend only for beginners and people who are intrested in Herb Ellis's style.




2. If you're into learning Ellis' uptown beboppy swing style, you should investigate this book. The "how to" part is pretty brief, going over a few of the CAGED shapes, scales and arpeggios as they apply to dominant and 9th chords, plus a look at chromatics. But it's what Ellis does with this that makes the book a great resource. He lays out three long multi-chorus blues solos with various tempos and feels, and it's pretty much the sort of playing you'd hear on one of his records. They're all transcribed and annoted in places with the shapes particular lines were built on. Ellis is a master of taste, timing and melodic bluesy lines, and this book showcases all of that. Check it out.

No comments about Swing Under the Nazis: Jazz as a Metaphor for Freedom.

No comments about Swing City: Newark Nightlife, 1925-50.

No comments about Jazz in Black and White: The Photographs of Duncan Schiedt.

2 comments about Swinging the Machine: Modernity, Technology, and African American Culture between the World Wars.

1. This book weaves together several important and somewhat familiar stories in a startlingly new and brilliant way. We know that music and dance exploded in powerful new forms in the 1930s. And we know the "streamlined" and "futuristic" themes of techno-optimism dominated other cultural expressions in the 1930s. And we know there was a current of "techno-anxiety" that expressed itself in everything from Chaplin films to the Frankfurt School. But Joel Dinerstein has shown that these phenomena intimately informed each other. We will never view early-20th century American culture the same way after this book. Buy it. Read it. Assign it to your students. It should win many major awards.



2. Fabulous book. Dinerstein ties together architecture, tap dancing, West African drummers, the lindy hop, John Henry and Fred Astaire in this exploration of what he calls the "techno-dialogic" embedded in big band/swing music. He argues that African American artists put the industrial rhythms of the era in popular music. In this analysis, dancing to the big band wasn't just about entertainment, it was about using one's body to keep pace with the machine. Until you've read Dinerstein and considered how dance/movement/sound contribute to cultural change, you haven't understood American modernity.

1 comments about Big Book of Swing ("Piano, Vocal, Guitar).

1. This book featured piano and guitar reductions of some of the most famous pop tunes of the Swing Era. The music is primarily accompaniment for vocals, though. Only "Air Mail Special" and "In the Mood" don't come with lyrics. That's great for singers, like me, but my friends who are pianists were disappointed by the lack of complexity in the accompaniment.

No comments about Early Jazz and Swing Songs: Acoustic Guitar Method Songbook.

No comments about Overcome Depression Subliminal CD.