Chasing The Blues

Chasing the Blues explores the roots of the blues---the music birthed in the Mississippi Delta by African Americans who fashioned a new form of musical expression grounded in their shared experience of brutal oppression. They used the power of music to survive that oppression, creating a simple-in-structure, emotionally complex form that transformed and upended culture and became the bedrock of popular song. Tracing the music back to its geographical and cultural origins in the Delta is key to understanding how the blues were shaped. Over time, the Delta blues have touched virtually every form of popular music (rock and roll, soul, R&B, country-western, gospel), creating the soundscape of our lives. What makes this book unique? Fathoming how the music flowed from living and working conditions in the heart of the Deep South; appreciating how life-changing events like the Flood of 1927 sparked a mass migration away from plantation life, spreading the blues to the cities in the North and becoming the soundtrack to the civil rights movement; how blues musicians interacted, "cross-fertilizing" their music by learning, influencing, and imitating each other. The habits of travel are shifting, and there is more interest and a larger market for diving deep into destinations closer to home. Interest in Black history and culture and the role Black Americans played in shaping America is at an all-time high. By appreciating the roots of this most American style of music, readers will have a richer experience listening to songs and visiting blues' holy and sacred sites.

A young girl happens across a jazz/blues bar one night and starts fixating on the piano player. She wants to get to know him better, despite his attempts to persuade her otherwise...

Vivian Sharpe is a psychotherapist raising an inquisitive, intelligent, and handsome son who struggles to cope with anxiety. Just when she is beginning to accept the limitations that anxiety imposes on her son the unthinkable happens. She is taken for an emotional ride where she encounters shock, grief and fear before learning to embrace her courage in order to help her son rise above the pathological intrusion in their lives. In this book Mrs. Sharpe gives a first hand account of her experience dealing with mental health experts, child protective services and school officials after learning that her own son had been sexually abused. Based on her years of working with victims of abuse Mrs. Sharpe brings substantial insight into the psychological make up of victims and victimizers. If you know a child who suffers from anxiety and you are seeking help for that child this book will be of enormous help to you. This book is a valuable resource for parents, educators, mental health advocates, legal experts and families who have been affected by child on child sexual abuse.

Adult beginners can be taught the basics of jazz and rock music easily using this dynamic supplement to Alfred's Basic Adult Piano Course. And, teachers don't have to be jazz or rock experts to teach it! Perfect for individual or group instruction and playable on both acoustic and electronic keyboard.

The Adult All-In-One Course combines all of the pages from the Lesson Books and selected pages from Alfred's Basic Adult Piano Course Theory, Solo and Technic Books (Finger Aerobics) into each of these concise volumes.

Chasing the Rising Sun is the story of an American musical journey told by a prize-winning writer who traced one song in its many incarnations as it was carried across the world by some of the most famous singers of the twentieth century. Most people know the song "House of the Rising Sun" as 1960s rock by the British Invasion group the Animals, a ballad about a place in New Orleans -- a whorehouse or a prison or gambling joint that's been the ruin of many poor girls or boys. Bob Dylan did a version and Frijid Pink cut a hard-rocking rendition. But that barely scratches the surface; few songs have traveled a journey as intricate as "House of the Rising Sun." The rise of the song in this country and the launch of its world travels can be traced to Georgia Turner, a poor, sixteen-year-old daughter of a miner living in Middlesboro, Kentucky, in 1937 when the young folk-music collector Alan Lomax, on a trip collecting field recordings, captured her voice singing "The Rising Sun Blues." Lomax deposited the song in the Library of Congress and included it in the 1941 book Our Singing Country. In short order, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, and Josh White learned the song and each recorded it. From there it began to move to the planet's farthest corners. Today, hundreds of artists have recorded "House of the Rising Sun," and it can be heard in the most diverse of places -- Chinese karaoke bars, Gatorade ads, and as a ring tone on cell phones. Anthony began his search in New Orleans, where he met Eric Burdon of the Animals. He traveled to the Appalachians -- to eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina -- to scour the mountains for the song's beginnings. He found Homer Callahan, who learned it in the mountains during a corn shucking; he discovered connections to Clarence "Tom" Ashley, who traveled as a performer in a 1920s medicine show. He went to Daisy, Kentucky, to visit the family of the late high-lonesome singer Roscoe Holcomb, and finally back to Bourbon Street to see if there really was a House of the Rising Sun. He interviewed scores of singers who performed the song. Through his own journey he discovered how American traditions survived and prospered -- and how a piece of culture moves through the modern world, propelled by technology and globalization and recorded sound.

Traces the development and characteristics of the Delta blues, and describes the most influential blues musicians and recordings of the 1920s and 1930s