Charles Shaar Murray

Jimi Hendrix 'transgressed many boundaries; both arbitrary musical definitions separating blues and soul or jazz and rock, and also those fundamental divides between the archaic and the avant-garde, between individualist and collectivist philosophies,between blacks and whites, between America and Britain, between passive acquiescence and furious resistance,between lust for life and obsession with death.' Charles Shaar Murray Crosstown Traffic charts the routes Hendrix took to arrive at his 'unique musical formulation'. The result is a bravura study of his art and life that has become established as the definitive work on 'the most eloquent instrumentalist ever to work in rock.' Winner of the Ralph Gleason Music Book Award on first publication, this brilliant and ambitious book, hailed as 'the most compelling and literate essay on rock since Greil Marcus' Mystery Train, is being reissued with an updated introduction.

Jimi Hendrix and Post-war Pop

Crosstown Traffic

YOU DON'T NEED TO GO TO THE CROSSROADS TO MAKE A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL. THE CROSSROADS WILL COME TO YOU. James 'Blue' Moon, the greatest living bluesman, was ten years old when he saw Robert Johnson playing on a street corner. Now, more than seventy years later, he's dying of cancer. His last wish is to reunite his estranged family - his soul-diva daughter Venetia Moon and his grandson, hip-hop mogul Calvin 'Ice Blue' Holland - for one final album. Enter his former protÃ©gÃ©, hapless British blues-rock superstar Mick Hudson, who has unfinished business with all three of them, plus a posse of vengeful gangstaz and a mysterious figure with whom Blue struck a deal one dark, bloody night at a haunted crossroads back in his native Mississippi Delta. It's a potent mix of secrets, nightmares and lies, spanning decades and continents. James 'Blue' Moon has one last chance to escape the hellhound on his trail ... if the cancer doesn't get him first. YOU NEVER GET OUT OF THESE BLUES ALIVE.

The Hellhound Sample

Called by "Entertainment Weekly" "The best book on Hendrix", "Crosstown Traffic" rode their A-list for over two months and won the prestigious Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award. Roots-savvy British critic Charles Shaar Murray assesses the lifework of guitarist Jimi Hendrix in the context of black musical tradition, social history, and the upheaval of the 1960s.

Jimi Hendrix & The Post-War Rock 'N' Roll Revolution

Traces the history and music of Jimi Hendrix and discusses the influence and impact of one of rock music's most innovative guitarists on a generation

Jimi Hendrix and the Post-war Rock'n'roll Revolution

Acclaimed writer Charles Shaar Murray's Boogie Man is the authorized and authoritative biography of an extraordinary musician. Murray was given unparalleled access to Hooker, and he lets the man from Clarksdale, Mississippi, tell his own story. "Everything you read on album covers is not true, and every album reads different," he told Murray. Murray helps Hooker set the record straight, disentangling the myths and legends from truths so rock-ribbed that we understand, as if for the first time, why they have provided the source for a lifetime of unforgettable sound. Murray weaves together Hooker's life and music to reveal their indissoluble bonds. Yet Boogie Man is far more than merely an accomplished and brilliant biography of one man; it gives an account of an entire art form. Grounded in a time and place in American culture, the blues are universal, and in the hands of the greatest practitioners its power resides in the miracle of using despair to transcend it. "The preacher's mantle," Murray tells us, "passes to the bluesman." This bluesman traveled a hard road out of the American South, from obscurity to adulation and back-and back again. John Lee Hooker has seen it all and sung it all, and his music is both a living legacy and an American treasure. Here is the book that does him and his music full justice.

The Adventures of John Lee Hooker in the American Twentieth Century

Boogie Man

Cherie van Gelder

Biografie van de Amerikaanse popmusicus (1942-1970).

Jimi Hendrix

‘You the funkiest man alive.’ Miles Davis’ accolade was the perfect expression of John Lee Hooker’s apotheosis as blues superstar: recording with the likes of Van Morrison, Keith Richards and Carlos Santana; making TV commercials (Lee Jeans); appearing in films (The Blues Brothers); and even starring in Pete Townshend’s musical adaptation of Ted Hughes’ story The Iron Man. His was an extraordinary life. Born in the American deep south, he moved to Detroit and then, in a career spanning over fifty years, recorded hypnotic blues classics such as ‘Boogie Chillen’, rhythm-and-blues anthems such as ‘Dimples’ and ‘Boom Boom’ and, in his final, glorious renaissance, the Grammy-winning album The Healer. Charles Shaar Murray’s authoritative biography vividly, and often in John Lee Hooker’s own words, does magnificent justice to the man and his music.

Charles Shaar Murray

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