When Elvis Presley first showed up at Sam Phillips's Memphis-based Sun Records studio, he was a shy teenager in search of a sound. Phillips invited a local guitarist named Scotty Moore to stand in. Scotty ...

Jazz as an instrument of global diplomacy transformed superpower relations in the Cold War era and reshaped democracy's image worldwide. Lisa E. Davenport tells the story of America's program of jazz ...

Association of Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence
Best Research in Recorded Jazz Music–Best History (tie) (2011)

Wilbur C. Sweatman (1882-1961) is one of the most important, yet unheralded, ...

In I’m Feeling the Blues Right Now: Blues Tourism and the Mississippi Delta, Stephen A. King reveals the strategies used by blues promoters and organizers in Mississippi, both African American and white, ...

Association of Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence
Best Research in Record Labels–Certificate of Merit (2012)

The Starday Story: The House That Country Music Built is the first book entirely ...

In this famed collection of full-color photographs, Birney Imes reveals a previously unexplored and now nearly vanished domain, the Black juke joints of the Mississippi Delta. Imes's work transforms these ...

Greil Marcus once said to an interviewer, "There is an infinite amount of meaning about anything, and I free associate. " For more than four decades, Marcus has explored the connections among figures, ...

Saved by Song returns to print with its sweeping overview of the history of gospel music. Powerful and incisive, the book traces contemporary Christianity and Christian music to the sixteenth century and ...

The commercial explosion of ragtime in the early twentieth century created previously unimagined opportunities for black performers. However, every prospect was mitigated by systemic racism. The biggest ...

Association of Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence
Best Research in Recorded Jazz Music–Certificate of Merit (2013)

The coal fields of West Virginia would seem an unlikely market for big ...