Here are 100 books that Johnny Mandel Songbook fans have personally recommended if you like
Johnny Mandel Songbook.
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I’ve been the pianist for the Heath Brothers and the Jimmy Heath Quartet for over 20 years. Since moving to NYC in 1996, I’ve had the honor of playing and recording with an assortment of jazz luminaries including Charles McPherson, Roberta Gambarini, Lewis Nash, Winard Harper, Rodney Green, Michael Rodriguez, David Wong, among many others. During that time, I’ve also been actively involved in teaching, arranging, and writing, having three books published by Chuck Sher since 2013, An Approach to Comping Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 and Introduction to Jazz Piano, A Deep Dive.
First of all, the compositions are incredibly beautiful. Kenny Dorham is the ultimate romantic. As an added bonus, Walter Davis arranges these often complex tunes in a way that is accessible for the intermediate pianist. The simple and economical voicings offer insights that you just can’t get from fake books.
Kenny Dorham: jazz legend, master composer, arranger and performer. His unique and compelling voice on trumpet is well documented on recordings. Now K.D.'s music is presented in print, through the eyes, ears and heart of pianist Walter Davis, Jr. All 30 compositions have been recorded by major jazz artists. Complete with recording credits, chord symbols and instructions for expanding the arrangements to include improvised solo choruses. Contents include: Escapade + The Fox + Karioka + La Mesha + Night Watch + An Oscar for Oscar + Philly Twist + Whistle Stop + Windmill + Una Mas + and 20 others.…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’ve been the pianist for the Heath Brothers and the Jimmy Heath Quartet for over 20 years. Since moving to NYC in 1996, I’ve had the honor of playing and recording with an assortment of jazz luminaries including Charles McPherson, Roberta Gambarini, Lewis Nash, Winard Harper, Rodney Green, Michael Rodriguez, David Wong, among many others. During that time, I’ve also been actively involved in teaching, arranging, and writing, having three books published by Chuck Sher since 2013, An Approach to Comping Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 and Introduction to Jazz Piano, A Deep Dive.
I love the way Mr. Mathews retains Monk’s personal and instantly recognizable sound while presenting very playable and economical jazz piano arrangements. I would recommend this to jazz piano students looking for a way to play Monk’s music as solo piano pieces. It's nice to be able to reference how to voice these tunes from a master who actually exchanged ideas with Monk himself. The collection includes some of the most popular Monk compositions along with some lesser-known gems.
(Artist Transcriptions). Now the intermediate-level pianist can play and study the music of this jazz giant! This collection includes 14 tunes Monk made great, arranged by T.S. Monk band member Ronnie Mathews. Songs include: Brilliant Corners * Criss Cross * Hackensack * Pannonica * 'Round Midnight * Thelonious * Well You Needn't * and more. Also includes a biography, discography, performance notes and more.
I’ve been the pianist for the Heath Brothers and the Jimmy Heath Quartet for over 20 years. Since moving to NYC in 1996, I’ve had the honor of playing and recording with an assortment of jazz luminaries including Charles McPherson, Roberta Gambarini, Lewis Nash, Winard Harper, Rodney Green, Michael Rodriguez, David Wong, among many others. During that time, I’ve also been actively involved in teaching, arranging, and writing, having three books published by Chuck Sher since 2013, An Approach to Comping Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 and Introduction to Jazz Piano, A Deep Dive.
This resource offers a great selection of standards. Some include verses as well. The lyrics, chords, and melody are crystal clear and professionally copied. The look and style of these real books are legendary and very easy to use. I personally own the version in B-flat. This helps me see these tunes in another key and in turn, makes them slightly easier to transpose in general. Knowledge of standards cannot be underestimated in my opinion. For me, hearing how the great jazz pianists interpreted jazz standards is very illuminating.
The Standards Real Book is the most comprehensive book of classic songs in the jazz tradition ever published. Lyrics are included for every song that has a lyric and even the verses are there, especially valuable for vocalists. The book includes the best songs of Gershwin, Rodgers & Hart, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Henry Mancini, Johnny Mandel and many more! The Gold Standard in jazz songbooks.
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I’ve been the pianist for the Heath Brothers and the Jimmy Heath Quartet for over 20 years. Since moving to NYC in 1996, I’ve had the honor of playing and recording with an assortment of jazz luminaries including Charles McPherson, Roberta Gambarini, Lewis Nash, Winard Harper, Rodney Green, Michael Rodriguez, David Wong, among many others. During that time, I’ve also been actively involved in teaching, arranging, and writing, having three books published by Chuck Sher since 2013, An Approach to Comping Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 and Introduction to Jazz Piano, A Deep Dive.
This songbook is an incredible window into the world of chord movement and voice leading. Mr. Hyman offers the original chord symbols from chord sheets (often lost to history), professional substitutions that are frequently played, and his own substitutions offering some fresh new harmonic options. Because each measure of music is teeming with chords and little movements, it makes you think precisely about chord extensions and what’s unnecessary in your voicings.
Songs include: Alone Together * Am I Blue? * Body and Soul * Do It Again * Get Happy * Lulu's Back in Town * Mack the Knife * Misty * Night and Day * Skylark * Soon * Sweet Georgia Brown * Time After Time * You Go to My Head * You're the Top and more.
I like to believe that my own characters struggle with being human. They struggle with their bitterness, their relations to others (or lack thereof), and their unresolved guilt. What happens when guilt is left unresolved? What happens when someone enters into a state of self-imposed isolation? These are topics I enjoy exploring in my work. I’ve enjoyed writing since I was a child. My mother deserves all the credit. At bedtime, rather than reading bedtime stories to me from a book, she would make up a story and then ask me to do the same. This helped me to develop a lifelong love for reading and writing.
I feel as though this book isn’t widely known. The plot is quite bizarre and surreal–a man falls in love with a woman who is growing a water lily in her lung.
The novel’s theme of grief stood out to me, and I feel it was perfectly illustrated by Collin’s desperate attempts to keep his wife alive. It is evident that Vian used Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist philosophy as inspiration for this novel.
My prime credential for writing these books is my own humanity, as someone who's felt the deep power of music on the human spirit since childhood. The stories I tell in these books are about musicians and artists, people who had a passion for creating something out of thin air with patience and many years of hard work. I highlight their lives to give kids (and adults) examples of passion coupled with persistence because Life is often very challenging.
Winner of the prestigious Schneider Award, Parker's text and artwork celebrate the genius of the great Art Tatum - who just happened to be blind. The words are poignant and effective, but it is Parker's watercolor paintings that glow and amaze with a balance of sophistication and childlike elegance. In short, a master of one medium is being honored by another.
Regardless of whether they’ve heard of jazz or Art Tatum, young readers will appreciate how Parker uses simple, lyrical storytelling and colorful, energetic ink-and-wash illustrations to show the world as young Art Tatum might have seen it. Tatum came from modest beginnings and was nearly blind, but his passion for the piano and his acute memory for any sound that he heard drove him to become a virtuoso who was revered by both classical and jazz pianists alike. Included in the back matter is a biography and bibliography.
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
Music has always spoken to my innermost being, and coming of age in the late 1960s, I’ve been drawn to the quest for justice and equality in politics. In my undergraduate studies at Berkeley, the late political theorist Michael Rogin, who interpreted Moby Dick as a parable of 19th Century race relations, taught me that my two interests could be combined. As a professor of Political Science I’ve written books and articles that explore music’s ability to express ideas about politics, race, and ethnicity in sometimes unappreciated ways.
This punningly-titled book is an act of historical excavation, uncovering the hundreds of all-female swing bands that have been erased from jazz history. But Tucker goes beyond this, asking how the lenses of gender, race, class, and sexuality affected how these bands were seen and heard and, equally important, how they forged their destinies within those constraints. They had difficulties to overcome – wearing gowns that made it more difficult to play and caused them to be taken less seriously as musicians, and risking arrest by having white members “passing” as Black in the South. But Tucker’s “counternarrative” shows how these bands found creative ways to evade such barriers, by using stereotypes of femininity and masculinity to their advantage or presenting themselves as “international” to push against the color line.
The forgotten history of the "all-girl" big bands of the World War II era takes center stage in Sherrie Tucker's Swing Shift. American demand for swing skyrocketed with the onslaught of war as millions-isolated from loved ones-sought diversion, comfort, and social contact through music and dance. Although all-female jazz and dance bands had existed since the 1920s, now hundreds of such groups, both African American and white, barnstormed ballrooms, theaters, dance halls, military installations, and makeshift USO stages on the home front and abroad. Filled with firsthand accounts of more than a hundred women who performed during this era and…
More has been accomplished by music to wake us up that any marches, speeches, injustice, and/or wealth. In the beginning, music and its many forms I followed were an accident. Now I see that music is vital for social expression, intimacy, solitude. The walls in my writing room are covered with photos, CDs, 78s, and most certainly live recordings and books. I feel sorry for the soul(s) who will have to pick through this history when I’ve gone to that Upper Room.
This is a story of Jazz by the musicians who made it. Hear Me Talkin' to Ya is a wide study of the Jazz at its source (New Orleans) through the era of Big Bands and into Modern Jazz, from Kid Ory to Dave Brubeck. This book doesn’t have a narrative or authors’ opinions. This book features passages quoted by Billie Holiday, Mary Lou Williams, Lil Harden Armstrong, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Othello Tinsley, Dizzy Gillespie, and a hundred other musicians.
We’ve entered a second era of inclusion. Women now play an essential role in creating music. Add Lizzie Miles, Anita O’Day, Ethel Waters, Lena Horne, Mary Ann McCall, Alberta Hunter, and Leora Henderson and we get a different perspective of the evolution of music culture.
Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (Dover Books On Music: History)
"Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." — Charlie Parker "What is jazz? The rhythm — the feeling." — Coleman Hawkins "The best sound usually comes the first time you do something. If it's spontaneous, it's going to be rough, not clean, but it's going to have the spirit which is the essence of jazz." — Dave Brubeck Here, in their own words, such famous jazz musicians as Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Fletcher Henderson, Bunk Johnson,…
My father, a huge Ella Fitzgerald fan, had a bunch of her records, and took us to hear her live once. So I knew mid-century jazz, but I had yet to discover its early origins. From the first, I knew my trilogy was set in the 1920s and one of the main characters had to be a jazz musician. I began collecting dozens of recordings by early jazz and blues artists, reading books about them, and I developed an enthusiasm for these early musicians. I found that the original “jazz maniacs” had the same passion for their music that I felt about rock and roll in the early 1960s.
This jive-tongued jazz cat really knows how to use language! His use of slang is evidenced by the ten-page glossary at the end of the book. Raw and gritty, Mezzrow’s memoir describes how he learned to play jazz and blues in a juvenile reformatory, where he developed his love for the Black “race” and its culture. He often riffs on race. In 1920s Chicago he rubbed elbows with Black and White jazz luminaries, plus gangsters, prostitutes, and drug dealers. During a side trip to Paris, France, he spread the gospel of jazz to Europe. In the 30s he lived in New York City’s Harlem, inhabiting a milieu similar to that in Chicago, peddling marijuana to jazz greats and others. His extraordinary writing inspired Jack Kerouac and the Beat writers.
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I started buying records 70 years ago. I worked in a car factory for a decade, then landed a job in publishing, having written a couple of magazine articles, and finally got a chance to do what I was born to do: write about my favorite subject. Music has been the most important thing in the world to me ever since I heard the hits of the 1940s on the radio, playing on the kitchen floor while my mother did the ironing. I believe music is a mystery, more important than we can know, in every way: intellectual, psychological, emotional, philosophical. That is why it is such a big business, even if the business itself is often less than salubrious.
Back when jazz was popular and popular music was jazz, Andy Razaf was born in Washington DC, a member of the royal family of Madagascar: one source says his name was Andriamanantena Paul Rezafinkarefo, his father a nephew of Queen Ranavalona III. Andy became one of the most successful lyricists of his era. By the time he and Fats Waller co-wrote the black broadway show Hot Chocolates in 1929, Louis Armstrong singing "Ain't Misbehavin'" from the pit, he was at the top of his game. He and Waller wrote "Honeysuckle Rose", "Keepin' Out Of Mischief Now", "Blue, Turning Grey Over You", "The Joint Is Jumpin'", and more; in the early years, they would sell their lead sheets to as many publishers as they could, knowing that the publishers were cheats too. But Razaf also wrote with Eubie Blake ("You're Lucky To Me", "Memories Of You"), James P. Johnson ("A Porter's…
Chronicles the life and Prohibition-era times of the legendary songwriter whose lyrics include those for ""Honeysuckle Rose"" and ""Ain't Misbehavin'"" and whose musicals pioneered a distinctive African-American musical theater on Broadway.
