*Includes pictures
*Includes Nelson's quotes about his life and career
*Includes footnotes and a bibliography for further reading
*Includes a table of contents
“Since I was a kid, music was what I wanted to do. I thought I could make it by my own talents. That's what I wanted to prove.” – Willie Nelson
A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history’s most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors’ American Legends series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives of America’s most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known.
By the time Willie Hughes Nelson was born in 1933, several of the genres he would later cover and dominate had already passed through an entire generation of pioneering artists. The tradition of authentic country music was handed down by such groups as the Carter family, and the boundaries of style and sound were well set by the time Nelson picked up his first guitar. The pioneers of rock music had later done the same for their industry, with Buddy Holly setting the tone for clean-cut hairstyles, wholesome, non-aggressive texts, and predictable harmonic progressions to underpin his unique energy. Elvis Presley was melding rock with country and blues, but through sheer charisma, created a distinct package for the future of rock music. Given this, there was no obvious path for one such as Willie Nelson to travel with country music’s pre-set expectations. Jazz artists were, in most cases, expected to possess a vocal instrument of some conventional beauty, unless they wished to pursue the comedic route, as in the case of Fats Waller, so that door seemed closed as well. The protest movement was decades away from liberating the songwriter to deal with looming social issues, and anything nearing classical music was, for a voice like Nelson’s, out of the question, since he lacked a natural reverberation or depth of acoustical color in his instrument. In the world of club standards, one of Nelson’s favorite repertoire types, it seemed unlikely that he could compete with his idol, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Perry Como, or dozens of other vocal stylists who depended on a specific suave from the sound of the voice.
*Includes Nelson's quotes about his life and career
*Includes footnotes and a bibliography for further reading
*Includes a table of contents
“Since I was a kid, music was what I wanted to do. I thought I could make it by my own talents. That's what I wanted to prove.” – Willie Nelson
A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history’s most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors’ American Legends series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives of America’s most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known.
By the time Willie Hughes Nelson was born in 1933, several of the genres he would later cover and dominate had already passed through an entire generation of pioneering artists. The tradition of authentic country music was handed down by such groups as the Carter family, and the boundaries of style and sound were well set by the time Nelson picked up his first guitar. The pioneers of rock music had later done the same for their industry, with Buddy Holly setting the tone for clean-cut hairstyles, wholesome, non-aggressive texts, and predictable harmonic progressions to underpin his unique energy. Elvis Presley was melding rock with country and blues, but through sheer charisma, created a distinct package for the future of rock music. Given this, there was no obvious path for one such as Willie Nelson to travel with country music’s pre-set expectations. Jazz artists were, in most cases, expected to possess a vocal instrument of some conventional beauty, unless they wished to pursue the comedic route, as in the case of Fats Waller, so that door seemed closed as well. The protest movement was decades away from liberating the songwriter to deal with looming social issues, and anything nearing classical music was, for a voice like Nelson’s, out of the question, since he lacked a natural reverberation or depth of acoustical color in his instrument. In the world of club standards, one of Nelson’s favorite repertoire types, it seemed unlikely that he could compete with his idol, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Perry Como, or dozens of other vocal stylists who depended on a specific suave from the sound of the voice.
African Orgin of Biological Psychiatry
The Ancient Egyptian knew the relationship of the pineal gland to higher states of consciousness more than 4000 years before its rediscovery by modern biological psychiatry. The concept of an African origin of biological psychiatry is based on a review...
$33.00
$22.00
CONVERSATION PIECES: POEMS THAT TALK TO OTHER POEMS
Here are poems that answer, argue with, update, elaborate on, mock, interrogate, or pay tribute to poems of the past. We hear Leda's view of the Swan; feel sympathy for La Belle Dame sans Merci, and find out how Marvell's...
$21.49
African American Cookbook (SB)
African American Cookbook: Traditional And Other Favorite Recipes by Bailey, Phoebe (2002) Spiral-bound
Product details
ASIN : B011YTRB2A
Publisher : Good Books (January 1, 1709)
Item Weight : 14.8 ounces
$2.99
Bad Boy
Library Binding : 224 pages
ISBN-10 : 0060295244
ISBN-13 : 978-0060295240
$16.89
$14.36
Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring '20s
A vibrant portrait of the talented and entrepreneurial women who defined an era in Cairo. One of the world’s most multicultural cities, twentieth-century Cairo was a magnet for the ambitious and talented. During the 1920s and ’30s, a vibrant music,...
$17.95
$15.95
The Butler
Joachim von Hartmann was born and raised in Buenos Aires by his loving German mother, inseparable from his identical twin, Javier. When Joachim moves to Paris with his mother in his late teens, his twin stays behind and enters a...
$8.99
$6.99
Black Pioneers: An Untold Story
BLACK PIONEERS: AN UNTOLD STORY one of Katz’s four important books on the African American experience as western pioneers. It has a new Preface by Kenneth B. Morris, Jr. great, great, great grandson of Frederick Douglass, and founder of the...
$15.00
$10.50
Flight from the Devil: Six Slave Narratives
During the early 19th century African American men and women who broke their chains also gave the abolitionist movement its strongest verbal weapons in the form of detailed autobiographies that exposed the slave system. Perceptive, dramatic and often starkly horrifying,...
$20.00
$14.00