Play Me Something Quick and Devilish explores the heritage of traditional fiddle music in Missouri. Howard Wight Marshall considers the place of homemade music in people’s lives across social and ethnic communities from the late 1700s to the World War I years and into the early 1920s. This exceptionally important and complex period provided the foundations in history and settlement for the evolution of today’s old-time fiddling. Beginning with the French villages on the Mississippi River, Marshall leads us chronologically through the settlement of the state and how these communities established our cultural heritage. Other core populations include the “Old Stock Americans” (primarily Scotch-Irish from Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia), African Americans, German-speaking immigrants, people with American Indian ancestry (focusing on Cherokee families dating from the Trail of Tears in the 1830s), and Irish railroad workers in the post–Civil War period. These are the primary communities whose fiddle and dance traditions came together on the Missouri frontier to cultivate the bounty of old-time fiddling enjoyed today. Marshall also investigates themes in the continuing evolution of fiddle traditions. These themes include the use of the violin in Westward migration, in the Civil War years, and in the railroad boom that changed history. Of course, musical tastes shift over time, and the rise of music literacy in the late Victorian period, as evidenced by the brass band movement and immigrant music teachers in small towns, affected fiddling. The contributions of music publishing as well as the surprising importance of ragtime and early jazz also had profound effects. Much of the old-time fiddlers’ repertory arises not from the inherited reels, jigs, and hornpipes from the British Isles, nor from the waltzes, schottisches, and polkas from the Continent, but from the prolific pens of Tin Pan Alley. Marshall also examines regional styles in Missouri fiddling and comments on the future of this time-honored, and changing, tradition. Documentary in nature, this social history draws on various academic disciplines and oral histories recorded in Marshall’s forty-some years of research and field experience. Historians, music aficionados, and lay people interested in Missouri folk heritage—as well as fiddlers, of course—will find Play Me Something Quick and Devilish an entertaining and enlightening read. With 39 tunes, the enclosed Voyager Records companion CD includes a historic sampler of Missouri fiddlers and styles from 1955 to 2012. A media kit is available here: press.umsystem.edu/pages/PlayMeSomethingQuickandDevilish.aspx

North American Fiddle Music: A Research and Information Guide is the first large-scale annotated bibliography and research guide on the fiddle traditions of the United States and Canada. These countries, both of which have large immigrant populations as well as Native populations, have maintained fiddle traditions that, while sometimes faithful to old-world or Native styles, often feature blended elements from various traditions. Therefore, researchers of the fiddle traditions in these two countries can not only explore elements of fiddling practices drawn from various regions of the world, but also look at how different fiddle traditions can interact and change. In addition to including short essays and listings of resources about the full range of fiddle traditions in those two countries, it also discusses selected resources about fiddle traditions in other countries that have influenced the traditions in the United States and Canada.

Ole Hendricks was an immigrant both representative and exceptional—a true artistic talent who nevertheless lived a familiar immigrant experience. By day, he was a farmer. But at night, his fiddle lit up dance halls, bringing together all manner of neighbors in rural Minnesota. Each tune in his repertoire of waltzes, reels, polkas, quadrilles, and more were copied neatly into his commonplace book. Such tunebooks, popular during the nineteenth century, rarely survive and are often overlooked by folk scholars in favor of commercially produced recordings, published sheet music, or oral tradition. Based on extensive historical and genealogical research, Amy Shaw presents a grounded picture of a musician, his family, and his community in the Upper Midwest, revealing much about music and dance in the area. This notable contribution to regional music and folklore includes more than one hundred of Ole's dance tunes, transcribed into modern musical notation for the first time. Ole Hendricks and His Tunebook will be valuable to readers and scholars interested in ethnomusicology and the Norwegian American immigrant experience.

A story and a boy named Miguel, who, at a certain point in his life, begins to weigh strangers to a woman on the verge of death, and a monster trying to pierce his heart, he uses a cause because of the situations and almost isolates himself his whole social life, but things get worse in that period of his life and cause an eventuality in destiny, end up having an accident. Upon waking up, discover that your problems in times past were just a hobby, or what will come. It is a tragedy or it takes him to a place where he could no longer call home. An exposed parallel world, where, during his journey, he discovers that it will be one of the keys to the collapse of the entire universe. An entity that he calls, guardian spirit, will offer help, exchange whatever it is and the most precious moment, but during this journey, he does not know how to explain if he is really arriving at his home, or if he is just entering even further into the your first nightmares. But on this journey he found, strong passions that either put him at a crossroads, wars in which they were beautiful in no story of his life, and the true absolute price.

The Penderyn 2020 Music Book Prize (UK edition) Living Blues Critics Choice Best Blues Book of 2019 Living Blues Readers Choice Best Blues Book of 2019 Certificate of Merit in the Best Historical Research in Recorded Blues, Soul, Gospel, or R&B category from ARSC (Association for Recorded Sound Collections) An essential story of blues lore, black culture, and American music history Robert Johnson's recordings, made in 1936 and 1937, have profoundly influenced generations of singers, guitarists, and songwriters. Yet until now, his short life—he was murdered at the age of 27—has been poorly documented. Gayle Dean Wardlow has been interviewing people who knew Johnson since the early 1960s, and he was the person who discovered Johnson's death certificate in 1967. Bruce Conforth began his study of Johnson's life and music in 1970 and made it his mission to fill in what was still unknown about him. In this definitive biography, the two authors relied on every interview, resource, and document, much of it material no one has seen before. This is the first book about Johnson that documents his lifelong relationship with family and friends in Memphis, details his trip to New York, uncovers where and when his wife Virginia died and the impact this had on him, fully portrays the other women Johnson was involved with and tells exactly how and why he died and who gave him the poison that killed him. Up Jumped the Devil will astonish blues fans worldwide by painting a living, breathing portrait of a man who was heretofore little more than a legend.

No matter how much dirt you throw over the past, some things won't stay buried. THEN At ten years old, Demi was no angel. He embraced the streets and its terms of survival as law. But when UGod, the father he never knew, snatches Demi from his god-fearing mother, he learns that his old life was child’s play. Under the cruel direction of his father, DemiGod committed a lot of heartless acts, but there was one that will forever haunt him. Giselle Johnson was the only girl he ever loved; and the actions Demi was forced to take to save her from his father’s wrath broke both of them. NOW As a rich and successful businessman, Demetrius Carrion wants nothing more than to put his carefree life as a kid on the streets of Baltimore, and the Devil he eventually became under his father’s thumb, behind him. But he finds out, the truly wicked never get to rest; and no matter how much dirt you throw over the past, some things won't stay buried. After a bomb meant to take his life kills his longtime friend and Giselle shows up after ten long years, Demi realizes his past is coming for him. He can’t help but wonder if she’s behind the attempts on his life but his list of enemies is extensive. Can Demi outmaneuver death and earn Giselle’s forgiveness? To do so, he may have to become the Devil once again.

"Lexicon Devil is, pure and simple, the finest volume on punk to have seen the light of print. (Yes, folks: that includes Please Kill Me.) Great book!"—Richard Meltzer Production has started on the documentary feature based on the book.

A dark and humorous tale of horror and woe concerning an unwitting salesman turned devil who finds himself just a tad behind on his infernal quota.