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- BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Composers & Musicians
- BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Entertainment & Performing Arts
- HISTORY / United States / General
- HISTORY / United States / State & Local / West (AK, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, UT, WY)
- MUSIC / Genres & Styles / Country & Bluegrass
- PHOTOGRAPHY / Subjects & Themes / Regional (see also TRAVEL / Pictorials)
12 products
Bakersfield
9781467109918
Regular price $23.99 Sale price $17.99 Save 25%
Bakersfield was established in 1863 in the western shadow of the Sierra Nevada at the intersection of two of the country's defining events: the California Gold Rush and the Civil War. Bakersfield's first generation of pioneers--gold-seekers, Southern sympathizers, and European immigrants--tamed the region's confluence of swamps and built a frontier town. Over the next century, the town at the southern tip of California's San Joaquin Valley produced a noteworthy array of heroes, poets, leaders, and scoundrels, including the most influential Supreme Court chief justice in the nation's history, two best-selling country artists, decorated athletes, brilliant innovators, and corrupt lawmen. Founded by Col. Thomas Baker, Bakersfield prospered atop fertile soil unmatched anywhere on the planet and crude oil reserves that had few peers. During the Dust Bowl migration, it became a beacon of hope to the refugees of the nation's most dire ecological disaster and, consequently, a unique region that writer Gerald Haslam came to call the Other California. Today, Bakersfield is California's ninth-largest city and among its fastest-growing. The story of its first century is presented here in words and pictures.
Record Plant, Sausalito Studios
9781467109468
Regular price $23.99 Sale price $17.99 Save 25%
The Record Plant studio in Sausalito, California, was one of America's top-of-the-line music recording facilities. Opened in 1972, Record Plant was known as the "resort studio," just across the Golden Gate Bridge in Northern California and away from the big city. One of three studios, the first Record Plant was opened in New York City in 1968 by Chris Stone and Gary Kellgren. The second studio in Los Angeles opened in 1969, followed by the third studio in Sausalito. San Francisco Bay Area-based radio station KSAN FM hosted live studio broadcasts from the Sausalito studio. With its nautical-inspired interior wood artistry, the building known as the "Plant" had a groovy aesthetic that drew in some of the most iconic musical artists of all time, including Fleetwood Mac, Bob Marley, the Grateful Dead, Sly and the Family Stone, Prince, Tom Petty, Metallica, Santana, Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Dave Matthews Band, and many more. Katiana Giacona, a Marin County native, was resident DJ at the former Sausalito Studio location when it was a spa and yoga event center called Harmonia. For Record Plant, Sausalito Studio she has assembled a collection of discography and photographs from the studio as well as interviews from former receptionists, managers, audio engineers, producers, and staff. Ken Caillat was the producer of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours album, one of the greatest rock and roll albums of all time.
Southern California Surf Music, 1960-1966
9781467133203
Regular price $24.99 Sale price $18.74 Save 25%
Dick Dale & the Del-Tones began holding weekend dances at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, California, in the summer of 1960. Over the next year and a half, Dale developed the sound and style that came to be known as surf music. The result was the development of more powerful guitar amplifiers, a dramatic increase in the sales of Fender guitars and amplifiers, and a shift from New York to West Coast recording studios. More and more people were drawn to the sport of surfing, which became an important part of teen beach culture at the time. Even landlocked teenagers were captured by the moment, carrying surfboards atop their woodies in Phoenix or bleaching their hair blonde in St. Paul. For hundreds of thousands of kids, though, the attraction was not the connection to surfing; it was the connection to the music pioneered by Dick Dale.
Showgirls of Las Vegas
9780738596532
Regular price $24.99 Sale price $18.74 Save 25%
Little girls all over the world may hope to grow up to become a princess, but few ever realize the dream. For those who grow up to become showgirls, they go far beyond, becoming goddess-like objects of men's desire and the epitome of feminine beauty, elegance, and class. As soon as resort casinos began to dot the dusty Las Vegas landscape, major stars, extravagant show productions, and beautiful women helped promote the city to become the ultimate adult playground. In the early 1950s, when women began to dance and parade on the stages of Las Vegas, the showgirl persona evolved from the seductive burlesque-style performance art to the elegant productions modeled after those staged in France, with women dripping in furs and feathers, or in nothing more than a G-string and rhinestones. The over-the-top Las Vegas productions may have faded into obscurity, leaving but one show, Bally's Jubilee, as the longest running showgirl show on the Las Vegas Strip, but the iconic showgirl will forever represent Las Vegas in all of its glitz and glory.
Casper's Troopers Drum & Bugle Corps
9781467129084
Regular price $23.99 Sale price $17.99 Save 25%
The Troopers Drum & Bugle Corps was founded in Casper, Wyoming, in November 1957. It was the dream of one man, Jim Jones. He believed that any kid who wanted to march with the Troopers should be afforded the chance. In 10 years, Jones took kids from Casper who had never marched before and turned them into national champions. The Troopers have played for celebrities and presidents, performed at football games and Disneyland, and marched in parades from California to New York. Drum and bugle corps have changed dramatically in the last 60 years, and the Troopers have as well. Today, the Troopers are an elite group of young people from across the country and all over the world, and they compete in Drum Corps International's World Class division.
Los Angeles's Central Avenue Jazz
9781467131308
Regular price $24.99 Sale price $18.74 Save 25%
From the late 1910s until the early 1950s, a series of aggressive segregation policies toward Los Angeles's rapidly expanding African American community inadvertently led to one of the most culturally rich avenues in the United States. From Downtown Los Angeles to the largely undeveloped city of Watts to the south, Central Avenue became the center of the West Coast jazz scene, nurturing homegrown talents like Charles Mingus, Dexter Gordon, and Buddy Collette while also hosting countless touring jazz legends such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Billie Holiday. Twenty-four hours a day, the sound of live jazz wafted out of nightclubs, restaurants, hotel lobbies, music schools, and anywhere else a jazz combo could squeeze in its instruments for nearly 50 years, helping to advance and define the sound of America's greatest musical contribution.
Hollywood Studios
9780738547084
Regular price $24.99 Sale price $18.74 Save 25%
Just after the turn of the 20th century, the motion picture industry moved to the West Coast, and the largest land of make-believe was created in Hollywood, California. From the silent-era beginnings of primitive, open-air stages to the fabled back lots of the studios' heyday, Hollywood Studios presents a bygone era of magical moviemaking in rare postcards. Assembled from the author's private collection, these images from the Chaplin Studios to Metro-Goldwyn Mayer depict an insider's look back at the dream factories known as the Hollywood studios.
Rock 'n' Roll in Orange County
9781626196094
Regular price $21.99 Sale price $16.49 Save 25%
The great acts--from Hendrix to Joplin and from Kiss to Korn--played to the Orange County crowd at such classic venues as Huntington Beach's Golden Bear, the Anaheim Convention Center and Anaheim's Doll Hut. Rock 'n' roll's OC roots include Leo Fender's electric guitar factory in Fullerton and the birthplace for the garage-band standard Louie Louie in Anaheim. As the music changed, iconic OC groups like Social Distortion and Avenged Sevenfold helped lead the way. Final curtains came down here, too: though killed in England, Eddie Cochran is buried in Cypress, and Bobby Hatfield, half of the Righteous Brothers, is interred at Corona del Mar. Join pop culture expert Chris Epting for the essential big hits plus idiosyncratic flip-side riffs of Orange County's mighty rock 'n' roll history.
The Denver Folk Music Tradition
9781609495329
Regular price $21.99 Sale price $16.49 Save 25%
In 1962, Harry Tuft founded the Denver Folklore Center to bring together contemporary folk music fans and performers such as Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins and so many more. In the following decade, a core of folk enthusiasts established the Swallow Hill Music Association. These two organizations have persevered to sustain a lasting folk legacy in the Mile High City. This is the story of how the music and the people who love and live it shaped a unique, influential tradition. Join local historian and musician Paul Malkoski on a tour through more than fifty years of Denver's proud folk music scene.
San Francisco Jazz
9781467132879
Regular price $24.99 Sale price $18.74 Save 25%San Francisco is probably best known for its hills, ubiquitous fog, dungeness crab and the Golden Gate Bridge. But jazz music's threads are similarly woven into the fabric of the city and its environs. Whether performed in renowned clubs like So Different, Jimbo's Bop City, Black Hawk, and the Jazz Workshop or in halls like the Primalon Ballroom and Great American Music Hall, jazz has infused the city from the Barbary Coast to the Fillmore, thrilling audiences for over a century. San Franciscans have grooved to and incubated scores of jazz acts, hot and cool, raucous and contemplative.
Montana Americana Music
9781467135146
Regular price $21.99 Sale price $16.49 Save 25%
Montana's relationship to Americana music is as wide and deep as the famed Missouri River that inspired countless musicians seated at its shores. From the fiddling of Pierre Cruzatte and George Gibson in the Corps of Discovery to the modern-day loner folk of Joey Running Crane and Cameron Boster, the Treasure State inspires the production of top-notch country music. In the 1950s, bands like the Snake River Outlaws fostered a long-standing love of hillbilly honky-tonk, and in the 1970s, the Mission Mountain Wood Band added a homegrown flavor of its own. Contemporary acts like the Lil' Smokies and songwriter Martha Scanlan promise a vibrant future for the local sound. Author and musician Aaron Parrett explores this history to show what it means to boot stomp in Big Sky Country.
