Music In The Air

The old gospel song invited listeners to turn their radios on and hear the . . . music in the air. Now return to the eventful days when Americans could “turn the lights down low and listen to the Master’s radio” through this colorful and inspiring history of Christian music and ministry during the golden age of gospel radio. Learn the stories behind such legendary groups as Blackwood Brothers, Statesmen, Gaithers, Back to the Bible Quartet, Old Fashioned Revival Hour Quartet, Haven of Rest Quartet, and Stamps Quartet. Follow the careers of the great songwriters of the radio days, men such as Albert Brumley, Merrill Dunlop, John W. Peterson, and Stuart Hamblen. Read about the evangelists who pioneered Christian broadcasting, such as Billy Graham, Charles Fuller, Jack Wyrtzen, Percy Crawford, Paul Myers, Torrey Johnson, Walter Maier, Theodore App, and Paul Vader. And learn the stores behind the greatest gospel songs of the country, from “Some Golden Daybreak” to “Beyond the Sunset,” plus more than 100 others!

A collection of the best music writing and cultural criticism from one of the most influential music journalists of his day The co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine, Ralph J. Gleason was among the most respected journalists, interviewers, and critics writing about popular music in the latter half of the twentieth century. As a longtime contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle, Down Beat, and Ramparts, his expertise and insights about music, musicians, and cultural trends were unparalleled, whether his subject was jazz, folk, pop, or rock and roll. He was the only music journalist included on President Richard Nixon's infamous "Enemies List," which Gleason himself considered "the highest honor a man's country can bestow upon him." This sterling anthology, edited by Gleason's son Toby, himself a forty-year veteran of the music business, spans Ralph J. Gleason's four decades as popular music's preeminent commentator. Drawing from a rich variety of sources, including Gleason's books, essays, interviews, and LP record album liner notes, it is essential reading for writers, historians, scholars, and music lovers of every stripe.

In rural Nova Scotia, a young girl and her grandfather look for a perfect branch to carve.

The co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine, Ralph J. Gleason was among the most respected journalists, interviewers, and critics writing about popular music in the latter half of the twentieth century. As a longtime contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle, Down Beat, and Ramparts, his expertise and insights about music, musicians, and cultural trends were unparalleled, whether his subject was jazz, folk, pop, or rock and roll. He was the only music journalist included on President Richard Nixon’s infamous “Enemies List,” which Gleason himself considered “the highest honor a man’s country can bestow upon him.” This sterling anthology, edited by Gleason’s son Toby, himself a forty-year veteran of the music business, spans Ralph J. Gleason’s four decades as popular music’s preeminent commentator. Drawing from a rich variety of sources, including Gleason’s books, essays, interviews, and LP record album liner notes, it is essential reading for writers, historians, scholars, and music lovers of every stripe.

An account of nineteenth-century music in Atlantic worlds told through the history of the art’s elemental medium, the air. Often experienced as universal and incorporeal, music seems an innocent art form. The air, the very medium by which music constitutes itself, shares with music a claim to invisibility. In Creatures of the Air, J. Q. Davies interrogates these claims, tracing the history of music’s elemental media system in nineteenth-century Atlantic worlds. He posits that air is a poetic domain, and music is an art of that domain. From West Central African ngombi harps to the European J. S. Bach revival, music expressed elemental truths in the nineteenth century. Creatures of the Air tells these truths through stories about suffocation and breathing, architecture and environmental design, climate strife, and racial turmoil. Contributing to elemental media studies, the energy humanities, and colonial histories, Davies shows how music, no longer just an innocent luxury, is implicated in the struggle for control over air as a precious natural resource. What emerges is a complex political ecology of the global nineteenth century and beyond.