Heroes and villains

essays on music, movies, comics, and culture

1st ed.
  • 4 Want to read

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Last edited by MARC Bot
January 1, 2023 | History

Heroes and villains

essays on music, movies, comics, and culture

1st ed.
  • 4 Want to read

Heroes and Villains is the first collection of essays by David Hajdu, 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. The heart of Heroes and Villains is an extraordinary new piece of cultural rediscovery, original to this book. It tells the untold story of one of the most important—and, ultimately, one of the most tragic—figures in American popular music, Billy Eckstine. Through exhaustive new research, Hajdu shows how this great, forgotten singer, once more popular than Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, transformed American music by combining sex appeal, sophistication, and black machismo—in the era of segregation. The cost, for Eckstine, was his career—and nearly his life. Other essays in this expansive book deal with topical and surprising subjects like Beyonce, Bobby Darin, Kanye West, Marjane Satrapi, Woody Guthrie, Will Eisner, the White Stripes, Elmer Fudd, Elvis Costello, Harry Partch, Ray Charles, Joni Mitchell, and more.

Publish Date
Publisher
Da Capo Press
Language
English

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Heroes and Villains
Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture
2010, ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited
in English
Cover of: Heroes and villains
Heroes and villains: essays on music, movies, comics, and culture
2009, Da Capo Press
in English - 1st ed.
Cover of: Heroes and Villains
Heroes and Villains
2009, DaCapo Press
eBook in English
Cover of: Heroes and villains
Heroes and villains: essays on music, movies, comics, and culture
2009, Da Capo Press
in English - 1st Da Capo Press ed.
Cover of: Heroes and Villains
Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture
2009, Hachette Books
in English
Cover of: Heroes and Villains
Cover of: Heroes and Villains
Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture
2009, Hachette Books
in English
Cover of: Heroes and Villains
Cover of: Heroes and villains
Heroes and villains: essays on music, movies, comics, and culture
2009, Da Capo Press
in English - 1st ed.
Cover of: Heroes and villains
Heroes and villains: essays on music, movies, comics, and culture
2009, Da Capo Press
in English - 1st ed.

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Book Details


Table of Contents

Foreword by David Yaffe
Part I. B's world. Billy Eckstine: the man who was too hot
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
Part III. Blues and the abstract truth. A hundred years of blues ; Alan Lomax ; Dinah Washington: queen ; Ray Charles
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
Part V. Cultural machinery.The blogging of American pop ; Myspace ; The music of Starbucks ; Rick Rubin and Kanye West ; Open-source remixing
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
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.

Edition Notes

Includes index.

Published in
Boston

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
781.64
Library of Congress
ML60 .H178 2009, ML60.H178 2009

The Physical Object

Pagination
p. cm.

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL24061323M
Internet Archive
heroesvillainses0000hajd
ISBN 13
9780306818332
LCCN
2009026583
OCLC/WorldCat
316825624

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History

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January 1, 2023 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
December 26, 2022 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
January 27, 2022 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
December 23, 2020 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
March 2, 2010 Created by ImportBot Imported from Library of Congress MARC record