100 Books Like The Bean Eaters;

This was a book I first read nearly fifty years ago after my childhood friend Nate Harrington taught me to read while we were in prison together at 18 and 19 years old. As part of our commitment to helping each other return to our communities as an asset and not a liability, the men in prison taught each other political education classes, which included reading key texts like Malcolm X’s autobiography.

This book gave me an indication that I could do something different with my life. That moment occurred when it was revealed that Malcolm was known as “Detroit Red” on the streets of New York City–but when he went to prison and found a true education, he also embraced a new identity and new way of life. He died as Malcolm. His journey indicated that I could make a transition, too. It also helped me recognize that If… show more.

Williams, late in his life, can look out the window or at the newspaper and open his mind and eye and breath to catch the truth of the thing in verse-music.

Very early in his life, he memorized a lot of poems, so as a New Jersey improviser he didn’t have to think about the sounds. He composed as an athlete runs, jumps, throws, etc. I can hear him.

If you trained to be a jazz musician as I once did, or if you love jazz, you’ll be fascinated by this story (both autobiography and oral history from those who knew Pepper).

It includes also journalistic and critical literary assessments of his music and life that Art and Laurie Pepper include, but mostly, I was fascinated by Art’s own testimony of the struggles of a musician in the 1950s and ‘60s.

By the 70s, Pepper was trying to go straight, off drugs, and his long struggle with that issue is documented by him, his wife, and his colleagues and friends. But he was indeed straight in a different sense—he played beautiful, lyrical, straight-ahead jazz, no free form self-indulgence. So I got a wide view of the man and music through the oral history and through the journalists and critics who wrote essays about him.

Ultimately, it is a tragic… show more.

Like most calm, ordinary, cautious people, I enjoy movies and books by and about reckless, clever criminals.

Myles Connor, rock star and felon, may or may not know all about, or played a role in, the famous art theft from Boston’s Isabella Gardner museum. He talks an extremely good game.

This book was actually written before Baraka’s turn to Marxism, but as a social history of African American music, it is more than exemplary of a style of writing that takes the relationship of cultural form to its conditions seriously.

How Baraka moves between the music and the social conditions of Black musicians changed what I thought engaged musical analysis could be.

I came across this book when I decided to focus my graduate study on the history of jazz and was reading everything I could find. It’s a short book, full of incredible vintage photographs, and it taught me so much about what swing is, how music and dance are joined at the hip. How it’s all rooted in the blues. And about the link between the “Saturday Night Function” of celebrating life with music and dance, followed a few hours later by the “Sunday Morning Function,” singing and celebrating God and community in church. The two are not all that far apart. Along with Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray was probably the first author to write about jazz with a real sense of lyricism and poetry. In this book, the writing itself carries the energy and exuberance of jazz.

Pirates! I absolutely love a good pirate book, and this one by Vanessa delivered. We follow the story of Declan, a broody and mysterious captain, and Aoife, an heir who flees her kingdom. This book fulfilled all my enemies to lovers wants and told a very engaging story with a plot full of twists that kept you turning the page. Not to mention the world building was fantastic! It’s a new release and I’ve already pre-ordered the sequel. The best part of this book was supporting Vanessa Rasanen who is also an indie author. 

This self-published beauty is the perfect soft, sweet pirate read to warm anyone’s heart. The main romance is to die for, and the descriptions within feel almost painted. Ryckman is a well-paced storyteller, and this debut novel from her reads almost like a fairytale. But best of all, it features plenty of piratey goodness and tons of adventure. 

Howard was a top Los Angeles session guitarist (one of the fabled Wrecking Crew), jazz stylist, and brilliant visionary who combined his skills to create the Guitar Institute of Technology, an innovative, intensive program that trained thousands of professionals and transformed guitar education.

The Guitar Compendium is the result of Howard’s decades of research into learning theory and information flow applied to the guitar. It’s not a standard guitar method (and not designed for raw beginners), but rather a collection of practical, thought-provoking solutions to the universal challenges of learning and playing the instrument, from developing technique to breaking through creative roadblocks. If you’re an aspiring, curious, and perhaps frustrated guitarist, The Praxis System is a unique source of wisdom and inspiration from one of the greatest.

Completing a trifecta with Deep Blues and Sound of the City, Honkers and Shouters is a definitive examination of the evolution of rural blues into urban rhythm-and-blues, the “big beat” that made African-American-based popular music into one of America’s greatest, and most lucrative, cultural exports. 

Shaw, a former music executive, focuses on how the music found its way from the artists to the ears and wallets of the consumers. It was a tough, exploitative business that provided a way for entrepreneurs excluded from more traditional careers by race or ethnicity to find their fortune, if often at the expense of the artists themselves. The rough saga of lives in the music business makes us appreciate the magical results even more. Listen while you read.