Skip to main content

Shopping Cart

You're getting the VIP treatment!

Item(s) unavailable for purchase
Please review your cart. You can remove the unavailable item(s) now or we'll automatically remove it at Checkout.
itemsitem
itemsitem

Recommended For You

Loading...


mel watkins

Showing 1 - 12 of 12 results for “mel watkins
Skip side bar filters
  • Stepin Fetchit

    The Life & Times of Lincoln Perry

    by Mel Watkins ...
    In the late 1920s and '30s Lincoln Perry, aka Stepin Fetchit, was both renowned and reviled for his surrealistic portrayals of the era’s most popular comic stereotype–the lazy, shiftless Negro. Perry was hailed by critic Robert Benchley as “the best actor that the talking movies have produced,” and Mel Watkins’s meticulously researched and sensitive biography reveals the paradoxes of this ... Read more

    $10.99 USD

  • On the Real Side

    A History of African American Comedy

    by Mel Watkins ...
    This comprehensive history of black humor sets it in the context of American popular culture. Blackface minstrelsy, Stepin Fetchit, and the Amos 'n' Andy show presented a distorted picture of African Americans; this book contrasts this image with the authentic underground humor of African Americans found in folktales, race records, and all-black shows and films. After generations of stereotypes, ... Read more

    $12.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Continental Crucible

    Big Business, Workers and Unions in the Transformation of North America, Second Edition

    The crucible of North American neoliberal transformation is heating up, but its outcome is far from clear. Continental Crucible examines the clash between the corporate offensive and the forces of resistance from both a pan-continental and a class struggle perspective. This book also illustrates the ways in which the capitalist classes in Canada, Mexico, and the United States used free trade ... Read more

    $8.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Darkest America

    Black Minstrelsy from Slavery to Hip-Hop

    An exploration and celebration of a controversial tradition that, contrary to popular opinion, is alive and active after more than 150 years.Yuval Taylor and Jake Austen investigate the complex history of black minstrelsy, adopted in the mid-nineteenth century by African American performers who played the grinning blackface fool to entertain black and white audiences. We now consider minstrelsy an ... Read more

    $18.99 USD

People who read these also enjoyed

  • Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music

    The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music

    by Ted Gioia ...
    “The essential history of this distinctly American genre.”—Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionIn this “expertly researched, elegantly written, dispassionate yet thoughtful history” (Gary Giddins), award-winning author Ted Gioia gives us “the rare combination of a tome that is both deeply informative and enjoyable to read” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). From the field hollers of nineteenth-century ... Read more

    $13.99 USD

  • Crossroads

    The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson

    by Tom Graves ...
    The result of careful research, this stylish biography of infamous blues musician Robert Johnson reveals the real story behind the mythical talent that made him a musical legend. According to some, Robert Johnson learned guitar by trading his soul away to the Devil at a crossroads in rural Mississippi. When he died at age 27 of a mysterious poisoning, many superstitious fans came to believe that ... Read more

    $9.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Dream Boogie

    The Triumph of Sam Cooke

    From the acclaimed author of Last Train to Memphis, this is the definitive biography of Sam Cooke, one of most influential singers and songwriters of all time.Sam Cooke was among the first to blend gospel music and secular themes -- the early foundation of soul music. He was the opposite of Elvis: a black performer who appealed to white audiences, who wrote his own songs, who controlled his own ... Read more

    $12.99 USD

  • Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues

    A companion book to the PBS documentary series exploring the history of the blues and its contribution to American culture and music worldwide.A companion to the groundbreaking documentary series, this volume is a unique and timeless celebration of the blues, from writers and artists as esteemed and revered as the music that moved them.Included in this stunning collection are:Essays by David ... Read more

    $12.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Escaping the Delta

    Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues

    by Elijah Wald ...
    The life of blues legend Robert Johnson becomes the centerpiece for this innovative look at what many consider to be America's deepest and most influential music genre. Pivotal are the questions surrounding why Johnson was ignored by the core black audience of his time yet now celebrated as the greatest figure in blues history.Trying to separate myth from reality, biographer Elijah Wald studies ... Read more

    $14.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll

    An Alternative History of American Popular Music

    by Elijah Wald ...
    "There are no definitive histories," writes Elijah Wald, in this provocative reassessment of American popular music, "because the past keeps looking different as the present changes." Earlier musical styles sound different to us today because we hear them through the musical filter of other styles that came after them, all the way through funk and hip hop. As its blasphemous title suggests, How ... Read more

    $13.99 USD

  • The Blues

    A Very Short Introduction

    by Elijah Wald ...
    Series series Very Short Introductions
    Praised as "suave, soulful, ebullient" (Tom Waits) and "a meticulous researcher, a graceful writer, and a committed contrarian" (New York Times Book Review), Elijah Wald is one of the leading popular music critics of his generation. In The Blues, Wald surveys a genre at the heart of American culture. It is not an easy thing to pin down. As Howlin' Wolf once described it, "When you ain't got no ... Read more

    $7.99 USD

  • All Shook Up

    How Rock 'n' Roll Changed America

    Series series Pivotal Moments in American History
    The birth of rock 'n roll ignited a firestorm of controversy--one critic called it "musical riots put to a switchblade beat"--but if it generated much sound and fury, what, if anything, did it signify? As Glenn Altschuler reveals in All Shook Up, the rise of rock 'n roll--and the outraged reception to it--in fact can tell us a lot about the values of the United States in the 1950s, a decade that ... Read more

    $15.99 USD