Beyond The Chitlin Circuit

Author : Preston Lauterbach
Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 0393076520
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Chitlin Circuit written by Preston Lauterbach and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2011-07-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A definitive account of the birth of rock 'n' roll in black America, this book establishes the Chitlin' Circuit as a major force in American musical history. Combining terrific firsthand reporting with deep historical research, Preston Lauterbach uncovers characters like Chicago Defender columnist Walter Barnes, who pioneered the circuit in the 1930s, and larger-than-life promoters such as Denver Ferguson, the Indianapolis gambling chieftain who consolidated it in the 1940s. Charging from Memphis to Houston and now-obscure points in between, The Chitlin' Circuit brings us into the sweaty back rooms where such stars as James Brown, B. B. King, and Little Richard got their start. With his unforgettable portraits of unsung heroes including King Kolax, Sax Kari, and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Lauterbach writes of a world of clubs and con men that has managed to avoid much examination despite its wealth of brash characters, intriguing plotlines, and vulgar glory, and gives us an excavation of an underground musical America.

Author : Preston Lauterbach
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393246752
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Beale Street Dynasty: Sex, Song, and the Struggle for the Soul of Memphis written by Preston Lauterbach and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-03-30 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The vivid history of Beale Street—a lost world of swaggering musicians, glamorous madams, and ruthless politicians—and the battle for the soul of Memphis. Following the Civil War, Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, thrived as a cauldron of sex and song, violence and passion. But out of this turmoil emerged a center of black progress, optimism, and cultural ferment. Preston Lauterbach tells this vivid, fascinating story through the multigenerational saga of a family whose ambition, race pride, and moral complexity indelibly shaped the city that would loom so large in American life. Robert Church, who would become “the South’s first black millionaire,” was a mulatto slave owned by his white father. Having survived a deadly race riot in 1866, Church constructed an empire of vice in the booming river town. He made a fortune with saloons, gambling, and—shockingly—white prostitution. But he also nurtured the militant journalism of Ida B. Wells and helped revolutionize American music through the work of composer W.C. Handy, the man who claimed to have invented the blues. In the face of Jim Crow, the Church fortune helped fashion the most powerful black political organization of the early twentieth century. Robert and his son, Bob Jr., bought and sold property, founded a bank, and created a park and auditorium for their people finer than the places whites had forbidden them to attend. However, the Church family operated through a tense arrangement with the Democrat machine run by the notorious E. H. “Boss” Crump, who stole elections and controlled city hall. The battle between this black dynasty and the white political machine would define the future of Memphis. Brilliantly researched and swiftly plotted, Beale Street Dynasty offers a captivating account of one of America’s iconic cities—by one of our most talented narrative historians.

Author : Annye C. Anderson
Publisher : Hachette Books
ISBN 13 : 030684527X
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Brother Robert written by Annye C. Anderson and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Rolling Stone-Kirkus Best Music Book of 2020 “[Brother Robert} book does much to pull the blues master out of the fog of myth.”—Rolling Stone An intimate memoir by blues legend Robert Johnson's stepsister, including new details about his family, music, influences, tragic death, and musical afterlife Though Robert Johnson was only twenty-seven years young and relatively unknown at the time of his tragic death in 1938, his enduring recordings have solidified his status as a progenitor of the Delta blues style. And yet, while his music has retained the steadfast devotion of modern listeners, much remains unknown about the man who penned and played these timeless tunes. Few people alive today actually remember what Johnson was really like, and those who do have largely upheld their silence-until now. In Brother Robert, nonagenarian Annye C. Anderson sheds new light on a real-life figure largely obscured by his own legend: her kind and incredibly talented stepbrother, Robert Johnson. This book chronicles Johnson's unconventional path to stardom, from the harrowing story behind his illegitimate birth, to his first strum of the guitar on Anderson's father's knee, to the genre-defining recordings that would one day secure his legacy. Along the way, readers are gifted not only with Anderson's personal anecdotes, but with colorful recollections passed down to Anderson by members of their family-the people who knew Johnson best. Readers also learn about the contours of his working life in Memphis, never-before-disclosed details about his romantic history, and all of Johnson's favorite things, from foods and entertainers to brands of tobacco and pomade. Together, these stories don't just bring the mythologized Johnson back down to earth; they preserve both his memory and his integrity. For decades, Anderson and her family have ignored the tall tales of Johnson "selling his soul to the devil" and the speculative to fictionalized accounts of his life that passed for biography. Brother Robert is here to set the record straight. Featuring a foreword by Elijah Wald and a Q&A with Anderson, Wald, Preston Lauterbach, and Peter Guralnick, this book paints a vivid portrait of an elusive figure who forever changed the musical landscape as we know it.

Author : Marcus Anthony Hunter
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520292820
Total Pages : 310 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Chocolate Cities written by Marcus Anthony Hunter and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2018-01-16 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When you think of a map of the United States, what do you see? Now think of the Seattle that begot Jimi Hendrix. The Dallas that shaped Erykah Badu. The Holly Springs, Mississippi, that compelled Ida B. Wells to activism against lynching. The Birmingham where Martin Luther King, Jr., penned his most famous missive. Now how do you see the United States? Chocolate Cities offers a new cartography of the United States—a “Black Map” that more accurately reflects the lived experiences and the future of Black life in America. Drawing on cultural sources such as film, music, fiction, and plays, and on traditional resources like Census data, oral histories, ethnographies, and health and wealth data, the book offers a new perspective for analyzing, mapping, and understanding the ebbs and flows of the Black American experience—all in the cities, towns, neighborhoods, and communities that Black Americans have created and defended. Black maps are consequentially different from our current geographical understanding of race and place in America. And as the United States moves toward a majority minority society, Chocolate Cities provides a broad and necessary assessment of how racial and ethnic minorities make and change America’s social, economic, and political landscape.

Author : Kimberly C. Roberts
Publisher : Xlibris Corporation
ISBN 13 : 147978902X
Total Pages : 191 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Joy Ride! The Stars and Stories of Philly's Famous Uptown Theater written by Kimberly C. Roberts and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Joy Ride! The Stars and Stories of Philly’s Famous Uptown Theater" is the exclusive, behind-the-scenes, inside story of iconic disc jockey Georgie Woods" spectacular R&B shows at Philadelphia’s Uptown Theater, and how the controlled creative chaos at the majestic movie house inspired "The Philly Sound." Told by the people who actually lived it, "Joy Ride!" is the fi rst comprehensive history on the Uptown, which was once a mandatory stop on the legendary "chitlin' circuit." It features the intimate, amusing, outrageous and sometimes scandalous stories of dozens of decorated entertainers, including 11 Rock and Roll Hall of Famers. All agree that like Georgie Woods' soulful theme song that opened his R&B extravaganzas, every show at the Uptown Theater was a "Joy Ride!"

Author : Rashida Z. Shaw McMahon
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351401629
Total Pages : 319 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Black Circuit written by Rashida Z. Shaw McMahon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-03-09 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Black Circuit: Race, Performance, and Spectatorship in Black Popular Theatre presents the first book-length study of Chitlin Circuit theatre, the most popular and controversial form of Black theatre to exist outside the purview of Broadway since the 1980s. Through historical and sociological research, Rashida Z. Shaw McMahon links the fraught racial histories in American slave plantations and early African American cuisine to the performance sites of nineteenth-century minstrelsy, early-twentieth-century vaudeville, and mid-twentieth-century gospel musicals. The Black Circuit traces this rise of a Black theatrical popular culture that exemplifies W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1926 parameters of "for us, near us, by us, and about us," with critical differences that, McMahon argues, complicate our understanding of performance and spectatorship in African American theatre. McMahon shows how an integrated and evolving network of consumerism, culture, circulation, exchange, ideologies, and meaning making has emerged in the performance environments of Chitlin Circuit theatre that is reflective of the broader influences at play in acts of minority spectatorship. She labels this network the Black Circuit.

Author : Henry T. Sampson
Publisher : Scarecrow Press
ISBN 13 : 0810883511
Total Pages : 1573 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Blacks in Blackface written by Henry T. Sampson and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2013-10-30 with total page 1573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published in 1980, Blacks in Blackface was the first and most extensive book up to that time to deal exclusively with every aspect of all-Black musical comedies performed on the stage between 1910 and 1940. Sampson provides an unprecedented wealth of information on legitimate musical comedies, including show synopses, casts, songs, and production credits. Sampson also recounts the struggles of Black performers and producers to overcome the racial prejudice of white show owners, music publishers, and theatre managers and booking agents to achieve adequate financial compensation for their talents and managerial expertise. A comprehensive volume that covers all aspects of Black musical shows performed in theatres, nightclubs, circuses, and medicine shows, this edition of Blacks in Blackface can be used as a reference for serious scholars and researchers of Black show business in the United States before 1940.

Author : Vanessa Lynn
Publisher : Createspace Independent Pub
ISBN 13 : 9781482376777
Total Pages : 162 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Beyond the Chitlin' Circuit written by Vanessa Lynn and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2013-02-19 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finally! A tangible resource for the forgotten urban playwright! Commonly referred to as the “Chitlin' Circuit” (considered a negative connotation by many), urban theater is nothing more than a joke in some circles, but many urban playwrights are laughing all the way to the bank! The truth is, this little known phenomenon has recently caught the eye of the industry because of the success of urban playwrights such as Tyler Perry who made the transition from the stage to a multi-million dollar film and television empire. But every weekend throughout the country from small church buildings to large arenas, scores of adoring fans pack out theaters to witness a rabble rousing gospel or urban play. And no, for the most part the urban playwright does not have a technical degree in theater, but they do have a dream often leading to less than desirable technical results, but at the same time a pleased an uplifted audience. Beyond the Chitlin' Circuit, The Ultimate Urban Playwright's Guide is the first to tackle the wild beast of urban theater. At last, a resource to assist from the creative process, to the stage and beyond. A practical hands-on guide that can be a reference for nearly every real life scenario a playwright or producer could run into in this unpredictable world. And with demands high in major retailers for urban inspirational plays and films, this is the perfect time to perfect our craft and move beyond the “Chitlin' Circuit!” to the world's stage!

Author : Debra Devi
Publisher : True Nature Books
ISBN 13 : 9781624071850
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Language of the Blues written by Debra Devi and published by True Nature Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive dictionary of blues lyrics invites listeners to interpret what they hear in blues songs and blues culture, including excerpts from original interviews with Dr. John, Bonnie Raitt, Hubert Sumlin, Buddy Guy, and many others.

Author : Jeffery Renard Allen
Publisher : Graywolf Press
ISBN 13 : 1555970923
Total Pages : 608 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Song of the Shank written by Jeffery Renard Allen and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2014-06-17 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A contemporary American masterpiece about music, race, an unforgettable man, and an unreal America during the Civil War era At the heart of this remarkable novel is Thomas Greene Wiggins, a nineteenth-century slave and improbable musical genius who performed under the name Blind Tom. Song of the Shank opens in 1866 as Tom and his guardian, Eliza Bethune, struggle to adjust to their fashionable apartment in the city in the aftermath of riots that had driven them away a few years before. But soon a stranger arrives from the mysterious island of Edgemere—inhabited solely by African settlers and black refugees from the war and riots—who intends to reunite Tom with his now-liberated mother. As the novel ranges from Tom's boyhood to the heights of his performing career, the inscrutable savant is buffeted by opportunistic teachers and crooked managers, crackpot healers and militant prophets. In his symphonic novel, Jeffery Renard Allen blends history and fantastical invention to bring to life a radical cipher, a man who profoundly changes all who encounter him.