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Country Music
- A Very Short Introduction
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 4 hrs and 2 mins
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Publisher's summary
Country Music: A Very Short Introduction presents a compelling overview of the music and its impact on American culture.
Country music has long been a marker of American identity; from our popular culture to our politics, it has provided a soundtrack to our national life. While traditionally associated with the working class, country's appeal is far broader than any other popular music style. While this music rose from the people, it is also a product of the popular music industry, and the way the music has been marketed to its audience is a key part of its story.
Key artists, songs, and musical styles are highlighted that are either touchstones for a particular social event (such as Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man," which produced both a positive and negative backlash as a marker of women's roles in society at the beginning of the liberation movement) or that encompass broader trends in the industry (for example, Jimmie Rodgers' "T for Texas" was an early example of the appropriation of black musical forms by white artists to market them to a mainstream audience).
While pursuing a basically chronological outline, the book is structured around certain recurring themes (such as rural vs. urban; tradition vs. innovation; male vs. female; white vs. black) that have been documented through the work of country artists from the minstrel era to today. Truly the voice of the people, country music expresses both deep patriotism as well as a healthy skepticism towards the powers that dominate American society. Country Music: A Very Short Introduction illuminates this rich tradition and assesses its legacy in American popular music culture.
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King of the Blues
- The Rise and Reign of B.B. King
- By: Daniel De Visé
- Narrated by: Cary Hite
- Length: 17 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Riley “Blues Boy” King (1925-2015) was born into deep poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi. Wrenched away from his sharecropper father, B.B. lost his mother at age 10, leaving him more or less alone. Music became his emancipation from exhausting toil in the fields. Inspired by a local minister’s guitar and by the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker and encouraged by his cousin, the established blues man Bukka White, B.B. taught his guitar to sing in the unique solo style that, along with his relentless work ethic and humanity, became his trademark.
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Excellent
- By Sonny Garcia on 01-02-24
By: Daniel De Visé
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Never a Dull Moment
- 1971 - the Year That Rock Exploded
- By: David Hepworth
- Narrated by: David Hepworth
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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On New Year's Eve, 1970, Paul McCartney told his lawyers to issue the writ at the High Court in London, effectively ending The Beatles. You might say this was the last day of the pop era. The following day, which was a Friday, was 1971. You might say this was the first day of the rock era. And within the remaining 364 days of this monumental year, the world would hear Don McLean's "American Pie", The Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar", The Who's "Baba O'Riley", Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven", and more.
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A blast from the past
- By Amazon Customer on 07-30-16
By: David Hepworth
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Cool Town
- How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture
- By: Grace Elizabeth Hale
- Narrated by: Emily Cauldwell
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1979, the self-titled debut album by the B-52s burst onto the Billboard charts, capturing the imagination of fans and music critics worldwide. The fact that the group had formed in the sleepy southern college town of Athens, Georgia, only increased the fascination. Soon, more Athens bands followed the B-52s into the vanguard of the new American music that would come to be known as "alternative", including R.E.M., who catapulted over the course of the 1980s to the top of the musical mainstream.
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I feel like I was there when it happened
- By Joseph Suciu on 01-11-23
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1965
- The Most Revolutionary Year in Music
- By: Andrew Grant Jackson
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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During 12 unforgettable months in the middle of the turbulent '60s, America saw the rise of innovative new sounds that would change popular music as we knew it. In 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music, music historian Andrew Grant Jackson (Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of The Beatles' Solo Careers) chronicles a groundbreaking year of creativity fueled by rivalries between musicians and continents, sweeping social changes, and technological breakthroughs.
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Seems like a good overview
- By wylie smith on 01-12-23
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Solid State
- The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles
- By: Kenneth Womack, Alan Parsons - foreword
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In February 1969, the Beatles began working on what became their final album together. Abbey Road introduced a number of new techniques and technologies to the Beatles' sound and included "Come Together", "Something", and "Here Comes the Sun", which all emerged as classics. Womack's colorful retelling of how this landmark album was written and recorded is a treat for fans of the Beatles. Solid State takes listeners back to 1969 and into EMI's Abbey Road Studios, which boasted an advanced solid state transistor mixing desk.
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It's all about the recording studios
- By Tina on 02-18-20
By: Kenneth Womack, and others
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Dig If You Will the Picture
- Funk, Sex, God and Genius in the Music of Prince
- By: Ben Greenman
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Ben Greenman, New York Times best-selling author, contributing writer to The New Yorker, and owner of thousands of recordings of Prince and Prince-related songs, knows intimately that there has never been a rock star as vibrant, mercurial, willfully contrary, experimental, or prolific as Prince. Uniting a diverse audience while remaining singularly himself, Prince was a tireless artist, a musical virtuoso and chameleon, and a pop-culture prophet.
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Reads like a indepth career review & analysis
- By herb on 05-18-17
By: Ben Greenman
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All Shook Up
- How Rock ‘n’ Roll Changed America
- By: Glenn C. Altschuler
- Narrated by: Jack Garrett
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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As Glenn Altschuler reveals in All Shook Up, the rise of rock 'n roll--and the outraged reception to it--in fact can tell us a lot about the values of the United States in the 1950s, a decade that saw a great struggle for the control of popular culture. Altschuler shows, in particular, how rock's "switchblade beat" opened up wide fissures in American society along the fault-lines of family, sexuality, and race.
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50's Rock&Roll was more of a force than I thought
- By James on 10-19-11
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Your Song Changed My Life
- From Jimmy Page to St. Vincent, Smokey Robinson to Hozier, Thirty-Five Beloved Artists on Their Journey and the Music That Inspired It
- By: Bob Boilen
- Narrated by: Bob Boilen
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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From the beloved host and creator of NPR's All Songs Considered and Tiny Desk Concerts comes an essential oral history of modern music, told in the voices of iconic and up-and-coming musicians, including Dave Grohl, Jimmy Page, Michael Stipe, Carrie Brownstein, Smokey Robinson, and Jeff Tweedy, among others - published in association with NPR Music.
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Cool if you know all interviewed artists
- By Farfield on 12-05-16
By: Bob Boilen
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Music
- A Subversive History
- By: Ted Gioia
- Narrated by: Jamie Renell
- Length: 17 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Histories of music overwhelmingly suppress stories of the outsiders and rebels who created musical revolutions and instead celebrate the mainstream assimilators who borrowed innovations, diluted their impact, and disguised their sources. In Music: A Subversive History, Ted Gioia reclaims the story of music for the riffraff, insurgents, and provocateurs. Gioia tells a 4,000-year history of music as a global source of power, change, and upheaval.
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Squeezing cherry-picked facts into a simplistic narrative
- By Erik A. Ritland on 11-24-20
By: Ted Gioia
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Chairman at the Board
- Recording the Soundtrack of a Generation
- By: Bill Schnee
- Narrated by: Bill Schnee
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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With over 125 gold and platinum records, and two Grammys for Steely Dan's Aja and Gaucho, Schnee has been called a living legend - recognized and respected in the industry as the consummate music man with an incomparable career that he lovingly shares with listeners in humorous detail.
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Worst narration ever!
- By Anonymous User on 01-26-23
By: Bill Schnee
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The Wrecking Crew
- The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Best-Kept Secret
- By: Kent Hartman
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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If you were a fan of popular music in the 1960s and early '70s, you were a fan of the Wrecking Crew - whether you knew it or not. On hit record after hit record by everyone from the Byrds, the Beach Boys, and the Monkees to the Grass Roots, the 5th Dimension, Sonny & Cher, and Simon & Garfunkel, this collection of West Coast studio musicians from diverse backgrounds established themselves as the driving sound of pop music - sometimes over the objection of actual band members....
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Left Guessing
- By Patrick King on 04-29-14
By: Kent Hartman
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Bright lights dark shadows
- The real story of Abba
- By: Carl Palm
- Narrated by: Adrian Mulraney
- Length: 26 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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An exploration of all aspects of the Abba member’s lives and careers. Amazingly detailed, it examines the group member’s family backgrounds, the pre-Abba days, the legendary 70s, the marriages, the divorces, the business ups and downs, and the post-Abba solo careers.
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Awesome! -- All the Swedish words pronounced!
- By Howard_a on 06-18-12
By: Carl Palm