The History Book Club discussion

Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music Hardcover

by Ann Powers (no photo)

Synopsis:

In this sweeping history of popular music in the United States, NPR’s acclaimed music critic examines how popular music shapes fundamental American ideas and beliefs, allowing us to communicate difficult emotions and truths about our most fraught social issues, most notably sex and race.

In Good Booty, Ann Powers explores how popular music became America’s primary erotic art form.

Powers takes us from nineteenth-century New Orleans through dance-crazed Jazz Age New York to the teen scream years of mid-twentieth century rock-and-roll to the cutting-edge adventures of today’s web-based pop stars.

Drawing on her deep knowledge and insights on gender and sexuality, Powers recounts stories of forbidden lovers, wild shimmy-shakers, orgasmic gospel singers, countercultural perverts, soft-rock sensitivos, punk Puritans, and the cyborg known as Britney Spears to illuminate how eroticism—not merely sex, but love, bodily freedom, and liberating joy—became entwined within the rhythms and melodies of American song.

This cohesion, she reveals, touches the heart of America's anxieties and hopes about race, feminism, marriage, youth, and freedom.

In a survey that spans more than a century of music, Powers both heralds little known artists such as Florence Mills, a contemporary of Josephine Baker, and gospel queen Dorothy Love Coates, and sheds new light on artists we think we know well, from the Beatles and Jim Morrison to Madonna and Beyoncé.

In telling the history of how American popular music and sexuality intersect—a magnum opus over two decades in the making—Powers offers new insights into our nation psyche and our soul.

Bill Evans

Copenhagen rehearsal tape (1966):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mn0h...

Excellent tape - I am always amazed at the wonderful jazz players who have bee created all over the world from the origins of jazz 100 years ago in New Orleans. It just goes to prove you cannot stop a good thing from spreading all over the world. Little did those original African American jazz musicians truly realize the impact that they had and would have long after they were gone.

Yes, Bill Evans is/was a great musician.

André Previn, Joe Pass and Ray Brown:

There'll Never Be Another You:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-JX6...

Terrific - thank you

Joao Gilberto has passed away...

Desafinado (live):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6w3a...

Full concert Sao Paulo 1994:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fkXg...

The Girl from Ipanema:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5QfX...

Live in Rome 1983:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj29n...

Sorry to belatedly hear of the news Andre. Thank you for your wonderful adds.

A great interview with the Genius, Quincy Jones (the first 20 minutes are with the documentary filmmakers):

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/rac...

Thank you very much Andre

Mahalia Jackson

Summertime (live):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q4qw...

Jill Scott is set to play Mahalia Jackson in a biopic to be produced by Queen Latifah and Jamie Foxx

Mahalia Jackson - excellent. Look forward to the biopic.

Thank you so much Andre.

André wrote: "Mahalia Jackson

Summertime (live):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q4qw...

Jill Scott is set to play Mahalia Jackson in a biopic to be produced by Queen Latifah and Jamie Foxx"

Speaking of "Summertime," Joshua Bell recorded it on violin for his new album. It is a very different rendition that adds to the ever-growing list of performances that expand the range of interpretations the song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Asc6...

George Gershwin was a genius.

Douglass - love Joshua Bell saw him perform in NYC a couple of times with the Lincoln Philharmonic

Thank you for the add - Andre will be so happy - please post on any of the music threads.

The annual Indy Jazz Fest put this year's event on Youtube in 4 presentations. They commissioned original works and really raised the bar for virtual events. I can't believe what an amazing job they did and that you can watch it all for free. Enjoy!

-Charlie Ballentine - Vonnegut (compositions inspired by the works of Kurt Vonnegut)

-Native Sun - Legalize Being Black (jazz hip-hop)

-Celebrate Naptown (featuring variety of local artists)

-38th and Postmodernism (documentary)

Source: Indy Jazz Fest

That is fabulous Douglass. Especially great for all of our HBC jazz fans.

Thank you for the post. Please keep them coming for our Music folder.

Very nice Douglas, thanks for posting!

Jon Batiste and friends

Live in Concert on NPR:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyds0...

Harry Connick Jr.

Working In The Coal Mine
(from the 2007 album Oh, My NOLA)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEo38...