Pan Alley

A guide to locating information on popular music and the people who create it, this volume is designed as a desk reference—to locate answers to specific questions and to direct library users to key resources. More than 400 comprehensive titles are carefully annotated, describing content, scope, and special features. The focus is on the musical styles that have developed measurable commercial success through recordings and live performance. Along with academic titles, many important titles from the popular press are included, as well as selected electronic resources. A necessary reference tool for any library, scholar, student, and popular music buff.

Copiously researched and documented, Hit Men is the highly controversial portrait of the pop music industry in all its wild, ruthless glory: the insatiable greed and ambition; the enormous egos; the fierce struggles for profits and power; the vendettas, rivalries, shakedowns, and payoffs. Chronicling the evolution of America's largest music labels from the Tin Pan Alley days to the present day, Fredric Dannen examines in depth the often venal, sometimes illegal dealings among the assorted hustlers and kingpins who rule over this multi-billion-dollar business.

In 1946, Harry Choates, a Cajun fiddle virtuoso, changed the course of American musical history when his recording of the so-called Cajun national anthem "Jole Blon" reached number four on the national Billboard charts. Cajun music became part of the American consciousness for the first time thanks to the unprecedented success of this issue, as the French tune crossed cultural, ethnic, racial, and socio-economic boundaries.

The Ultimate Jazz Fake Book includes: * More than 625 songs important to every jazz library * Carefully chosen chords with some common practice chord substitutions * Lyrics to accommodate vocalists * Easy-to-read music typography * Composer and performer indexes. The selection of songs in The Ultimate Jazz Fake Book is a result of an exhaustive effort to represent the many styles of music that make up that beloved idiom we call jazz. The styles found in this collection include: traditional, swing, bebop, Latin/bossa nova, hard bop/modern jazz and Tin Pan Alley standards/show tunes. More than 625 songs including: Ain't Misbehavin' * All the Things You Are * Au Privave * Autumn Leaves * Bag's Groove * Basin Street Blues * Bewitched * Birdland * Body and Soul * Cherokee * Cry Me a River * Darn That Dream * Desafinado * Django * Don't Get Around Much Anymore * A Foggy Day * The Girl from Ipanema * Here's That Rainy Day * I Can't Get Started * I Concentrate on You * Little Boat * Love for Sale * Love Walked In * Lullaby of Birdland * Milestones * Moonglow * More * My Foolish Heart * A Night in Tunisia * Ornithology * People * The Preacher * 'Round Midnight * Saint Thomas * Satin Doll * Sentimental Journey * Solar * Someday My Prince Will Come * Song for My Father * Strange Fruit * Take the "A" Train * Waltz for Debby * What a Diff'rence a Day Made * Work Song * Yardbird Suite * and many, many more! Spanning m ore than nine decades of music, The Ultimate Jazz Fake Book fills a void for many musicians whose active repertoires could not possibly include this vast collection of classic jazz compositions and durable songs.

Born Carole Klein in Brooklyn, by her teens Carole King was heading into Manhattan after school to sell her songs on Tin Pan Alley. She cut a few singles in the late 50's and early 60s, but first made a name for herself as a songwriter, working with lyricist/husband Gerry Goffin: they cranked out hits for a plethora of acts, and even turned their babysitter into a recording star when they wrote “Locomotion” for Little Eva. They also managed to stir up some controversy with “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)”, a look at domestic violence that no one was ready for (recently covered by Courtney Love).

In his 1999 memoir, A Cure for Gravity: A Musical Pilgrimage, Joe Jackson writes approvingly of George Gershwin as a musician who kept one foot in the popular and one in the classical realms of music. Like Gershwin, Jackson possesses a restless musical imagination that has found him straddling musical genres unapologetically, disinclined to pick one style and stick to it. The word "chameleon" often crops up in descriptions of him, but Jackson prefers to be though of as "eclectic." Is he the Joe Jackson he appeared to be upon his popular emergence in 1979, a new wave singer/songwriter with a belligerent attitude derisively asking, "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" The reggae-influenced Joe Jackson of 1980's Beat Crazy? The jump blues revivalist of 1981's Joe Jackson's Jumpin' Jive? The New York salsa-styled singer of 1982's "Steppin' Out"? The R&B/jazz-inflected Jackson of 1984's Body & Soul? Or is he David Ian Jackson, L.R.A.M. (Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music), who composes and conducts instrumental albums of contemporary classical music such as 1987's Will Power and 1999's Grammy-winning Symphony No. 1? He is all of these, Jackson himself no doubt would reply, and a few others besides.