James Allen, Hilton Als, Congressman John Lewis, Leon F. Litwack - Without Sanctuary - Lynching Photography In America

Without Sanctuary
Essays by Hilton Als, John Lewis, and Leon F. Litwack. Edited by James Allen 

The Tuskegee Institute records the lynching of 3,436 blacks between 1882 and 1950. This is probably a small percentage of these murders, which were seldom reported, and led to the creation of the NAACP in 1909, an organization dedicated to passing federal anti-lynching laws. Through all this terror and carnage someone-many times a professional photographer-carried a camera and took pictures of the events. These lynching photographs were often made into postcards and sold as souvenirs to the crowds in attendance. These images are some of photography's most brutal, surviving to this day so that we may now look back on the terrorism unleashed on America's African-American community and perhaps know our history and ourselves better. The almost one hundred images reproduced here are a testament to the camera's ability to make us remember what we often choose to forget.

Many people today, despite the evidence, will not believe-don't want to believe-that such atrocities happened in America not so very long ago. These photographs bear witness to ...an American holocaust.
- Congressman John Lewis, from his Introduction

Without Sanctuary is a great and terrible book. It's an album of peacetime atrocities, during which hundreds of Kodak's clicked.
- Richard Lacayo, Time

Giuseppe Pino - Black and Blues

The Blues—its melodies were created as an expression of profound sorrow and melancholy in the scorching heat of the cotton plantations. Its power encouraged the people and gave them support. Black and Blues is an homage to this moving musical genre. Unique photographs of famous blues musicians taken by Giuseppe Pino celebrate a grand emotion. Music CDs: A collection of recordings that impressively surveys the many facets of the roots of the Blues, including such great names as Big Joe Turner, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, and Memphis Slim.

Geroge Mitchell - I`m Somebody Important - Young Black Voices from Rural Georgia

To reveal what some young blacks from the rural South are thinking, and what everyday life is like for them, George Mitchell interviewed six young blacks from Georgia's poverty-stricken Lower Chattahoochee Valley.

Clenora Hudson-Weems - Emmett Till - The Sacrificial Lamb of the Civil Rights Movement

It has always been said that truth will ultimately prevail. This three part book represents that truism. Part One presents the untainted facts surrounding the story of Emmett Till's brutal lynching and the establishment of that incident as the true catalyst of the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s. Unearthing and establishing Till as catalyst found its beginnings over thirty years later, in the 1988 Ford Doctoral Dissertation, "Emmett Till: The Impetus of the Modern Civil Rights Movement," by this author at the University of Iowa. It speaks the truth about the seminal role of the innocent fourteen-year-old northern youth whose brief visit to Mississippi, the metaphor for American racism, rendered him the status of martyr for victims of centuries of abject racial oppression. Part Two presents the raison d'tre for the book, as it confronts and exposes the abominable acts of plagiarism by several people whose obvious goal is to acquire fame and fortune for themselves. Part Three highlights the continuing commitment to the struggle on the part of the author via demonstrating the Till Continuum, represented by modern day examples of Black victimization. The plight of Black farmers, who are losing 9,000 acres of land per week, and land owners in general, such as "Smokin' Joe" Frazier who lost 140 acres of prime property in Bucks County, PA valued at 100 million dollars, are supreme paradigms of this reality. Thus, the injustices of robbing Black people and their future generations of their land legacy and the theft of the intellectual property of one who is dedicated to truth in its totality are the key elements in this book. Scholars, attorneys, celebrities, and many others have offeredtestimonies here, thereby rendering their dedication to bringing a halt once and for all to such pervasive injustices.

Alan Govenar - Texas Blues - The Rise of a Contemporary Sound

Published: November 2008 by Texas A&M University Press, ISBN: 158544605X
Details: Hardcover, Full-Color, 624 pages

Texas Blues allows artists to speak in their own words, revealing the dynamics of blues, from its beginnings in cotton fields and shotgun shacks to its migration across boundaries of age and race to seize the musical imagination of the entire world.

Fully illustrated with 495 dramatic, high-quality color and black-and-white photographs--many never before published--Texas Blues provides comprehensive and authoritative documentation of a musical tradition that has changed contemporary music. Award-winning documentary filmmaker and author Alan Govenar here builds on his previous groundbreaking work documenting these musicians and their style with the stories of 110 of the most influential artists and their times.

From Blind Lemon Jefferson and Aaron "T-Bone" Walker of Dallas, to Delbert McClinton in Fort Worth, Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins in East Texas, Baldemar (Freddie Fender) Huerta in South Texas, and Stevie Ray Vaughan in Austin, Texas Blues shows the who, what, where, and how of blues in the Lone Star State.

Stephen J. Whitfield - A Death In The Delta - The Story of Emmett Till

Stephen Calt - I`d Rather Be The Devil - Skip James and the Blues

Robert Uzzel - Blind Lemon Jefferson - His Life, his Death and his Legacy

Mike Rowe - Chicago Blues - The City & The Music

Simeon Wright and Herb Boyd - Simeon`s Story - An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till

Mamie Till-Mobley and Christopher Benson - Death of Innocence - The story of the hate crime that changed America

Belinda Hurmence - Slavery Time When I Was Chillun

Anne Moody - Coming of Age in Mississippi - The classic Autobiography of Growing up poor and black in the rural south

Samuel Charters - The Blues Makers

Robert Santelli - The Big Book of Blues - The Fully and Uptaded Biographical Encyclopedia

Robert Gordon - Can`t Be Satisfied - The Life and Times of Muddy Waters

Richard Kostelanetz - The B. B. King Reader - 6 Decades of Commentary

Randall Norris and Jean-Philippe Cypres - Highway 61 Heart of the Delta

Paul Oliver, Max Harrison, William Bolcom - The New Grove - Gospel, Blues and Jazz

Michael Gray - Hand Me My Travellin` Shoes - In Search of Blind Willie McTell

Jeff Dunas - State of the Blues

Herb Wise - People You`D Like To Know - Legendary Musicians Photographed by Herb Wise

Ernst C. Withers, Daniel Wolff - The Memphis Blues Again - Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs

Dwight DeVane, Blaine Waide - Drop on Down in Florida - Field Recordings of African American Traditional Music 1977-1980

B.B. King and David Ritz - Blues All Around Me - The Autobiography of B.B. King

They All Played For Us: Arhoolie Records 50th Anniversary Celebration by Various Artists

http://www.arhoolie.com/

4 CDs with a 192 page, full color, hardcover book
Over 4 hours and 58 minutes of music
70 songs
Over 175 color photographs by Mike Melnyk
Commentary by Chris Strachwitz and band members

On February 4, 5, and 6, 2011 there was a benefit for the Arhoolie Foundation celebrating the 50th anniversary of Arhoolie Records. Three joyous days of concerts and panel discussions were held in Berkeley, California at the Freight and Salvage to honor Chris Strachwitz and Arhoolie’s 50 years of documenting and preserving traditional music. There was even the first New Orleans-style brass band parade through the streets of Berkeley with the Treme Brass Band and a second line. The concerts were hosted by American Routes radio host Nick Spitzer.
The events were recorded by Fantasy Studios and the Bay Area’s premier concert photographer Mike Melnyk captured the performances and backstage activities. This limited edition book and CD set is filled with passionate music, stunning full color photos and remembrances. Chris Strachwitz with Adam Machado, writes about each band, and then each band comments about Chris, Arhoolie Records, and traditional music. If you were at the event, you'll want this as a lasting memory. If you weren't, get it to share the experience.

"It was a weekend of earthy, honest, gutsy music and fun celebrating fifty years of good ol’ Arhoolie Records! I had no idea that all these years after releasing the first Arhoolie LP in 1960, Mance Lipscomb: Texas Sharecropper and Songster, I would still be on this planet, outliving many of the fascinating and unique musical legends I had the pleasure of meeting and recording. This book brings to life in sounds, stories, and pictures those three days of celebration in February 2011 at the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse in Berkeley, CA. I was delighted and surprised by how many friends and musicians were willing to contribute their talents freely to this extravaganza, even though some had never even recorded for Arhoolie! Photographer Mike Melnyk was on hand capturing the various sights, and Fantasy Studios captured the sounds. I hope this resulting book with four CDs will spread joy into your ears and eyes."
— Chris Strachwitz


"Strachwitz had this fabulous approach with people: he would just walk right in with his big smile and this openhearted manner that he has. Nobody turned him down, nobody was doubtful, they just accepted him. After he became known and on friendly terms with a lot of the players down there [South Texas], he got to be known as El Fanatico, who wanted to hear every song, know every story, bought every record he could get his hands on, and he never stopped."
— Ry Cooder

"This young guy from Navasota, TX going to school with me came in one day and was oh, just so excited by the record he had in his hand...it was Chris' first Arhoolie record, Mance Lipscomb: Texas Sharecropper & Songster. I have to tell you, that's when it started for me."
— Taj Mahal

"The most amazing thing about [Chris] is he's tireless and he knows exactly what he wants. The more primitive you sound the better it is for him. It's very interesting, because I don't think everyone approaches music or life that way."
— David Doucet

"I'm delighted to be included in Arhoolie's 50th Anniversary recording. It's an honor to be a part of that. I've grown more and more to appreciate what Chris has done to save so much music from oblivion and to expand the horizons for a lot of roots music. He has made such a huge effort to support the music locally and everywhere hither, thither, and yon. He just seems to be one of those ebullient people. Gets very very very excited about what he likes. He's a bear of a man. But he's not just one thing only: he perseveres, he's continuing on. Viva la musica!"
— Peter Rowan

"Don't tell me they don't make music like this anymore. They sure damn do!"
— Barbara Dane

"If it hadn't been for Arhoolie, I don't know where I would be at today...Everything that I love Chris has supported, everything I love Chris has cultivated it, and everything that I love Chris has helped bring out in me. There should be a 'Chris Strachwitz Day' that the whole world would celebrate."
— Marc Savoy

Paul Oliver - Songsters & Saints : Vocal Traditions on Race Records

In this innovatory book the celebrated writer on the blues, Paul Oliver, rediscovers the wealth of neglected vocal traditions presented on Race records. When blues first reached a large audience it was through the 'Race records' issued specifically for black purchasers in the 1920s. Blues South have been extensively discussed by many writers. Paul Oliver shows that this emphasis has drawn attention away from the other important vocal traditions also available on Race records: the songs of Southern rural dances, the comic and social songs and ballads of the medicine shows and travelling entertainments, and, even more neglected, the sacred vocal traditions, from the song-sermons of the Baptist and Sanctified preachers to the gospel songs of the church congregations and of the 'jack-leg' preachers and street evangelists. Over 500 artists and 700 song titles are indexed and there is a guide to reissued recordings.

Paul Oliver - Bessie Smith (Kings of Jazz)

Edward Komara, Greg Johnson - 100 Books every Blues Fan Should Know

 

Search the Internet for the 100 best songs or best albums. Dozens of lists will appear from aficionados to major music personalities. But what if you not only love listening to the blues or country music or jazz or rock, you love reading about it, too. How do you separate what matters from what doesn’t among the hundreds—sometimes thousands—of books on the music you so love? In the Best Music Booksseries, readers finally have a quick-and-ready list of the most important works published on modern major music genres by leading experts.

In 100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own, Edward Komara, former Blues Archivist of the University of Mississippi, and his successor Greg Johnson select those histories, biographies, surveys, transcriptions and studies from the many hundreds of works that have been published about this vital American musical genre.

Komara and Johnson provide a short description of the contents and the achievement of each title selected for their “Blues 100.” Entries include full bibliographic citations, prices of copies in print, and even descriptions of specific editions for book collectors. 100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own also includes suggested blues recordings to accompany each recommended work, as well as a concluding section on key reference titles—or as Komara and Johnson phrase it: “The Books behind the Blues 100.”

100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own serves as a guide for any blues fan looking for a road map through the history of—and even history of the scholarship on—the blues. Here Komara and Johnson answer the question of not only what is a “blues” book, but which ones are worth owning.

American Harmonica Newsletter - Magazine