Highly original and fascinating cultural and political history told through Belfast's popular music scene in the 1960s in the context of Northern Ireland's sociopolitical milieu. With particular emphasis on Van Morrison, Them, and Ottilie Patterson; also features the Peter Whitehead film of TheRolling Stones. 15 b/w illus.

Perfect for fans of The United States vs. Billie Holiday, this is the fiercely honest, no-holds-barred memoir of the legendary jazz, swing, and standards singing sensation—a fiftieth-anniversary edition updated with stunning new photos, a revised discography, and an insightful foreword by music writer David Ritz Taking the reader on a fast-moving journey from Billie Holiday’s rough-and-tumble Baltimore childhood (where she ran errands at a whorehouse in exchange for the chance to listen to Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith albums), to her emergence on Harlem’s club scene, to sold-out performances with the Count Basie Orchestra and with Artie Shaw and his band, this revelatory memoir is notable for its trenchant observations on the racism that darkened Billie’s life and the heroin addiction that ended it too soon. We are with her during the mesmerizing debut of “Strange Fruit”; with her as she rubs shoulders with the biggest movie stars and musicians of the day (Bob Hope, Lana Turner, Clark Gable, Benny Goodman, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and more); and with her through the scrapes with Jim Crow, spats with Sarah Vaughan, ignominious jailings, and tragic decline. All of this is told in Holiday’s tart, streetwise style and hip patois that makes it read as if it were written yesterday.

"Deep Blues" offers a concise, authoritative account of the music's Afircan beginnings, its early evolution, and its transformation from a backcountry good-time music into today's modern blues and rock and roll.

Rory Gallagher is a hero and icon of rock music. He inspired guitar players from The Edge to Johnny Marr, Slash to Gary Moore, Johnny Fean to Philip Donnelly, Declan Sinnott to Brian May. He toured incessantly and sold over 30 million albums worldwide. Acknowledged as one of the world's leading guitarists, he collaborated with his boyhood hero Muddy Waters, and played with Jerry Lee Lewis, Albert King and Lonnie Donegan. In this compelling biography, contemporaries, fellow musicians, film maker Tony Palmer and Taste drummer John Wilson tell stories about Rory from his meteoric rise in the late 1960s with Taste to his remarkable solo career. This is a compelling testament to the musical life of a shy and retiring working-class hero, distinguished by his checked shirts and his astounding dexterity on acoustic and electric guitar – the guitarist and blues man who blazed a trail for others to follow.

This book explores the influence of geographical isolation and peripherality on the functioning of music industries and scenes which operate within and from such locales. As is explored, these sites engage dynamic practices to offset challenges resulting from geographical isolation and peripherality.

The Virgin Encyclopaedia of the Blues is a complete handbook of information and opinion about the history of the most classically simple, enduring and inspiring genre in the history of popular music. All entries have been created from the massive database of The Encyclopaedia of Popular Music, which has swiftly and firmly established itself as the undisputed champion of contemporary music reference books. Brand new research ensures that the 1000 entries are bang up-to-date and cover everyone - the musicians, bands, songwriters, producers and record labels - who has made a significant impact on the development of the blues. It brings together pioneers like Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson, the influence of Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon on the blues boom of the 1960s, and the most recent blues resurgence featuring Keb'Mo, Larry Garner and Jonny Lang. As well as the giants of the blues, this encyclopaedia has the range and depth to include performers who flew the blues flag during fallow periods, the 1980s band Roomful of Blues for example, or acts like Paul Butterfield, Chicken Shack, Stevie Ray Vaughan, who took the music to a wider, whiter, audience. Some blues musicians, including John Lee Hooker and Taj Mahal, seem to last forever. Others simply defined the genre, like Lead Belly, Bessie Smith and Howlin' Wolf. Whomever you remember or want to know more about, each entry gives the essential elements - dates, career facts, discography and album ratings - as well as a sense of context, striking a balance between the extremes of the self-opinionated and the bland.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE PENDERYN MUSIC BOOK PRIZERoots, Radicals & Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World is the first book to explore this phenomenon in depth - a meticulously researched and joyous account that explains how skiffle sparked a revolution that shaped pop music as we have come to know it. It's a story of jazz pilgrims and blues blowers, Teddy Boys and beatnik girls, coffee-bar bohemians and refugees from the McCarthyite witch-hunts. Billy traces how the guitar came to the forefront of music in the UK and led directly to the British Invasion of the US charts in the 1960s.Emerging from the trad-jazz clubs of the early '50s, skiffle was adopted by kids who growing up during the dreary, post-war rationing years. These were Britain's first teenagers, looking for a music of their own in a pop culture dominated by crooners and mediated by a stuffy BBC. Lonnie Donegan hit the charts in 1956 with a version of 'Rock Island Line' and soon sales of guitars rocketed from 5,000 to 250,000 a year. Like punk rock that would flourish two decades later, skiffle was a do-it-yourself music. All you needed were three guitar chords and you could form a group, with mates playing tea-chest bass and washboard as a rhythm section.