What is a popular kind of music that originated in the United States? The answer is Jazz. Mixing folk and blues influences, talented artists from Scott Joplin to Wynton Marsalis have kept jazz at the forefront of the American music scene. The musicians portrayed in this book played different instruments and had different styles, but all helped keep jazz fresh and new. Readers follow ten prominent jazz musicians (Scott Joplin, Daniel Louis Armstrong, Edward Kennedy Ellington, Mary Lou Williams, Benjamin David Goodman, John Birks Gillespie, Charles Christopher Parker, Jr., Miles Dewey Davis, III, John Coltrane, and Wynton Marsalis) through their many successes and varied hardships.

Keeping in mind the long history of music and its powerful effect on the human social and cultural psyche, this brand-new volume in the Innovators series profiles the most innovative and important individuals in music history. Each of these extended biographies offers concise and informative top matter that includes an introductory summary of the person's significance; birth and death dates and places; and specialty fields. Biographies represent a strong, global, cross-gender focus, and each biography offers a sidebar focusing on the group(s)/achievement(s) for which the subject is best known. Innovators in Music spans three large volumes, examining over 350 individuals and personalities who had an influential impact on the music industry, including: Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Ani DiFranco, Peter Gabriel, Arlo Guthrie, Janis Joplin, Patti LaBelle, John Lennon, Annie Lennox, Little Richard, Nicki Minaj, Willie Nelson, Itzhak Perlman, Lou Reed, Nina Simone, Patti Smith, Michael Stipe, Kanye West, Hank Williams, "Weird Al" Yankovic, and many more. -- salempress.com

Prominent symphony conductor Maurice Peress describes his career conducting the premiers of such works as Leonard Bernstein's 'Mass' and Duke Ellington's 'Queenie Pie'. He traces the great impact of African American music on American music, beginning with the work of Antonin Dvořák.

Music and the Creative Spirit is a book of interviews with today's innovators in Jazz, Improvisation, and the Avant Garde, including Pat Metheny, Regina Carter, Fred Anderson, John Zorn, Joshua Redman, and others.

AN INTERACTIVE, SWING-ALONG PICTURE BOOK—WITH 12 SOUND CHIPS! Are you ready to swing? Discover the wonders of jazz: How to get in the groove, what it means to play a solo, and the joy of singing along in a call-and-response. In this interactive swing-along picture book with 12 sound chips, you’ll hear the instruments of jazz—the rhythm section with its banjo, drums, and tuba, and the leads, like the clarinet, trumpet, and trombone. And you’ll hear singers scat, improvising melodies with nonsense syllables like be-bop and doo-we-ah! Along the way, you’ll learn how this unique African American art form started in New Orleans, and how jazz changed over time as innovative musicians like King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday added their own ideas to it. Press the buttons to hear the band, the rhythms, and the singer calling out: “OH WHEN THE SAINTS—oh when the saints…”

Essays consider the work of Sarah Vaughan, Teddy Wilson, Tony Bennett, Roy Eldridge, Lester Young, Joe Turner, Art Pepper, Sonny Stitt, Woody Herman, Wynton Marsalis, and Frank Sinatra