Devil Take The Blue Tail Fly

John Franklin Bardin's most acclaimed work plays a virtuoso performance on music and madness in this unforgettable thriller. In 1946 New York, Ellen, a world-renowned musician, is suffering from the effects of her latest mental breakdown. Amongst other challenges, a chance meeting with a folk singer from her past causes her psychological well-being to rapidly deteriorate. Over the following terrifying weeks, Ellen finds herself becoming both a criminal and a victim as she attempts to contend with the darkness within. "We have all had these feelings, more or less, and now and then. The healthier among us try to step back from the brink, try to laugh at what might have happened if we had gone a bit further. The reader of these tales will read in horror—those who can take it. And they will not forget very soon." —Patricia Highsmith

A new edition of the classic New York Times bestseller edited by Toni Morrison, offering an encyclopedic look at the black experience in America from 1619 through the 1940s with the original cover restored. “I am so pleased the book is alive again. I still think there is no other work that tells and visualizes a story of such misery with seriousness, humor, grace and triumph.”—Toni Morrison Seventeenth-century sketches of Africans as they appeared to marauding European traders. Nineteenth-century slave auction notices. Twentieth-century sheet music for work songs and freedom chants. Photographs of war heroes, regal in uniform. Antebellum reward posters for capturing runaway slaves. An 1856 article titled “A Visit to the Slave Mother Who Killed Her Child.” In 1974, Middleton A. Harris and Toni Morrison led a team of gifted, passionate collectors in compiling these images and nearly five hundred others into one sensational narrative of the black experience in America—The Black Book. Now in a newly restored hardcover edition, The Black Book remains a breathtaking testament to the legendary wisdom, strength, and perseverance of black men and women intent on freedom. Prominent collectors Morris Levitt, Roger Furman, and Ernest Smith joined Harris and Morrison (then a Random House editor, ultimately a two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning Nobel Laureate) to spend months studying, laughing at, and crying over these materials—transcripts from fugitive slaves’ trials and proclamations by Frederick Douglass and celebrated abolitionists, as well as chilling images of cross burnings and lynchings, patents registered by black inventors throughout the early twentieth century, and vibrant posters from “Black Hollywood” films of the 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, it was an article she found while researching this project that provided the inspiration for Morrison’s masterpiece, Beloved. A labor of love and a vital link to the richness and diversity of African American history and culture, The Black Book honors the past, reminding us where our nation has been, and gives flight to our hopes for what is yet to come. Beautifully and faithfully presented and featuring a foreword and original poem by Toni Morrison, The Black Book remains a timeless landmark work.

First Lessons Mandolin teaches the absolute basics of learning to play mandolin from holding the pick to performing easy mandolin tunes. It doesn't get any easier than this! Students learn how to hold the mandolin correctly, how to read mandolin tablature, basic note reading, the most popular mandolin chords, how to play easy melodies in several musical styles, basic picking technique, how to tune the mandolin, and much more. Along the way students will learn about the greatest mandolin players and their music. the main emphasis of First Lessons Mandolin is to get the student up and playing immediately and to have fun doing it!

For the most practical use of this book, the author selected fold songs which are known and sung in schools, scouting organization and by other recreational, educational and social groups. These are also songs which can be chorded with a few simple chords. In this case, I have used the simplest chording rather than the richest chording so that persons with only a limited knowledge of the instruments can play them. The songs are arranged in their chronological order in history, offering a few songs from each period.

A step-by-step, self-instruction method. Includes care of the autoharp, playing positions, chord changes, back-up strums, arpeggio strums, melody picking, rhythm picking, and much more! Each song teaches something new and each strum pattern is built on the previous one. When you have practiced each selection and perfected each strum, you will have the necessary foundation to go on to more advanced styles and more intricate picking. the songs in the book are arranged for the 15-chord instrument, since it is the most popular for beginning students.

The Library of Folk Songs contains an expansive collection of over 130 folk tunes from around the world! Each song is presented with melody line in standard notation along with chords and lyrics. Ordered into 6 categories – ‘Love and Longing’, ‘Fun and Dancing’, ‘Holidays and Celebrations’, ‘Quiet Times and Faraway Places’, ‘Soldiers, Sailors and Cowboys’, and ‘Faith and Freedom’, you will find pieces from British, French, German, African-American, Israeli, Mexican traditions and more! With crisp engravings and illustrations, this is a beautiful folio and an indispensable library with which to explore the primal music of our world.

The Gig Book returns again with the chords an lyrics to over one hundred traditional songs; songs of hard travellin’, booze, the wild country and broken hearts. Presented with melody line arrangements in standard notation, with guitar chord boxes and complete lyrics, this is the perfect reference for guitarists, keyboard players and all other musicians, allowing you to quickly understand and learn every one of these historical pieces – how to sing it and what chords to play. The setlist includes: - Abide With Me - Amazing Grace - Barbara Allen - Battle Hymn Of The Republic - Cotton Fields - Dixie - Down By The Riverside - Down In The Valley - Four Drunken Nights - House Of The Rising Sun - John Brown's Body - John Henry - Midnight Special - Scarborough Fair - Shortnin' Bread - Streets Of London - The Blue Bells Of Scotland - The Camptown Races - Where Have All The Flowers Gone? - Auld Lang Syne - The Bells Of Rhymney - Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Hair - Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen - Frankie And Johnny And many, many more!

For keyboard players of all levels. Fake books are used by professional musicians at cocktail lounges, weddings, and many other performing situation. They are invaluable because they contain a thousand or more songs in one compact volume. But in order to use them one must know how to look at a kind of musical shorthand--a skeleton of each song which gives only melody, lyrics and chord symbols--and "fake" a full accompaniment. Now, anyone can! This book will teach you how to play any chord symbol you will find in pop, jazz or rock; how to create stylish arrangements on your own; and how to sound like a "pro" even when reading sheet music for the first time. Topics include bass lines, counter-melodies, intros and endings, rhythmic patterns, and embellishing a melody.--From publisher description