The Johnson family singers
Author: Kenneth M. Johnson
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Published: 1997-01-01
Total Pages: 160
ISBN-13: 9781617035005
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The Johnson Family Singers
Author: Kenneth M. Johnson
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Published: 1997
Total Pages: 126
ISBN-13: 9781578060047
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The Johnson Family Singers, a gospel group from North Carolina, rose to national acclaim during the 1940s and 1950s. This memoir was written by one of the three sons who sang with them. It focuses not only upon family singers that became famous on popular radio but also upon American gospel music. Although neglected by scholars and historians, it is loved by aficionados and is cherished by many devoted Christians everywhere. Here, in a frank, objective narrative Kenneth M. Johnson looks back on his singing days and details both the successes and struggles the Johnsons experienced during the years when their stirring music filled the air. He discusses what occurred behind the scenes and on the road to stardom. He tells how children who grew up in a singing family managed school life and how they balanced their social development with entertainment schedules. He gives details of the stresses that fame placed on family life, especially on his parents' troubled marriage, and of their survival through their love of gospel song. He speaks of humble beginnings, of the illegitimacy of family members, of legal problems, and of the heart-felt hymns that propelled the Johnsons onward and were their mainstay. On many Sabbaths CBS radio broadcast their program. Listeners getting ready for services were likely to hear the familiar litany: "Each Sunday morning at this time Columbia presents fifteen minutes of hymns and sacred songs with the Johnson Family Singers... a father, mother, and four children. Southern-born, steeped in the tradition of the Deep South, the Johnson Family Singers bring to the well-beloved, familiar songs of Christian people everywhere a sweetness and simplicity of interpretation." Told with remarkable candor, We Sang for Our Supper recounts the public and the private life of the gospel group touted on the airwaves as "one of America's foremost singing families." Kenneth M. Johnson is a retired United Methodist clergyman living at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina.
Brother Robert
Author: Annye C. Anderson
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2020-06-09
Total Pages: 224
ISBN-13: 030684527X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A Rolling Stone-Kirkus Best Music Book of 2020 “[Brother Robert} book does much to pull the blues master out of the fog of myth.”—Rolling Stone An intimate memoir by blues legend Robert Johnson's stepsister, including new details about his family, music, influences, tragic death, and musical afterlife Though Robert Johnson was only twenty-seven years young and relatively unknown at the time of his tragic death in 1938, his enduring recordings have solidified his status as a progenitor of the Delta blues style. And yet, while his music has retained the steadfast devotion of modern listeners, much remains unknown about the man who penned and played these timeless tunes. Few people alive today actually remember what Johnson was really like, and those who do have largely upheld their silence-until now. In Brother Robert, nonagenarian Annye C. Anderson sheds new light on a real-life figure largely obscured by his own legend: her kind and incredibly talented stepbrother, Robert Johnson. This book chronicles Johnson's unconventional path to stardom, from the harrowing story behind his illegitimate birth, to his first strum of the guitar on Anderson's father's knee, to the genre-defining recordings that would one day secure his legacy. Along the way, readers are gifted not only with Anderson's personal anecdotes, but with colorful recollections passed down to Anderson by members of their family-the people who knew Johnson best. Readers also learn about the contours of his working life in Memphis, never-before-disclosed details about his romantic history, and all of Johnson's favorite things, from foods and entertainers to brands of tobacco and pomade. Together, these stories don't just bring the mythologized Johnson back down to earth; they preserve both his memory and his integrity. For decades, Anderson and her family have ignored the tall tales of Johnson "selling his soul to the devil" and the speculative to fictionalized accounts of his life that passed for biography. Brother Robert is here to set the record straight. Featuring a foreword by Elijah Wald and a Q&A with Anderson, Wald, Preston Lauterbach, and Peter Guralnick, this book paints a vivid portrait of an elusive figure who forever changed the musical landscape as we know it.
The Music of Bill Monroe
Author: Neil V. Rosenberg
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2024-04-22
Total Pages: 456
ISBN-13: 025205623X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Spanning over 1,000 separate performances, The Music of Bill Monroe presents a complete chronological list of all of Bill Monroe’s commercially released sound and visual recordings. Each chapter begins with a narrative describing Monroe’s life and career at that point, bringing in producers, sidemen, and others as they become part of the story. The narratives read like a “who’s who” of bluegrass, connecting Monroe to the music’s larger history and containing many fascinating stories. The second part of each chapter presents the discography. Information here includes the session’s place, date, time, and producer; master/matrix numbers, song/tune titles, composer credits, personnel, instruments, and vocals; and catalog/release numbers and reissue data. The only complete bio-discography of this American musical icon, The Music of Bill Monroe is the starting point for any study of Monroe’s contributions as a composer, interpreter, and performer.
Singing for Freedom
Author: Scott Gac
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2008-10-01
Total Pages: 326
ISBN-13: 0300138369
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →divdivIn the two decades prior to the Civil War, the Hutchinson Family Singers of New Hampshire became America’s most popular musical act. Out of a Baptist revival upbringing, John, Asa, Judson, and Abby Hutchinson transformed themselves in the 1840s into national icons, taking up the reform issues of their age and singing out especially for temperance and antislavery reform. This engaging book is the first to tell the full story of the Hutchinsons, how they contributed to the transformation of American culture, and how they originated the marketable American protest song. /DIVdivThrough concerts, writings, sheet music publications, and books of lyrics, the Hutchinson Family Singers established a new space for civic action, a place at the intersection of culture, reform, religion, and politics. The book documents the Hutchinsons’ impact on abolition and other reform projects and offers an original conception of the rising importance of popular culture in antebellum America./DIV/DIV
Close Harmony
Author: James R. Goff Jr.
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Published: 2014-02-01
Total Pages: 416
ISBN-13: 1469616882
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Comprehensive and richly illustrated, Close Harmony traces the development of the music known as southern gospel from its antebellum origins to its twentieth-century emergence as a vibrant musical industry driven by the world of radio, television, recordings, and concert promotions. Marked by smooth, tight harmonies and a lyrical focus on the message of Christian salvation, southern gospel--particularly the white gospel quartet tradition--had its roots in nineteenth-century shape-note singing. The spread of white gospel music is intricately connected to the people who based their livelihoods on it, and Close Harmony is filled with the stories of artists and groups such as Frank Stamps, the Chuck Wagon Gang, the Blackwood Brothers, the Rangers, the Swanee River Boys, the Statesmen, and the Oak Ridge Boys. The book also explores changing relations between black and white artists and shows how, following the civil rights movement, white gospel was influenced by black gospel, bluegrass, rock, metal, and, later, rap. With Christian music sales topping the $600 million mark at the close of the twentieth century, Close Harmony explores the history of an important and influential segment of the thriving gospel industry.
Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music
Author: W. K. McNeil
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-10-18
Total Pages: 520
ISBN-13: 1135377073
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music is the first comprehensive reference to cover this important American musical form. Coverage includes all aspects of both African-American and white gospel from history and performers to recording techniques and styles as well as the influence of gospel on different musical genres and cultural trends.
Exploring American Folk Music
Author: Kip Lornell
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Published: 2012-05-29
Total Pages: 410
ISBN-13: 1617032646
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The perfect introduction to the many strains of American-made music
Country Music
Author: Dayton Duncan
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2019-09-10
Total Pages: 562
ISBN-13: 0525520546
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The rich and colorful story of America's most popular music and the singers and songwriters who captivated, entertained, and consoled listeners throughout the twentieth century--based on the upcoming eight-part film series to air on PBS in September 2019 This gorgeously illustrated and hugely entertaining history begins where country music itself emerged: the American South, where people sang to themselves and to their families at home and in church, and where they danced to fiddle tunes on Saturday nights. With the birth of radio in the 1920s, the songs moved from small towns, mountain hollers, and the wide-open West to become the music of an entire nation--a diverse range of sounds and styles from honky tonk to gospel to bluegrass to rockabilly, leading up through the decades to the music's massive commercial success today. But above all, Country Music is the story of the musicians. Here is Hank Williams's tragic honky tonk life, Dolly Parton rising to fame from a dirt-poor childhood, and Loretta Lynn turning her experiences into songs that spoke to women everywhere. Here too are interviews with the genre's biggest stars, including the likes of Merle Haggard to Garth Brooks to Rosanne Cash. Rife with rare photographs and endlessly fascinating anecdotes, the stories in this sweeping yet intimate history will captivate longtime country fans and introduce new listeners to an extraordinary body of music that lies at the very center of the American experience.
Ducktails, Drive-ins, and Broken Hearts
Author: Hank Davis
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2023-06-01
Total Pages: 491
ISBN-13: 1438492677
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →They all tried, but few singers and musicians from the 1950s became stars. Yet many of them had stories to tell that were far more interesting than the ones you already know. Author Hank Davis was bitten by the music bug as a teenager. By the time he entered college in 1959, he was no stranger to New York's recording studios and had a few 45s of his own on the market. Spanning a 45 year career in music journalism, Davis has spent time backstage, in motel rooms, and on tour buses to uncover stories that rarely made the official annals of pop music history. Based on hundreds of hours of interviews and new research, Ducktails, Drive-Ins, and Broken Hearts offers a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at the winners and losers during rock 'n' roll's formative era. How did a decade as uptight and puritanical as the '50s produce so much cringe-worthy, politically incorrect music? What was it like to see a pale cover version of your latest record climb the charts while yours sat unplayed by mainstream radio stations? How did precious Elvis tapes end up in a Memphis landfill? And who was that thirteen-year-old girl who made a five-dollar vanity record at Sun just two years after Elvis had—and ended up singing backup on "Suspicious Minds" and "In the Ghetto?" This book is a must-read for all fans of '50s music. In the words of Jerry Phillips, son of Sun Records founder, Sam Phillips, "Hank Davis is one of the few guys who really gets it."
