A chronicle of the rise and development of a unique musical form. Inducted into the Blues Foundation's Blues Hall of Fame under its original title Walking to New Orleans, this fascinating history focuses on the music of major R&B artists and the crucial contributions of the New Orleans music industry. Newly revised for this edition, much of the material comes firsthand from those who helped create the genre, including Fats Domino, Ray Charles, and Wardell Quezergue.

"May 1961, and one tune was sitting pretty atop both the R&B and pop charts. "Mother-in-Law" became the first hit by a New Orleans artist to achieve this feat?to rule black and white airwaves alike. Ernie K-Doe was only twenty-five years old, and his reign was just beginning. Born in New Orleans?s Charity Hospital, K-Doe came of age in a still-segregated South. He built his musical chops singing gospel in church, graduating to late-night gigs in clubs on the city?s backstreets. He practiced self-projection, reinvention, shedding his surname, Kador, for the radio-friendly tag K-Doe. He coined his own dialect, heavy on hyperbole, and created his own pantheon, placing himself front and center: "There have only been five great singers of rhythm & blues?Ernie K-Doe, James Brown, and Ernie K-Doe!" Decades after releasing his one-and-only chart-topper, he crowned himself Emperor of the Universe. A decade after his death, lovers of New Orleans music remain his loyal subjects." -- from publisher's website.

In New Orleans, music screams. It honks. It blats. It wails. It purrs. It messes with time. It messes with pitch. It messes with your feet. It messes with your head. One musician leads to another; traditions overlap, intertwine, nourish each other; and everyone seems to know everyone else. From traditional jazz through rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll to sissy bounce, in second-line parades, from the streets to clubs and festivals, the music seems unending. In Talking New Orleans Music, author Burt Feintuch has pursued a decades-long fascination with the music of this singular city. Thinking about the devastation—not only material but also cultural—caused by the levees breaking in 2005, he began a series of conversations with master New Orleans musicians, talking about their lives, the cultural contexts of their music, their experiences during and after Katrina, and their city. Photographer Gary Samson joined him, adding a compelling visual dimension to the book. Here you will find intimate and revealing interviews with eleven of the city's most celebrated musicians and culture-bearers—Soul Queen Irma Thomas, Walter “Wolfman” Washington, Charmaine Neville, John Boutté, Dr. Michael White, Deacon John Moore, Cajun bandleader Bruce Daigrepont, Zion Harmonizer Brazella Briscoe, producer Scott Billington, as well as Christie Jourdain and Janine Waters of the Original Pinettes, New Orleans's only all-woman brass band. Feintuch's interviews and Samson's sixty-five color photographs create a powerful portrait of an American place like no other and its worlds of music.

Up from the Cradle of Jazz is the inside story of New Orleans music from the rise of rhythm and blues through the post-Hurricane Katrina resurrection.

This book is based on performances and transcriptions from the DCI music videos Herlin Riley: Ragtime & beyond, and Johnny Vidacovich: Street beats modern applications. Additional interviews and essays on: Baby Dodds, Vernel Fournier, Ed Blackwell, James Black and Freddie Kohlman, Smokey Johnson, David Lee, and bassist Bill Huntington.

Nearly 50 years after his death, Louis Armstrong remains one of the 20th century's most iconic figures. Popular fans still appreciate his later hits such as "Hello, Dolly!" and "What a Wonderful World," while in the jazz community, he remains venerated for his groundbreaking innovations in the 1920s. The achievements of Armstrong's middle years, however, possess some of the trumpeter's most scintillating and career-defining stories. But the story of this crucial time has never been told in depth until now. Between 1929 and 1947, Armstrong transformed himself from a little-known trumpeter in Chicago to an internationally renowned pop star, setting in motion the innovations of the Swing Era and Bebop. He had a similar effect on the art of American pop singing, waxing some of his most identifiable hits such as "Jeepers Creepers" and "When You're Smiling." However as author Ricky Riccardi shows, this transformative era wasn't without its problems, from racist performance reviews and being held up at gunpoint by gangsters to struggling with an overworked embouchure and getting arrested for marijuana possession. Utilizing a prodigious amount of new research, Riccardi traces Armstrong's mid-career fall from grace and dramatic resurgence. Featuring never-before-published photographs and stories culled from Armstrong's personal archives, Heart Full of Rhythm tells the story of how the man called "Pops" became the first "King of Pop."