The Man and His Music
SKU: MB.31008M
ISBN 9781513467016. 8.75x11.75 inches.
Blind Lemon Jefferson was a trail blazer, both as a singer and guitarist, but also as a commercial phenomenon, for he was the first blues musician to establish the tremendous appeal that blues, as played and sung by rural African American folk, had for the record-buying public. It is no exaggeration to say that the sales of Lemon’s records paved the way for a host of other solo rural blues musicians to record in his wake and made the record companies more willing to give other musicians a chance, in the hopes of achieving similar success. Lemon s record sales weren’t what made him a great musician, though - that could only be attributed to his startlingly virtuosic guitar - playing and soulful singing, developed over years of busking, building on his natural gifts with a great deal of practice and work. In the Guitar of Blind Lemon Jefferson author John Miller presents transcriptions, in standard notation and tablature, of 22 of Lemon’s greatest performances, with an additional essay examining Lemon’s senses of time and phrasing and his picking techniques. Also included is a download link to all the original recordings. To present a picture of Lemon the man, noted blues researchers Alan Governar and Kip Lornell have contributed an essay focusing on Lemon’s early life, the origins of his music, and his time spent in a musical partnership with Lead Belly. Links are provided to downloadable performances of the songs in the book from which the transcriptions were made, so that you can have Lemon’s sound in your head as you learn to play his songs.Blind Lemon Jefferson was remarkable, even in a style that abounded in great musicians, and some measure of his influence can be seen in the fact that musicians recorded in the 1960s, more than thirty years after his death, were still covering his songs and stealing guitar licks from him. The Guitar of Blind Lemon Jefferson gives you the resources needed to learn what was so special about Lemon’s music, and to experience his musical excellence from inside the music itself.Titles include: One Dime Blues, Got The Blues, Dry Southern Blues, Big Night Blues, Rabbit Foot Blues, Shuckin' Sugar Blues, Where Shall I Be, Wartime Blues, Black Horse Blues, Prison Cell Blues, Piney Woods Money Mama, See That My Grave Is Kept Clean, He Arose From The Dead, Beggin' Back, Broke And Hungry, Bad Luck Blues, Matchbox Blues, Lemon's Worried Blues, That Crawlin' Baby Blues, Easy Rider Blues, Stocking Feet Blues and Right of Way BluesLevel 2/3 • 160 pages • Direct download link to audio files.
SKU: BT.MUSAM1005334
ISBN 9781780387109.
The updated 2nd Edition of the Justinguitar.com Beginner's Songbook is now spiral bound for easy reading and page turns, while remaining the same compact size for jamming on the go. Established as the ultimate songbook available for beginners, the Justinguitar.com Beginner's Songbook - 2nd Edition is the perfect complement for Justin Sandercoe’s revolutionary online lessons which are used by hundreds of thousands of people across the world. Now you can learn to play 100 classic songs as your playing develops through the course. The book includes: Complete lyrics and chords to 100 songs by artists such as The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, JohnnyCash, Simon & Garfunkel, Jeff Buckley, Crowded House, Mumford & Sons, Kings of Leon, Nirvana and many more. There are 10 songs for each stage of the Beginner’s Course, building up from easy three-chord songs through to more advanced tunes. Tuition notes for each song by Justin advising you on strumming patterns and chord changes, with diagrams to illustrate all the chord shapes you need. Compact (17cm x 24.7cm) and now spiral bound for ultimate convenience.
SKU: HL.282484
ISBN 9781540034410. UPC: 888680789282. 9.0x12.0x0.709 inches.
64 pop hits which have become modern-day standards are included in this collection for easy piano. Includes: Billie Jean (Michael Jackson) • Don't Stop Believin' (Journey) • Dream On (Aerosmith) • Every Breath You Take (The Police) • Free Bird (Lynyrd Skynyrd) • Free Fallin' (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) • Hallelujah (Jeff Buckley) • Imagine (John Lennon) • Landslide (Fleetwood Mac) • Purple Rain (Prince) • Ring of Fire (Johnny Cash) • Rolling in the Deep (Adele) • Tears in Heaven (Eric Clapton) • With or Without You (U2)• You Raise Me Up (Josh Groban) • and more.
SKU: PR.465000130
ISBN 9781598064070. UPC: 680160600144. 9x12 inches.
Following a celebrated series of wind ensemble tone poems about national parks in the American West, Dan Welcher’s Upriver celebrates the Lewis & Clark Expedition from the Missouri River to Oregon’s Columbia Gorge, following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Welcher’s imaginative textures and inventiveness are freshly modern, evoking our American heritage, including references to Shenandoah and other folk songs known to have been sung on the expedition. For advanced players. Duration: 14’.In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s Corps of Discovery to find a water route to the Pacific and explore the uncharted West. He believed woolly mammoths, erupting volcanoes, and mountains of pure salt awaited them. What they found was no less mind-boggling: some 300 species unknown to science, nearly 50 Indian tribes, and the Rockies.Ihave been a student of the Lewis and Clark expedition, which Thomas Jefferson called the “Voyage of Discovery,” for as long as I can remember. This astonishing journey, lasting more than two-and-a-half years, began and ended in St. Louis, Missouri — and took the travelers up more than a few rivers in their quest to find the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean. In an age without speedy communication, this was akin to space travel out of radio range in our own time: no one knew if, indeed, the party had even survived the voyage for more than a year. Most of them were soldiers. A few were French-Canadian voyageurs — hired trappers and explorers, who were fluent in French (spoken extensively in the region, due to earlier explorers from France) and in some of the Indian languages they might encounter. One of the voyageurs, a man named Pierre Cruzatte, also happened to be a better-than-average fiddle player. In many respects, the travelers were completely on their own for supplies and survival, yet, incredibly, only one of them died during the voyage. Jefferson had outfitted them with food, weapons, medicine, and clothing — and along with other trinkets, a box of 200 jaw harps to be used in trading with the Indians. Their trip was long, perilous to the point of near catastrophe, and arduous. The dream of a Northwest Passage proved ephemeral, but the northwestern quarter of the continent had finally been explored, mapped, and described to an anxious world. When the party returned to St. Louis in 1806, and with the Louisiana Purchase now part of the United States, they were greeted as national heroes.Ihave written a sizeable number of works for wind ensemble that draw their inspiration from the monumental spaces found in the American West. Four of them (Arches, The Yellowstone Fires, Glacier, and Zion) take their names, and in large part their being, from actual national parks in Utah, Wyoming, and Montana. But Upriver, although it found its voice (and its finale) in the magnificent Columbia Gorge in Oregon, is about a much larger region. This piece, like its brother works about the national parks, doesn’t try to tell a story. Instead, it captures the flavor of a certain time, and of a grand adventure. Cast in one continuous movement and lasting close to fourteen minutes, the piece falls into several subsections, each with its own heading: The Dream (in which Jefferson’s vision of a vast expanse of western land is opened); The Promise, a chorale that re-appears several times in the course of the piece and represents the seriousness of the presidential mission; The River; The Voyageurs; The River II ; Death and Disappointment; Return to the Voyage; and The River III .The music includes several quoted melodies, one of which is familiar to everyone as the ultimate “river song,” and which becomes the through-stream of the work. All of the quoted tunes were either sung by the men on the voyage, or played by Cruzatte’s fiddle. From various journals and diaries, we know the men found enjoyment and solace in music, and almost every night encampment had at least a bit of music in it. In addition to Cruzatte, there were two other members of the party who played the fiddle, and others made do with singing, or playing upon sticks, bones, the ever-present jaw harps, and boat horns. From Lewis’ journals, I found all the tunes used in Upriver: Shenandoah (still popular after more than 200 years), V’la bon vent, Soldier’s Joy, Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier, Come Ye Sinners Poor and Needy (a hymn sung to the tune “Beech Spring”) and Fisher’s Hornpipe. The work follows an emotional journey: not necessarily step-by-step with the Voyage of Discovery heroes, but a kind of grand arch. Beginning in the mists of history and myth, traversing peaks and valleys both real and emotional (and a solemn funeral scene), finding help from native people, and recalling their zeal upon finding the one great river that will, in fact, take them to the Pacific. When the men finally roar through the Columbia Gorge in their boats (a feat that even the Indians had not attempted), the magnificent river combines its theme with the chorale of Jefferson’s Promise. The Dream is fulfilled: not quite the one Jefferson had imagined (there is no navigable water passage from the Missouri to the Pacific), but the dream of a continental destiny.
