Popular Music in America: And The Beat Goes On

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Cengage Learning, Sep 26, 2008 - Education - 384 pages
This refreshingly current, best-selling text provides a highly readable, chronological examination of the roots and history of American popular music, from 1840 to the present. The focus is on basic music fundamentals as well as the elements of each style; the heritage and diversity of popular music; the underlying kinship among its many styles; and the evolution of popular music from minstrel show music to rap and alternative. The text’s opening chapter introduces students to the elements of popular music through a familiar musical example. The text is available with an exclusive, high-quality heritage 3-CD set that contains each selection discussed in depth in the first two thirds of the book: from the early twentieth century through the 1960s. The remaining examples may be accessed via online iTunes and Rhapsody playlists (or from the student’s music collection). When packaged with the text, the CDs are available at a substantial discount.
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About the author (2008)

Michael Campbell is a writer and pianist. A California native, he is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Amherst College and holds a doctorate from Peabody Conservatory, where he studied piano with Leon Fleisher. As a commercial musician, he has assisted such artists as Angela Lansbury, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Bob Hope, Redd Foxx, Ethel Merman, and Don McLean. As a concert pianist, he has performed a broad range of repertoire, including his own transcriptions of recordings by Art Tatum, Jelly Roll Morton, and other legendary jazz pianists. He also performs all of the piano selections included with this textbook.

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