Music and lyrics for over 200 songs. John Henry, Goin' Home, Little Brown Jug, Alabama-Bound, Black Betty, The Hammer Song, Jesse James, Down in the Valley, The Ballad of Davy Crockett, and many more.

In this pathbreaking book, Allen Forte uses modern analytical procedures to explore the large repertoire of beautiful love songs written during the heyday of American musical theater, the Big Bands, and Tin Pan Alley. Covering the work of such songwriters as Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, and Harold Arlen, he seeks to illuminate this extraordinary music indigenous to America by revealing its deeper organizational characteristics. In so doing, he aims to establish it as a unique corpus of music that deserves more intensive study and appreciation by scholars and connoisseurs in the broader fields of American popular music and jazz. Expressing much of the traditional tonality associated with European music in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the love songs of the Golden Age are shown to draw on a rich variety of elements--popular harmony, idiomatic lyric-writing, and Afro-American dance rhythms. His analyses of such songs as "Embraceable You" or "Yesterdays" in particular exemplify his ability to convey the sublime, unpretentious simplicity of this great music.

The first book to explore the ballad's history and emotional appeal, surveying seventy years of the genre in modern America.

Pete Seeger is an outstanding folksinger and an American treasure. Millions in every corner of the globe have listened to and sung along with Seeger—discovering the riches of America's folk song heritage. Originally published in 1961, this book includes the most popular songs in Pete Seeger's songbag. 84 traditional folk songs, including such favorites as "Irene Goodnight," "Darline Corey," "Shenandoah," etc. Each song comes complete with melody line, lyrics, guitar chords, and Seeger's own introductory comments. Beautifully illustrated throughout with over 100 reproductions of documentary prints and wood-cuts, American Favorite Ballads presents a rich panorama of our America's great folk song legacy.

In American music, the notion of "roots" has been a powerful refrain, but just what constitutes our true musical traditions has often been a matter of debate. As Benjamin Filene reveals, a number of competing visions of America's musical past have vied fo

Updated and revised to include a new selected list of record albums, fold festivals, books and magazines on folk song.