The Music And Mythocracy Of Col Bruce Hampton

Author : Jerry Grillo
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820358495
Total Pages : 238 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Music and Mythocracy of Col. Bruce Hampton written by Jerry Grillo and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2021-04-01 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Col. Bruce Hampton was a charismatic musical figure who launched and continued to influence the jam band genre over his fifty-plus years performing. Part bandleader, soul singer, storyteller, conjuror, poet, preacher, comedian, philosopher, and trickster, Col. Bruce actively sought out and dealt in the weird, wild underbelly of the American South. The Music and Mythocracy of Col. Bruce Hampton is neither a true biography in the Boswellian sense nor a work of cultural studies, although it combines elements of both. Even as biographer Jerry Grillo has investigated and pursued the facts, this life history of Col. Bruce reads like a novel—one full of amazing tales of a musical life lived on and off the road. Grillo’s interviews with Hampton and his bandmates, family, friends, and fans paint a fascinating portrait of an artist who fostered some of the best music ever played in America. Grillo aims not so much to document and demystify the self-mythologizing performer as to explain why his fans and friends loved him so dearly. Hampton’s family history, his place in Atlanta and southeastern musical history, his significant friendships and musical relationships, and the controversies over personnel in his Hampton Grease Band over the years are all discussed. What emerges is a portrait of a P. T. Barnum of the musical world, but one who included his audience and invited them through the tent door to share his inside joke, with plenty of joy to go around.

Author : Jerry Grillo
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820368687
Total Pages : 238 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Music and Mythocracy of Col. Bruce Hampton written by Jerry Grillo and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2021-04 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Jerry Grillo
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780820358482
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.87/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Music and Mythocracy of Col. Bruce Hampton written by Jerry Grillo and published by . This book was released on 2021-04 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Colonel Bruce Hampton (the stage name of Gustav Valentine Berglund III) was a regional cult musical figure who launched and continued to influence the jam band genre over his more than fifty years in performing. The Myth of Col. Bruce Hampton is neither a true biography in the Boswellian sense nor a work of cultural studies, although it combines elements of both. As one of the reviewers said, Grillo's account of the life and music career of Col. Bruce (1947-2017) "reads like a novel." Grillo aims not so much to document and demystify the often self-mythologizing performer so much as explain why his fans and friends loved him so dearly. Hampton's family history, his place in Atlanta and southeastern musical history, significant friendships and musical relationships, and controversies over personnel in his Hampton Grease Band are covered. The author makes heavy use of interviews with Hampton, his bandmates, family, friends, and fans. The late Bruce Hampton's legacy includes being a touchstone for acts like the Allman Brothers, Widespread Panic, and the Grateful Dead. Hampton's mythology quickly outgrew his truth and he was quite happy that way"--

Author : Gordon Lamb
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820354139
Total Pages : 134 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Widespread Panic in the Streets of Athens, Georgia written by Gordon Lamb and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In April 1998, legendary southern jam band Widespread Panic held a free open-air record release show in downtown Athens, Georgia. This book recounts that event and what inspired nearly 100,000 spectators to take part.

Author : John Bealle
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 9780820319216
Total Pages : 332 pages
Book Rating : 4.1X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Public Worship, Private Faith written by John Bealle and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sacred Harp, a tunebook that first appeared in 1844, has stood as a model of early American musical culture for most of this century. Tunebooks such as this, printed in shape notes for public singing and singing schools, followed the New England tradition of singing hymns and Psalms from printed music. Nineteeth-century Americans were inundated by such books, but only the popularity of The Sacred Harp has endured throughout the twentieth century. With this tunebook as his focus, John Bealle surveys definitive moments in American musical history, from the lively singing schools of the New England Puritans to the dramatic theological crises that split New England Congregationalism, from the rise of the genteel urban mainstream in frontier Cincinnati to the bold "New South" movement that sought to transform the southern economy, from the nostalgic culture-writing era of the Great Depression to the post-World War II folksong revival. Although Bealle finds that much has changed in the last century, the custodians of the tradition of Sacred Harp singing have kept it alive and accessible in an increasingly diverse cultural marketplace. Public Worship, Private Faith is a thorough and readable analysis of the historical, social, musical, theological, and textual factors that have contributed to the endurance of Sacred Harp singing.

Author : Esther M. Morgan-Ellis
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820352039
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Everybody Sing! written by Esther M. Morgan-Ellis and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2018-01-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 1920s, a visit to the movie theater almost always included a sing-along. Patrons joined together to render old favorites and recent hits, usually accompanied by the strains of a mighty Wurlitzer organ. The organist was responsible for choosing the repertoire and presentation style that would appeal to his or her patrons, so each theater offered a unique experience. When sound technology drove both musicians and participatory culture out of the theater in the early 1930s, the practice faded and was eventually forgotten. Despite the popularity and ubiquity of community singing—it was practiced in every state, in theaters large and small—there has been scant research on the topic. This volume is the first dedicated account of community singing in the picture palace and includes nearly one hundred images, such as photographs of the movie houses’ opulent interiors, reproductions of sing-along slides, and stills from the original Screen Songs “follow the bouncing ball” cartoons. Esther M. Morgan-Ellis brings the era of movie palaces to life. She presents the origins of theater sing-alongs in the prewar community singing movement, describes the basic components of a sing-along, explores the unique presentation styles of several organists, and assesses the aftermath of sound technology, including the sing-along films and children’s matinees of the 1930s.

Author : Erich Nunn
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 082034737X
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sounding the Color Line written by Erich Nunn and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sounding the Color Line explores how competing understandings of the U.S. South in the first decades of the twentieth century have led us to experience musical forms, sounds, and genres in racialized contexts. Yet, though we may speak of white or black music, rock or rap, sounds constantly leak through such barriers. A critical disjuncture exists, then, between actual interracial musical and cultural forms on the one hand and racialized structures of feeling on the other. This is nowhere more apparent than in the South. Like Jim Crow segregation, the separation of musical forms along racial lines has required enormous energy to maintain. How, asks Nunn, did the protocols structuring listeners' racial associations arise? How have they evolved and been maintained in the face of repeated transgressions of the musical color line? Considering the South as the imagined ground where conflicts of racial and national identities are staged, this book looks at developing ideas concerning folk song and racial and cultural nationalism alongside the competing and sometimes contradictory workings of an emerging culture industry. Drawing on a diverse archive of musical recordings, critical artifacts, and literary texts, Nunn reveals how the musical color line has not only been established and maintained but also repeatedly crossed, fractured, and reformed. This push and pull--between segregationist cultural logics and music's disrespect of racially defined boundaries--is an animating force in twentieth-century American popular culture.

Author : Joanna Teresa Demers
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820330752
Total Pages : 194 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Steal This Music written by Joanna Teresa Demers and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2010-01-25 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is music property? Under what circumstances can music be stolen? Such questions lie at the heart of Joanna Demers’s timely look at how overzealous intellectual property (IP) litigation both stifles and stimulates musical creativity. A musicologist, industry consultant, and musician, Demers dissects works that have brought IP issues into the mainstream culture, such as DJ Danger Mouse’s “Grey Album” and Mike Batt’s homage-gone-wrong to John Cage’s silent composition “4’33.” Demers also discusses such artists as Ice Cube, DJ Spooky, and John Oswald, whose creativity is sparked by their defiant circumvention of licensing and copyright issues. Demers is concerned about the fate of transformative appropriation—the creative process by which artists and composers borrow from, and respond to, other musical works. In the United States, only two elements of music are eligible for copyright protection: the master recording and the composition (lyrics and melody) itself. Harmony, rhythm, timbre, and other qualities that make a piece distinctive are virtually unregulated. This two-tiered system had long facilitated transformative appropriation while prohibiting blatant forms of theft. The advent of digital file sharing and the specter of global piracy changed everything, says Demers. Now, record labels and publishers are broadening the scope of IP “infringement” to include allusive borrowing in all forms: sampling, celebrity impersonation—even Girl Scout campfire sing-alongs. Paying exorbitant licensing fees or risking even harsher penalties for unauthorized borrowing have become the only options for some musicians. Others, however, creatively sidestep not only the law but also the very infrastructure of the music industry. Moving easily between techno and classical, between corporate boardrooms and basement recording studios, Demers gives us new ways to look at the tension between IP law, musical meaning and appropriation, and artistic freedom.

Author : Bill Anderson
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820349666
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Whisperin' Bill Anderson written by Bill Anderson and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whisperin' Bill: An Unprecedented Life in Country Music presents a revealing portrait of Bill Anderson, one of the most prolific songwriters in the history of country music. Mega country music hits like "City Lights," (Ray Price), "Tips Of My Fingers," (Roy Clark, Eddy Arnold, Steve Wariner), "Once A Day," (Connie Smith), "Saginaw, Michigan," (Lefty Frizzell), and many more flowed from his pen, making him one of the most decorated songwriters in music history. But the iconic singer, songwriter, performer, and TV host came to a point in his career where he questioned if what he had to say mattered anymore. Music Row had changed, a new generation of artists and songwriters had transformed the genre, and the Country Music Hall of Fame member and fifty-year Grand Ole Opry star was no longer relevant. By 1990, he wasn't writing anymore. Bad investments left him teetering at bankruptcy's edge. His marriage was falling apart. And in Nashville, a music town where youth often carries the day, he was a museum piece--only seen as a nostalgia act, waving from the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. Anderson was only in his fifties when he assumed he had climbed all the mountains he was intended to scale. But in those moments plagued with self-doubt, little did he know, his most rewarding climb lie ahead. A follow-up to his 1989 autobiography, this honest and revealing book tells the story of a man with an unprecedented gift, holding on to it in order to share it. Known as "Whisperin' Bill" to generations of fans for his soft vocalizations and spoken lyrics, Anderson is the only songwriter in country music history to have a song on the charts in each of the past seven consecutive decades. He has celebrated chart-topping success as a recording artist with eighty charting singles and thirty-seven Top Ten country hits, including "Still," "8 x 10," "I Love You Drops," and "Mama Sang A Song." A six-time Song of the Year Award-winner and BMI Icon Award recipient, Anderson has taken home many CMA and ACM Award trophies and garnered multiple GRAMMY nominations. His knack for the spoken word has also made him a successful television host, having starred on "The Bill Anderson Show," "Opry Backstage," "Country's Family Reunion," and others. Moreover, his multi-faceted success extends far beyond the country format with artists like James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Dean Martin, and Elvis Costello recording his songs. Today, thanks to the support of musical peers and a few famous friends who believed in him, Anderson continues to forge the path of lyrical integrity in music, harnessing his ability to craft a song that tells a familiar story, grabs you by the heart and moves you. Modern day examples include "Whiskey Lullaby" (Brad Paisley and Allison Krauss), "Give It Away" (George Strait), "A Lot of Things Different" (Kenny Chesney), and "Which Bridge to Cross" (Vince Gill). A product of a long-gone Nashville, Anderson worked to reinvent himself, and this biography documents Anderson's fifty-plus-year career--a career he once thought unattainable. Richly illustrated with black-and-white photos of Anderson interacting with the superstars of American music, including such legends as Patsy Cline, Vince Gill, and Steve Wariner, this book highlights Anderson's trajectory in the business and his influence on the past, present, and future of this dynamic genre.

Author : Glenn T. Eskew
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820333301
Total Pages : 568 pages
Book Rating : 4.04/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Johnny Mercer written by Glenn T. Eskew and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2013-11-15 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Herndon “Johnny” Mercer (1909–76) remained in the forefront of American popular music from the 1930s through the 1960s, writing over a thousand songs, collaborating with all the great popular composers and jazz musicians of his day, working in Hollywood and on Broadway, and as cofounder of Capitol Records, helping to promote the careers of Nat “King” Cole, Margaret Whiting, Peggy Lee, and many other singers. Mercer’s songs—sung by Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Lena Horne, and scores of other performers—are canonical parts of the great American songbook. Four of his songs received Academy Awards: “Moon River,” “Days of Wine and Roses,” “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe,” and “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening.” Mercer standards such as “Hooray for Hollywood” and “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby” remain in the popular imagination. Exhaustively researched, Glenn T. Eskew’s biography improves upon earlier popular treatments of the Savannah, Georgia–born songwriter to produce a sophisticated, insightful, evenhanded examination of one of America’s most popular and successful chart-toppers. Johnny Mercer: Southern Songwriter for the World provides a compelling chronological narrative that places Mercer within a larger framework of diaspora entertainers who spread a southern multiracial culture across the nation and around the world. Eskew contends that Mercer and much of his music remained rooted in his native South, being deeply influenced by the folk music of coastal Georgia and the blues and jazz recordings made by black and white musicians. At Capitol Records, Mercer helped redirect American popular music by commodifying these formerly distinctive regional sounds into popular music. When rock ’n’ roll diminished opportunities at home, Mercer looked abroad, collaborating with international composers to create transnational songs. At heart, Eskew says, Mercer was a jazz musician rather than a Tin Pan Alley lyricist, and the interpenetration of jazz and popular song that he created expressed elements of his southern heritage that made his work distinctive and consistently kept his music before an approving audience.