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Sinatra and Me: In the Wee Small Hours (A Gift for Frank Sinatra Fans)
by Mary Jane Ross Tony OppedisanoThis intimate, revealing portrait of Frank Sinatra—from the man closest to the famous singer during the last decade of his life—features never-before-seen photos and new revelations about some of the most famous people of the past fifty years, including Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Sam Giancana, Madonna, and Bono. &“If you are a Frank fan, buy this book&” (Jimmy Kimmel).More than a hundred books have been written about legendary crooner and actor Frank Sinatra. Every detail of his life seems to captivate: his career, his romantic relationships, his personality, his businesses, his style. But a hard-to-pin-down quality has always clung to him—a certain elusiveness that emerges again and again in retrospective depictions. Until now. From Sinatra&’s closest confidant and an eventual member of his management team, Tony Oppedisano, comes an extraordinarily intimate look at the singing idol that offers &“new information on almost every page&” (The Wall Street Journal). Deep into the night, for more than two thousand nights, Frank and Tony would converse—about music, family, friends, great loves, achievements and successes, failures and disappointments, the lives they&’d led, the lives they wished they&’d led. In these full-disclosure conversations, Sinatra spoke of his close yet complex relationship with his father, his conflicts with record companies, his carousing in Vegas, his love affairs with some of the most beautiful women of his era, his triumphs on some of the world&’s biggest stages, his complicated relationships with his talented children, and, most important, his dedication to his craft. Toward the end, no one was closer to the singer than Oppedisano, who kept his own rooms at the Sinatra residences for many years, often brokered difficult conversations between family members, and held the superstar entertainer&’s hand when he drew his last breath. &“Frank Sinatra fans, pull up a chair and let longtime confidante and road manager Tony Oppedisano regale you with tales from the entertainer&’s inner circle&” (Parade magazine)—Sinatra and Me pulls back the curtain on a man whom history has, in many ways, gotten wrong.
Sinatra and the Jack Pack: The Extraordinary Friendship between Frank Sinatra and John F. Kennedy Jr. - Why They Bonded and What Went Wrong
by David Harvey Michael SheridanNew York Times bestseller: Frank Sinatra and JFK—the truth behind their friendship, and what destroyed it. Frank Sinatra had his Rat Pack, made up of hard-drinking, womanizing charmers like himself, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Peter Lawford. But the guy Ol’ Blue Eyes wanted to hang with was Lawford’s brother-in-law, the real chairman of the board, John F. Kennedy. In Sinatra and the Jack Pack, Michael Sheridan delves deep into the acclaimed singer’s relationship with the former president. He shares how Sinatra emerged from a working class Italian family and carved out a unique place for himself in American culture, and how Kennedy, also of immigrant stock, came from a privileged background of which the young Frank could only have dreamed. By the time the men met in the 1950s, both were successful—and both liked the good life. They bonded over their mutual ability to attract beautiful women, male admirers, and adoring acolytes. They also shared a scandalous secret: each had dubious relationships with the mafia. It helped Frank’s career and bought Kennedy votes. All the while, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was compiling detailed and damning dossiers on their activities. From all accounts the friendship thrived. Then, suddenly, in March 1962, Frank was abruptly ejected from JFK’s gang. Sinatra and the Jack Pack, the basis for a Reelz Channel documentary, reveals why. With its legendary cast of characters, this is the compelling, untold story of a tumultuous relationship between two American icons.
Sinatra! The Song Is You: A Singer's Art
by Will Friedwald Tony BennettFrank Sinatra was the greatest entertainer of his age, invigorating American popular song with innovative phrasing and a mastery of drama and emotion. Drawing upon interviews with hundreds of his collaborators as well as with "The Voice" himself, this book chronicles, critiques, and celebrates his five-decade career. Will Friedwald examines and evaluates all the classic and less familiar songs with the same astute, witty perceptions that earned him acclaim for his other books about jazz and pop singing. Now completely revised and updated, and including an authoritative discography and rare photos of recording sessions and performances, Sinatra! The Song Is You is an invaluable resource for enthusiasts and an unparalleled guide through Sinatra's vast musical legacy.
Sinatra's Century: One Hundred Notes on the Man and His World
by David LehmanIn celebration of his one-hundredth birthday, a charming, irresistibly readable, and handsomely packaged look back at the life and times of the greatest entertainer in American history, Frank Sinatra.Sinatra’s Century is an irresistible collection of one-hundred short reflections on the man, his music, and his larger-than-life story, by a lifetime fan who also happens to be one of the poetry world’s most prominent voices. David Lehman uses each of these short pieces to look back on a single facet of the entertainer’s story—from his childhood in Hoboken, to his emergence as “The Voice” in the 1940s, to the wild professional (and romantic) fluctuations that followed. Lehman offers new insights and revisits familiar stories—Sinatra’s dramatic love affairs with some of the most beautiful stars in Hollywood, including Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe, and Ava Gardner; his fall from grace in the late 1940s and resurrection during the “Capitol Years” of the 1950s; his bonds with the rest of the Rat Pack; and his long tenure as the Chairman of the Board, viewed as the eminence grise of popular music inspiring generations of artists, from Bobby Darin to Bono to Bob Dylan.Brimming with Lehman’s own lifelong affection for Sinatra, the book includes lists of unforgettable performances; engaging insight on what made Sinatra the model of American machismo—and the epitome of romance; and clear-eyed assessments of the foibles that impacted his life and work. Warm and enlightening, Sinatra’s Century is full-throated appreciation of Sinatra for every fan.
Sinatra: The Chairman
by James KaplanJust in time for the Chairman's centennial, the endlessly absorbing sequel to James Kaplan's bestselling Frank: The VoiceFinally the definitive biography that Frank Sinatra, justly termed 'The Entertainer of the Century,' deserves and requires. Like Peter Guralnick on Elvis, Kaplan goes behind the legend to give us the man in full, in his many guises and aspects: peerless singer, (sometimes) powerful actor, business mogul, tireless lover and associate of the powerful and infamous.In 2010's Frank: The Voice, James Kaplan, in rich, distinctive, compulsively-readable prose, told the story of Frank Sinatra's meteoric rise to fame, subsequent failures, and reinvention as a star of the stage and screen. The story of 'Ol' Blue Eyes; continues with Sinatra: The Chairman, picking up the day after Frank claimed his Academy Award in 1954 and had reestablished himself as the top recording artist in music. Frank's life post-Oscar was incredibly dense: in between recording albums and singles, he often shot four or five movies a year; did TV show and nightclub appearances; started his own label, Reprise; and juggled his considerable commercial ventures (movie production, the restaurant business, even prizefighter management) alongside his famous and sometimes notorious social activities and commitments.
Sinatra: The Chairman
by James KaplanJust in time for the Chairman&’s centennial, the endlessly absorbing sequel to James Kaplan&’s bestselling Frank: The Voice—which completes the definitive biography that Frank Sinatra, justly termed the &“Entertainer of the Century,&” deserves and requires. Like Peter Guralnick on Elvis, Kaplan goes behind the legend to give us the man in full, in his many guises and aspects: peerless singer, (sometimes) accomplished actor, business mogul, tireless lover, and associate of the powerful and infamous. In 2010&’s Frank: The Voice, James Kaplan, in rich, distinctive, compulsively readable prose, told the story of Frank Sinatra&’s meteoric rise to fame, subsequent failures, and reinvention as a star of live performance and screen. The story of &“Ol&’ Blue Eyes&” continues with Sinatra: The Chairman, picking up the day after he claimed his Academy Award in 1954 and had reestablished himself as the top recording artist. Sinatra&’s life post-Oscar was astonishing in scope and achievement and, occasionally, scandal, including immortal recordings almost too numerous to count, affairs ditto, many memorable films (and more than a few stinkers), Rat Pack hijinks that mesmerized the world with their air of masculine privilege, and an intimate involvement at the intersection of politics and organized crime that continues to shock and astound with its hubris. James Kaplan has orchestrated the wildly disparate aspects of Frank Sinatra&’s life and character into an American epic—a towering achievement in biography of a stature befitting its subject.
Since Then: How I Survived Everything and Lived to Tell About It
by Carl Gottlieb David CrosbyDavid Crosby, the outspoken founding member of CSNY and The Byrds, turns his wry and unstinting eye to a fascinating, prickly subject: himself. Known to millions as the trickster poster boy for folkrock utopia and the inspiration for Dennis Hopper's wild-eyed antihero in the film Easy Rider, David Crosby is every bit the quintessential American icon of the counterculture today that he was in the sixties and seventies. Legendary, controversial, beloved, he is never far from the headlines. <P> Since Then is both a self-skewering look at the twists and turns of an impossibly rich life, and Crosby's confident declaration that it's far too soon for him to don the robe and slippers of Generational Elder. As a two-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he has an unparalleled legacy as a singer, songwriter, and musician-and few would object if he were to rest on his laurels. Yet despite Crosby's history of extravagant excess, he's never forgotten his great good fortune, and has never stopped using his enormous gifts in service of both his art and social causes to which he is committed. <P> This memoir shows the contradictory aspects to a personality whose truth-to-power outspokenness, exuberance, and creativity have made him a great and inspirational artist, yet whose struggles with private demons have resulted in arrests, chronic health issues, and ruined friendships. It discusses frankly the people and events that have drastically altered his definition of "family": raising ten-year-old son Django, with lover/wife/partner, Jan; reuniting with his adult son, musician James Raymond, while Crosby waited in the hospital for a life-saving liver transplant; becoming sperm donor to Melissa Etheridge and Julie Cypher.
Since We Saw You Last: The Church, the Community and Rites of Passage
by Ben ClowesMethodist Minister, Rev Ben Clowes has produced a series of Bible studies which relates scripture to living in the 21st Century. Using the music of Gary Barlow&’s highly emotional 2013 solo album, Since I Saw You Last as a backdrop, the studies look at how as a Church we connect with people most often at times of rites of passage. Since We Saw You Last offers a clear creative way to run a study or fellowship group to deepen discipleship. If people are searching for meaning in their lives, we need to speak into this as Christians and Ben believes this is at the heart of the links between the &‘I am&’ sayings, rites of passage and the words we hear so eloquently put by Gary Barlow. Christians must be a people who reach out and share the good news of Jesus&’ love with the world.
Sinfonia guerrera
by Iñigo Bolinaga IrasuegiEl 21 de junio de 1813, un ejército dirigido por Wellington infligió a las tropas de Napoleón una monumental derrota en las inmediaciones de Vitoria. El propio hermano del emperador, José, a la sazón rey de España, tuvo que huir a uña de caballo para evitar perecer o caer prisionero. Aquel acontecimiento, del que este año se conmemora el segundo centenario, supuso el repliegue definitivo de los franceses de la península ibérica y obtuvo un enorme eco en Europa, pues jamás antes las tropas imperiales habían sufrido tamaña derrota en combate. Al rebufo de este eco, Beethoven compuso una sinfonía en conmemoración de la Batalla de Vitoria que cosechó un éxito enorme, aunque luego el autor se lamentara de que, por primera y única vez en su vida, había sucumbido a los gustos del público menos exigente. Con este telón de fondo, Iñigo Bolinaga construye una novela estructurada en dos planos: el primero se corresponde con la batalla real, sangrienta y cruel, que invoca a los instintos más bajos del ser humano; el segundo, a la batalla imaginada, épica, gloriosa, sublime. El primero está protagonizado fundamentalmente por personajes históricos que estuvieronen Vitoria? Welllington, su amigo Álava, el rey José, su amante la marquesa de Montehermoso? y muchos, muchos guerrilleros, como Longa, Espoz y Mina, Dos Pelos o Martina Ibaibarriaga. El segundo plano corre a cargo de Beethoven y sus circunstancias, que son también, en buena medida, las de la Europa del momento. Sinfonía guerrera es una novela tan breve como intensa, tan amena como rigurosamente documentada desde el punto de vista histórico.
Sing
by Joe Raposo"Sing! Sing a song. Sing out loud, sing out strong." So begins a song first made popular on Sesame Street, then interpreted by singers of every style, from Gloria Estefan to the Dixie Chicks to R.E.M., as well as famous personalities such as Conan O'Brien, Katie Couric, Nathan Lane, and Liam Neeson. Now, bestselling children's book illustrator Tom Lichtenheld has put a visual story to this timeless and universal song that celebrates perseverance, self-expression, and the power of music to help each of us find our voice.
Sing Backwards and Weep: A Memoir
by Mark LaneganA gritty, gripping memoir by the singer Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees, Queens of the Stone Age, Soulsavers), chronicling his years as a singer and drug addict in Seattle in the '80s and '90s "Mark Lanegan-primitive, brutal, and apocalyptic. What's not to love?" -Nick Cave, author of The Sick Bag Song and The Death of Bunny Munro When Mark Lanegan first arrived in Seattle in the mid-1980s, he was just "an arrogant, self-loathing redneck waster seeking transformation through rock 'n' roll." Little did he know that within less than a decade, he would rise to fame as the front man of the Screaming Trees, then fall from grace as a low-level crack dealer and a homeless heroin addict, all the while watching some of his closest friends rocket to the forefront of popular music. In Sing Backwards and Weep, Lanegan takes readers back to the sinister, needle-ridden streets of Seattle, to an alternative music scene that was simultaneously bursting with creativity and dripping with drugs. He tracks the tumultuous rise and fall of the Screaming Trees, from a brawling, acid-rock bar band to world-famous festival favorites that scored a hit #5 single on Billboard's Alternative charts and landed a notorious performance on David Letterman, where Lanegan appeared sporting a fresh black eye from a brawl the night before. This book also dives into Lanegan's personal struggles with addiction, culminating in homelessness, petty crime, and the tragic deaths of his closest friends. From the back of the van to the front of the bar, from the hotel room to the emergency room, onstage, backstage, and everywhere in between, Sing Backwards and Weep reveals the abrasive underlining beneath one of the most romanticized decades in rock history-from a survivor who lived to tell the tale. Gritty, gripping, and unflinchingly raw, Sing Backwards and Weep is a book about more than just an extraordinary singer who watched his dreams catch fire and incinerate the ground beneath his feet. Instead, it's about a man who learned how to drag himself from the wreckage, dust off the ashes, and keep living and creating.
Sing Backwards and Weep: The Sunday Times Bestseller
by Mark LaneganTHE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER"Mark Lanegan-primitive, brutal, and apocalyptic. What's not to love?" NICK CAVE"A stoned cold classic" IAN RANKIN'Mark Lanegan writes like he sings, from the pained heart of a damaged soul with brutal honesty' BOBBY GILLESPIE"Powerfully written and brutally, frighteningly honest" LUCINDA WILLIAMSA ROUGH TRADE AND MOJO BOOK OF THE YEARFrom the back of the van to the front of the bar, from the hotel room to the emergency room, Mark Lanegan takes us back to the sinister, needle-ridden streets of Seattle, to an alternative music scene that was simultaneously bursting with creativity and saturated with drugs. He tracks the tumultuous rise and fall of Screaming Trees, from a brawling, acid-rock bar band to world-famous festival favourites with an enduring legacy, and tells of his own personal struggles with addiction, culminating in homelessness, petty crime, and the tragic deaths of his closest friends.Gritty, gripping and unflinchingly raw, SING BACKWARDS AND WEEP is about a man who learned how to drag himself from the wreckage, dust off the ashes, and keep living and creating.'The most brutally honest rock memoir imaginable' DAILY TELEGRAPH
Sing For Your Supper: A DIY Guide to Playing Music, Writing Songs, and Booking Your Own Gigs
by David RovicsSuccinct and to the point, David Rovics demystifies the very different skills necessary to cultivate the arts of songwriting, guitar-playing and tour booking. In an era when the truly independent record label is virtually a thing of the past, Rovics explains how itas possible to make a living as a recording artist without a label. At a time when the corporate record industry is suing music fans for sharing music, Rovics explains why the internet is good for independent artists, and how to utilize its potential. For those hoping to get a major record deal and become rich and famous, look elsewhere. But if youare looking to make a living as an independent artist, this pamphlet is a must-read.
Sing It Like Celia
by Mónica MancillasPerfect for fans of The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise and Merci Suárez Changes Gears, Sing It Like Celia is a revelatory story about a Mexican American girl who finds her voice and herself with the help of her role model and icon, Celia Cruz.Twelve-year-old Salva Sanchez has always been a fan of Celia Cruz, also known as &“the queen of salsa.&” Her love of Celia stems from her mother, who leaves Salva without explanation one awful day. Now Salva is stuck with her investigative journalist father in an RV campground. In the middle of nowhere.As Salva acclimates to her new environment and desperately tries to figure out why her mother left, she befriends a posse of campground kids who have started a band. When the kids discover that Salva has an amazing singing voice, they convince her to join their group. Soon, Salva learns how to find her voice—and herself—with the help of her newfound friends, her dad, and the one and only Celia Cruz.
Sing It!: A Biography of Pete Seeger
by Meryl DanzigerA tall, skinny man in blue jeans stands on a stage, one hand on his banjo, the other raised to the crowd of 15,000 people who have come to celebrate his ninetieth birthday. "Sing it!" he shouts, and everyone sings. How did a humble, banjo-playing Harvard University dropout become one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century? This is the story of Pete Seeger--singer, songwriter, social activist, environmentalist--who filled his toolbox with songs and set out to repair whatever in the world was broken. His story intertwines with a century of American history, and readers will be surprised to discover how many familiar songs, people, and projects somehow connect back to this one individual. What was it like for a city boy like Pete to hope freight trains with Woody Guthrie, the free-spirited composter of "This Land Is Your Land"? "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," a song beloved by people all over the world, might have been lost to history had it not been for Pete Seeger. The Hudson River is cleaner than it used to be; what did Pete do to help that happen? Through learning of his life of activism, readers will become links in the chain, inspired to reflect on their own power to make change.From the Hardcover edition.
Sing Me Back Home: Ethnographic Songwriting and Sardinian Language Politics (Teaching Culture: UTP Ethnographies for the Classroom)
by Kristina JacobsenSet on the Italian island of Sardinia, Sing Me Back Home explores language and culture through songwriting as an ethnographic method. Based on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork writing songs with Sardinian musicians, artisans, shepherds, poets, and language activists, Kristina Jacobsen asks: How are Sardinian lives and language ideologies narrated against the backdrop of American music? The book shows how Sardinian musicians sing their own history between the lines. It reveals how Sardinian songs become a site of transduction where, through the process of songwriting, recording, and performance, the energy from one genre of music and lingua-culture is harnessed to signal another one much closer to home. Sing Me Back Home is accompanied by original songs written and recorded in the field, with links to songs in each chapter. It includes songwriting prompts and lyrics, a glossary of key terms, and photographs from the field. Drawing on work from critical collaborative research, auto-ethnography, public anthropology, arts-based research, and ethnographic poetry, this sensory ethnography offers new ways for us to hear culture through stories and songs.
Sing Me Back Home: Love, Death, and Country Music
by Dana JenningsThe years from about 1950 to 1970 were the golden age of twang. Country music's giants all strode the earth in those years: Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, George Jones and Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette. And many of the standards that still define country were recorded then: "Folsom Prison Blues," "Your Cheatin' Heart," "Mama Tried," "Stand by Your Man," and "Coal Miner's Daughter." In Sing Me Back Home, Dana Jennings pushes past the iconic voices and images to get at what classic country music truly means to us today. Yes, country tells the story of rural America in the twentieth century—but the obsessions of classic country were obsessions of America as a whole: drinking and cheating, class and the yearning for home, God and death. Jennings, who grew up in a town that had more cows than people when he was born, knows all of this firsthand. His people lived their lives by country music. His grandmothers were honky-tonk angels, his uncles men of constant sorrow, and his father a romping, stomping hell-raiser who lived for the music of Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and the other rockabilly hellions. Sing Me Back Home is about a vanished world in which the Depression never ended and the sixties never arrived. Jennings uses classic country songs to explain the lives of his people, and shows us how their lives are also ours—only twangier.
Sing Out, Warning! Sing Out, Love!: The Writings of Lee Hays
by Lee Hays Robert S. KoppelmanFor fans and scholars of American Folk Music, particularly the folk song movement, this has some essential reading, much of which has previously not been published. Lee Hays (1914--1981) is remembered today as the bass singer of the Weavers, the popular folksinging quartet that included Pete Seeger and was blacklisted during the early years of the cold war. Hays is especially well known for his collaborations with Seeger on a number of political songs, including "The Hammer Song," and for his central role in producing Wasn't That a Time!, the 1981 film documentary about the Weavers. But he was also a talented, multifaceted writer of prose. In "Sing Out, Warning! Sing Out, Love!" Robert S. Koppelman brings together a selection of Hays's published and unpublished literary output and places the author and his work in historical context. In these writings, Hays emerges as a learned, incisive, and witty advocate of a new aesthetic that he helped introduce to American culture--an aesthetic grounded in the music of both the Methodist church of his father and the black churches of his Arkansas neighbors. Hays honed his participatory, inspirational musical style and his skills as a song leader while working in the southern labor movement, where he became acquainted with the left-wing notion of "Art as a Weapon." Yet as the autobiographical pieces in this collection make clear, it was not until he moved to New York City, teamed up with such iconic folk figures as Woody Guthrie and Seeger, and began performing before a mass public that he fully matured as a musical artist with a political message. In addition to documenting the trajectory of Hays's career, the volume includes samples of his well-crafted work as a writer of fiction and creative nonfiction. Together these writings reveal Hays to be an artist of diverse personal talents and deep social commitment. Robert S. Koppelman is assistant professor of English at Broward Community College and a banjo player and singer.
Sing Softer, Maggie
by Carolyn ShortMaggie loves to sing, but her mother keeps telling her to sing more softly.
Sing Your Name Out Loud: 15 Rules for Living Your Dream
by Jason DeruloIn his page-turning and inspiring first book, legendary songwriter and recording artist Jason Derulo shares his 15 rules for finding success in any pursuit, and invites everyone—especially artists and creators—to start on their path to greatness.In 2009, an 18-year-old son of Haitian immigrants burst onto Billboard music charts with the instant #1 song, “Whatcha Say,” which sampled a surprising hook and opened with what would prove to be one of the catchiest lines in pop music history – the artist’s own name, sung out loud. Defying every possible odd, Jason Derulo cemented himself again and again, hit after hit, as one of the hardest working singers, dancers, and performers in the world and a risk-taking force of nature.This is the remarkable story of Derulo's come up, told through the valuable principles that guided and propelled him toward artistic excellence. Waking at 4am to catch buses across Miami so he could attend performing arts schools on scholarship, entering himself into local singing competitions at the mall on the weekends, and penning hundreds of songs before he ever saw the inside of a recording studio, Derulo’s commitment to his dream – and dedication to seeing it come true – is the stuff of legend. But it was during his reinvention in 2020, after becoming one of the most followed creators on TikTok, that he realized his personal rules for self-mastery and success are applicable anywhere, for anyone, under any circumstance. “Now,” he writes, “It’s your turn.”Sing Your Name Out Loud: 15 Rules for Living Your Dream takes readers into the mind of one of the most consistent, dominating, and versatile artists alive. Derulo reflects, in his own words, on the defining moments of his career thus far, most notably the wins and losses that strengthened his signature style of creative pursuit and offers his fifteen rules for turning goals into reality – where numbers mean everything, obstacles are opportunities, closed doors are meant to be opened, failure is inevitable, and good lighting is non-negotiable.
Sing a Sad Song: The Life of Hank Williams (Music in American Life)
by Roger M. WilliamsFrom the book's Preface... Although he has been dead for twenty years, Hank Williams and his music live on in a manner unparalleled in American popular culture. His own recordings, reissued time and again, continue to sell to a body of fans and followers that has swelled to an estimated fifteen million. His songs, which Mitch Miller describes as "so indelible, so timeless they can take any kind of musical treatment," continue to take every kind, including jazz and soul. His popularity is so enduring and his influence so pronounced that many people express surprise when told Hank Williams is no longer living. The life, intertwined with the music, has become legend.
Sing a Song: How Lift Every Voice and Sing Inspired Generations
by Kelly Starling Lyons"Lyons delivers the history of a song that has inspired generations of African-Americans to persist and resist in the face of racism and systemic oppression. . . . A heartfelt history of a historic anthem."--Publishers WeeklySing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us.Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.In Jacksonville, Florida, two brothers, one of them the principal of a segregated, all-black school, wrote the song "Lift Every Voice and Sing" so his students could sing it for a tribute to Abraham Lincoln's birthday in 1900. From that moment on, the song has provided inspiration and solace for generations of Black families. Mothers and fathers passed it on to their children who sang it to their children and grandchildren. Known as the Black National Anthem, it has been sung during major moments of the Civil Rights Movement and at family gatherings and college graduations. Inspired by this song's enduring significance, Kelly Starling Lyons and Keith Mallett tell a story about the generations of families who gained hope and strength from the song's inspiring words.--A CCBC Choice --A Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People--An ALSC Notable Children's Book
Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement through its Songs
by Candie Carawan Guy CarawanTwo classic collections of freedom songs by historians Guy and Candie Carawan, We Shall Overcome (1963) and Freedom is a Constant Struggle (1968), are reprinted here in a single edition. Sing for Freedom includes a major new introduction by the editors, as well as words and music to original songs from the Civil Rights movement. The book also offers scores of firsthand accounts by participants in the movement.
Sing for Your Life: A Story of Race, Music, and Family
by Daniel BergnerThe touching, triumphant story of a young black man's journey from violence and despair to one of the world's most elite artistic institutions, as if The Blind Side were set in the world of opera. Ryan Speedo Green had a tough upbringing in southeastern Virginia: his family lived in a trailer park and later a bullet-riddled house across the street from drug dealers. His father was absent; his mother was volatile and abusive.At the age of twelve, Ryan was sent to Virginia's juvenile facility of last resort. He was placed in solitary confinement. He was uncontrollable, uncontainable, with little hope for the future. In 2011, at the age of twenty-four, Ryan won a nationwide competition hosted by New York's Metropolitan Opera, beating out 1,200 other talented singers. Today, he is a rising star performing major roles at the Met and Europe's most prestigious opera houses.SING FOR YOUR LIFE chronicles Ryan's suspenseful, racially charged and artistically intricate journey from solitary confinement to stardom. Daniel Bergner takes readers on Ryan's path toward redemption, introducing us to a cast of memorable characters--including the two teachers from his childhood who redirect his rage into music, and his long-lost father who finally reappears to hear Ryan sing. Bergner illuminates all that it takes--technically, creatively--to find and foster the beauty of the human voice. And Sing for Your Life sheds unique light on the enduring and complex realities of race in America.
Sing to Me: My Story of Making Music, Finding Magic, and Searching for Who's Next
by Joel Selvin LA ReidIn this long-awaited memoir, illustrated with over 100 never-before-seen photos from his personal collection, the groundbreaking record producer chronicles his struggles, his success, and the celebrated artists that made him a legend.Over the last twenty-five years, legendary music producer and record man LA Reid—the man behind artists such as Toni Braxton, Kanye West, Rihanna, TLC, Outkast, Mariah Carey, Pink, Justin Bieber, and Usher—has changed the music business forever. In addition to discovering some of the biggest pop stars on the planet, he has shaped some of the most memorable and unforgettable hits of the last two generations, creating an impressive legacy of talent discovery and hit records.Now, for the first time, he tells his story, taking fans on an intimate tour of his life, as he chronicles the fascinating journey from his small-town R&B roots in Cincinnati, Ohio, and his work as a drummer to his fame as a Grammy Award-winning music producer and his gig as a judge on the hit reality show, The X Factor. In Sing to Me, Reid goes behind the scenes of the music industry, charting his rise to fame and sharing stories of the countless artists he’s met, nurtured, and molded into stars. With fascinating insight into the early days of artists as diverse as TLC, Usher, Pink, Kanye West, and Justin Bieber, his story offers a detailed look at what life was like for stars at the start of their meteoric rise and how he always seemed to know who would be the next big thing.What emerges is a captivating portrait from the inside of popular music evolution over the last three decades. Part music memoir, part business story of climbing to the top, this beautifully designed book, jam packed with photos, showcases Reid's trademark passion and ingenuity and introduces a multifaceted genius who continues to shape pop culture today.