Heroes and villains
Subtitle: essays on music, movies, comics, and culture
By: David Hajdu.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Boston
Language: eng
Number of pages: 336
ISBN-13: 9780306818332
Subjects: Music -- History and criticism; Musicians
Description: "Heroes and Villains is the first collection of essays by David Hajdu, the award-winning author of The Ten-Cent Plague, Positively 4th Street, and Lush Life. Eclectic and controversial, Hajdu's essays take on topics as varied as pop music, jazz, the avant-garde, comic books, and our downloading culture."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes index.
Table of contents: title: Foreword by David Yaffe; title: Part I. B's world. Billy Eckstine: the man who was too hot; title: Part II. Whose standards? Mos Def and the American songbook ; Rodgers and Hart ; Sammy Davis, Jr.: two lives ; Anita O'Day ; Bobby Darin: Roman candle ; Susannah McCorkle; title: Part III. Blues and the abstract truth. A hundred years of blues ; Alan Lomax ; Dinah Washington: queen ; Ray Charles; title: Part IV. Growing up. Elvis Costello at fifty ; Brian Wilson and the lost masterpiece ; Sting the lutenist ; Joe Sacco and Daniel Clowes ; The white stripes ; Abbey Lincoln and Mark Murphy ; Three women in pop: Taylor Swift, Beyoncé́, and Lucinda Williams; title: Part V. Cultural machinery.The blogging of American pop ; Myspace ; The music of Starbucks ; Rick Rubin and Kanye West ; Open-source remixing; title: Part VI. Life with the lions. Woody Guthrie: Ramblin' man ; Will Eisner ; Elvis and the Colonel ; Ken Burns and the great men of jazz ; John Lennon: the life ; Paul McCartney's chaos and creation ; Joni Mitchell's shine ; Wynton Marsalis; title: Part VII. Otherwise engaged. Harry Partch ; Elmer Fudd ; Jules Feiffer at The Village Voice ; Michel Petrucciani ; John Zorn ; Josh Groban ; Walt Whitman and Fred Hersch: the jazz Leaves of grass ; Marjane Satrapi.