Sly Stone
Sylvester Stewart, better known by his stage name Sly Stone, was an American musician, songwriter, and record producer. He was the frontman of Sly and the Family Stone, playing a critical role in the development of funk with his pioneering fusion of soul, rock, psychedelia, and gospel in the 1960s and 1970s. AllMusic stated that " James Brown may have invented funk, but Sly Stone perfected it," and credited him with "creating a series of euphoric yet politically charged records that proved a massive influence on artists of all musical and cultural backgrounds". Crawdaddy! has credited him as the founder of the "progressive soul" movement.
Born in Denton, Texas, and raised in the Bay Area city of Vallejo in Northern California, Stone mastere
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Rita Marley
Alpharita Constantia Anderson, better known as Rita Marley is the widow of legendary Reggae musician Bob Marley, and a member of the trio the I Threes, Bob Marley's back up singers.
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Miki Berenyi
Miki Eleonora Berenyi is an English singer, songwriter, and guitarist best known as a member of the alternative rock band Lush and currently a member of Piroshka.
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Alice Randall
Alice Randall (born Detroit, Michigan) is an American author and songwriter. Randall grew up in Washington, D.C.. She attended Harvard University, where she earned an honors degree in English and American literature, before moving to Nashville in 1983 to become a country songwriter. She currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee and is married to attorney David Ewing.
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Randall is the first African American woman to write a number one country hit. Over 20 of her songs have been recorded, including several top ten and top forty records; her songs have been performed by Trisha Yearwood and Mark O'Connor.
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Max Brooks
Max Brooks is The New York Times bestselling author of The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z. He has been called ”the Studs Terkel of zombie journalism.“
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Brooks is the son of director Mel Brooks and the late actress Anne Bancroft. He is a 1994 graduate of Pitzer College. His wife, Michelle, is a screenwriter, and the couple have a son, Henry. -
William C. Kashatus
William C. Kashatus is an historian, educator and author. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Earlham College, he earned an MA in history at Brown University and a PhD in history education at the University of Pennsylvania. He currently teaches history at Luzerne County Community College in northeastern Pennsylvania.
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Dan Charnas
Dan Charnas is the author of the definitive history of the hip-hop business, The Big Payback (NAL/Penguin). He’s also the author of Work Clean (Rodale/Harmony), a book detailing applying chefs’ techniques to almost any life situation. He was also the co-creator and executive producer of the VH1 movie and TV series, The Breaks. He lives in Manhattan, and is an associate professor at NYU/Tisch’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music.
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Sebastian Bach
Sebastian Bach is a singer, songwriter and actor. He was the lead singer in the heavy metal band Skid Row from 1987 – 1996.
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Michele Wallace
Michele Faith Wallace (born January 4, 1952) is a black feminist author, cultural critic, and daughter of artist Faith Ringgold. She is best known for her 1979 book Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman. Wallace's writings on literature, art, film, and popular culture have been widely published and have made her a leader of African-American intellectuals. She is a Professor of English at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY).
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Amanda Petrusich
Amanda Petrusich is the author of “Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78rpm Records” (Scribner; 2014), “It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music” (Faber and Faber; 2008), and “Pink Moon,” an installment in Continuum/Bloomsbury’s acclaimed 33 1/3 series. She is a contributing writer for Pitchfork and a contributing editor at The Oxford American, and her music and culture writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Spin, BuzzFeed, and elsewhere. She has an M.F.A. in nonfiction writing from Columbia University and teaches writing and criticism at NYU’s Gallatin School. She lives in Brooklyn.
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Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr.
Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. is the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania. A widely published writer, he is the author of Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop (University of California Press, 2003). It was named outstanding book of the year by the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. He also has recently completed In Walked Bud: Earl “Bud” Powell and the Modern Jazz Challenge, which is forthcoming from the University of California Press. His next book, Who Hears Here?: Essays on Black Music History and Society, a mid-career collection of his essays is also forthcoming. He was recipient of the Lowens Award from the Society for American Music for best article on an Am
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Joel Selvin
San Francisco Chronicle pop music critic Joel Selvin started covering rock shows for the paper shortly after the end of the Civil War. His writing has appeared in a surprising number of other publications that you would think should have known better.
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John Lingan
I'm a writer and author who lives in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. I have written for The New York Times Magazine, The Oxford American, Washington Post, The Ringer, Pitchfork, and many other publications.
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In 2022 my book "A Song for Everyone: The Story of Creedence Clearwater Revival" was published by Hachette Books. It's a biography of a great American rock band, from their inception as junior high students in 1958 through their enormous global fame in the late 1960s and their stunning, sudden dissolution in 1972. Based on interview with band members and compatriots, as well as unpublished and rare memoirs from their inner circle, it has been praised in the New Yorker and Wall St. Journal among other places.
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James Walvin
James Walvin taught for many years at the University of York where he is now Professor of History Emeritus. He also held visiting positions in the Caribbean, the U.S.A. and Australia. He won the prestigious Martin Luther King Memorial Prize for his book Black and White, and has published widely on the history of slavery and the slave trade. His book The People's Game was a pioneering study of the history of football and remains in print thirty years after its first publication.
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Jim Fusilli
Jim Fusilli is the author of nine novels including “The Mayor of Polk Street” and “Narrows Gate,” which George Pelecanos called “equal parts Ellroy, Puzo and Scorsese” and Mystery Scene magazine said “must be ranked among the half-dozen most memorable novels about the Mob.”
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Jim’s debut novel “Closing Time” was the last work of fiction set in New York City published prior to the 9/11 attacks. The following year, his novel, “A Well-Known Secret” addressed the impact of 9/11 on the residents of lower Manhattan. Subsequent novels include “Tribeca Blues” and “Hard, Hard City,” which Mystery Ink magazine named its Novel of the Year. “Closing Time,” “A Well-Known Secret” and “Tribeca Blues” were reissued by Open Road Media in October 2018. Lawrenc -
Robert Gordon
Robert Gordon (b. 1961) is an American writer and filmmaker from Memphis, Tennessee. His work has focused on the American south—its music, art, and politics—to create an insider's portrait of his home, both nuanced and ribald.
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Paula L. Woods
Paula is a member of Mystery Writers of America, the International Association of Crime Writers, and Sisters in Crime. She has also served as an Edgar judge, on the Author Committee of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books and speaker at the festival.
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A native of Los Angeles, Paula's lifelong love of books has resulted in the growth of her personal library to over 1,000 volumes.
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Daniel de Visé
Daniel de Visé is a writer and journalist. His books have been translated into Spanish, German, Dutch, Italian, and Estonian. A graduate of Wesleyan and Northwestern universities, he has worked at The Washington Post, USA Today, the Miami Herald and four other newspapers. He shared a 2001 team Pulitzer Prize and garnered more than two dozen other national and regional journalism awards. His investigative reporting twice led to the release of wrongly convicted men from life terms in prison. His first book, I Forgot To Remember (with Su Meck, Simon & Schuster, 2014), began as a front-page article de Visé wrote for the Washington Post in 2011. His second book, Andy & Don (Simon & Schuster, 2015), began as a journalistic exploration into the s
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Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell is an American economist, social philosopher, and political commentator. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. With widely published commentary and books—and as a guest on TV and radio—he became a well-known voice in the American conservative movement as a prominent black conservative. He was a recipient of the National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush in 2002.
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Sowell was born in Gastonia, North Carolina and grew up in Harlem, New York City. Due to poverty and difficulties at home, he dropped out of Stuyvesant High School and worked various odd jobs, eventually serving in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War. Afterward, he took night classes at Howard University and then attended Harvar -
Kenneth Womack
Kenneth Womack is a world-renowned authority on the Beatles and their enduring cultural influence. His latest book project involves a two-volume, full-length biography devoted to famed Beatles producer Sir George Martin.
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Womack's Beatles-related books include Long and Winding Roads: The Evolving Artistry of the Beatles (2007), The Cambridge Companion to the Beatles (2009), and The Beatles Encyclopedia: Everything Fab Four (2014).
Womack is also the author of four novels, including John Doe No. 2 and the Dreamland Motel (2010), The Restaurant at the End of the World (2012), Playing the Angel (2013), and I Am Lemonade Lucy! (2019). -
Peter Guralnick
Peter Guralnick is an acclaimed American music critic, author, and screenwriter best known for his deeply researched works on the history of rock and roll. He earned a master’s degree in creative writing from Boston University and soon began writing about blues, country, soul, and early rock music. His two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love, is considered a definitive account of the singer’s life. Guralnick also authored landmark biographies of Sam Cooke and Sam Phillips, earning praise from critics and musicians alike. He has written liner notes for legends like Jerry Lee Lewis and Charlie Rich, winning a Grammy for his notes on Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club. His documentary scripts in
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Nelson George
Nelson George is an author, filmmaker, television producer, and critic with a long career in analyzing and presenting the diverse elements of African-American culture.
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Queen Latifah won the Golden Globe for playing the lead in his directorial debut, the HBO movie 'Life Support'. The critically acclaimed drama looked at the effects of HIV on a troubled black family in his native Brooklyn, New York. He recently co-edited, with Alan Leeds, 'The James Brown Reader (Plume)', a collection of previously published articles about the Godfather of Soul that date as far back the late '50s. Plume published the book in May '08.
He is an executive producer on two returning cable shows: the third season of BET's American Gangster and the fifth airing of VH1 -
Alice Randall
Alice Randall (born Detroit, Michigan) is an American author and songwriter. Randall grew up in Washington, D.C.. She attended Harvard University, where she earned an honors degree in English and American literature, before moving to Nashville in 1983 to become a country songwriter. She currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee and is married to attorney David Ewing.
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Randall is the first African American woman to write a number one country hit. Over 20 of her songs have been recorded, including several top ten and top forty records; her songs have been performed by Trisha Yearwood and Mark O'Connor.
Randall is also a novelist, whose first novel The Wind Done Gone is a reinterpretation and parody of Gone with the Wind. The Wind Done Gone is esse -
Moon Unit Zappa
Moon Unit Zappa (born September 28, 1967) is an American actress, musician and author. She goes by the name Moon Zappa; "Unit" is her middle name.
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Zappa was born in New York City, the eldest child of Adelaide Gail Sloatman, who worked in business, and musician Frank Zappa.
She has appeared in numerous films and performed on numerous albums with the Zappas, Julie Brown and the Vandals.
To date, America the Beautiful is her only novel. Wild Child: Girlhoods in the Counterculture is a documentary style exploration of the offspring of the flower children. -
Peter Wolf
Peter Wolf was born in the Bronx, moved to Boston to study painting at the Museum School of Fine Arts then left to pursue a life in music with the J.Geils Band. In 1984, he began his career as a solo artist. Wolf continues to paint, record and tour from his home base, in Boston, Massachusetts.
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Jeff Chang
Jeff Chang is a writer, host, and a cultural organizer known for his work in culture, politics, the arts, and music.
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His cultural biography of Bruce Lee called Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America (Mariner) will be published on September 23, 2025. He is the host of the Signal Award-winning podcast on artists and ideas, Edge of Reason, produced by Atlantic: Rethink and Hauser & Wirth, and of Notes From the Edge, produced by KALW Public Media.
His first book, Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, garnered many honors, including the American Book Award and the Asian American Literary Award. Slate named it one of the best nonfiction books of the past 25 years. Powell’s’ Books chose it as one of their -
Thurston Moore
Thurston Joseph Moore is an American musician best known as a singer, songwriter and guitarist of Sonic Youth. He has participated in many solo and group collaborations outside of Sonic Youth, as well as running a small record label.
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Joel Selvin
San Francisco Chronicle pop music critic Joel Selvin started covering rock shows for the paper shortly after the end of the Civil War. His writing has appeared in a surprising number of other publications that you would think should have known better.
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James Kaplan
James Kaplan has been writing noted biography, journalism, and fiction for more than four decades. The author of Frank: The Voice and Sinatra: The Chairman, the definitive two-volume biography of Frank Sinatra, he has written more than one hundred major profiles of figures ranging from Miles Davis to Meryl Streep, from Arthur Miller to Larry David.
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Amiri Baraka
Poems and plays, such as Dutchman (1964), of American writer Amiri Baraka originally Everett LeRoi Jones focus on racial conflict.
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He attended Barringer high school. Coyt Leverette Jones, his father, worked as a postal supervisor and lift operator. Anna Lois Russ Jones, his mother, worked as a social worker.
He studied at Rutgers, Columbia, and Howard universities but left without a degree and attended the new school for social research. He won a scholarship to Rutgers in 1951, but a continuing sense of cultural dislocation prompted him to transfer in 1952 to Howard. He studied philosophy and religion, major fields. Jones also served three years in the air force as a gunner. Jones continued his studies of comparative literature at Colum -
George Clinton
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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George Clinton (born July 22, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, and music producer. He was the principal architect of P-Funk, the mastermind of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic during the 1970s and early 1980s, and launched a solo career in 1981. He has been cited as one of the foremost innovators of funk music, along with James Brown and Sly Stone. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, alongside 15 other members of Parliament-Funkadelic. -
Will Hermes
Hi there. I write about music and popular culture for Rolling Stone, The New York Times and other outlets, and am a regular contributor to National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." I co-edited "SPIN: 20 Years of Alternative Music" with my pal Sia Michel.
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Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson
Ahmir Khalib Thompson, known professionally as ?uestlove or Questlove (also known as BROther ?uestion, Questo, Brother Question or Qlove), is an American drummer, DJ, music journalist and record producer.
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He is best known as the drummer and joint frontman (with Black Thought) for the Grammy Award-winning band The Roots, serving since February 17, 2014 as the in-house band for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the same role he and the band served during the entire 969 episode run of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.
He has produced for artists including Elvis Costello, Common, D'Angelo, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Bilal, Jay-Z, Nikka Costa and more recently, Al Green, Amy Winehouse and John Legend. He is a member of the production teams the So -
Michael McDonald
Michael McDonald is an American singer, songwriter, keyboardist and record producer.
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McDonald's music career spans more than forty years. His early career included singing with Steely Dan. He joined The Doobie Brothers in 1976 and remained an integral member until 1982, after which he released the first of eight solo albums.
Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. -
Stephen L. Harris
Librarian Note:
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There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. -
Joel Gion
Joel has been the tambourine-playing frontman of The Brian Jonestown Massacre for the last thirty years. He's THAT good at it. The band was formed in 1990 and immediately established itself as not only the torch-bearers of the classic 60s 'San Francisco Sound', but also as the most prominent US chapter of Shoegaze and Britpop.
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The prestigious Sundance Film Festival's 'Grand-Jury Prize' of 2004 was unanimously awarded to Dig!, a documentary based on The Brian Jonestown Massacre and their interchangeable friends/foes The Dandy Warhols. It quickly became a global cinematic sensation and catapulted BJM onto the world stage, where they have remained ever since. While the film's main focus was on the two bands' lead singers, many consider Joel to -
Marcus J. Moore
I'm an author and music journalist who covers jazz, soul, hip-hop, and rock for The New York Times, The Nation, Bandcamp Daily and Entertainment Weekly, among other outlets. My book, "The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America," is out Oct. 13 via Atria / Simon & Schuster.
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John Byrne Cooke
John Byrne Cooke was an American author of five books, road manager to Janis Joplin from late 1967 until her untimely death in 1970, a musician, a photographer, and a documentary film maker. He was the son of Alistair Cooke, and the great-grandnephew of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
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Joel Gion
Joel has been the tambourine-playing frontman of The Brian Jonestown Massacre for the last thirty years. He's THAT good at it. The band was formed in 1990 and immediately established itself as not only the torch-bearers of the classic 60s 'San Francisco Sound', but also as the most prominent US chapter of Shoegaze and Britpop.
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The prestigious Sundance Film Festival's 'Grand-Jury Prize' of 2004 was unanimously awarded to Dig!, a documentary based on The Brian Jonestown Massacre and their interchangeable friends/foes The Dandy Warhols. It quickly became a global cinematic sensation and catapulted BJM onto the world stage, where they have remained ever since. While the film's main focus was on the two bands' lead singers, many consider Joel to -
Cameron McWhirter
Cameron McWhirter is a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal. He was awarded a Nieman Foundation Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard in 2007. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia. "
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Susan Whitall
Susan Whitall is an award-winning journalist and author.
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She was born in Philadelphia, and moved to Detroit with her family at age 10.
She joined Detroit-based Creem Magazine as a writer and editor in 1975, and became editor in 1978.
A second edition of "Women of Motown" (DeVault-Graves), an oral history of the girl groups and women artists who put Motown on the map, is available online and in select stores, including the Book Beat in metro Detroit (thebookbeat.com) and Pure Detroit Stores.
Her bio of Little Willie John, "Fever: Little Willie John's Fast Life, Mysterious Death and the Birth of Soul" was chosen as a "Michigan Notable Book" for 2012 by the Library of Michigan, an honor reserved for just 20 books each year.
She is currently workin -
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is a three-time Academy Award-nominated American classical music composer. He is considered one of the most influential composers of the late-20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public (along with precursors such as Richard Strauss, Kurt Weill and Leonard Bernstein).
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His music is described asminimalist, from which he distanced himself in being a composer of "music with repetitive structures". Although his early, mature music is minimalist, he has evolved stylistically. Currently, he describes himself as "Classicist", trained in harmony and counterpoint and studied Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Franz Schubert.
Glass is a prolific composer: he has written ensembl -
Brian Wilson
Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Brian Douglas Wilson was an American musician, songwriter, singer, and record producer who co-founded the Beach Boys. Often called a genius for his novel approaches to pop composition and mastery of recording techniques, he is widely acknowledged as one of the most innovative and significant songwriters of the 20th century. His best-known work is distinguished for its high production values, complex harmonies and orchestrations, vocal layering, and introspective or ingenuous themes. Wilson was also known for his versatile vocal range. He faced lifelong struggles with mental illness.
Wilson's formative influences included George Gershwin, the Four -
Morris Day
Morris E. Day is an American musician, composer, and actor. He is best known as the leader of legendary funk band the Time and for his role in the Prince film Purple Rain (1984).
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Stuart Cosgrove
Scottish journalist, broadcaster and television executive. Worked as a journalist on the NME and The Face magazine during the 1980s. Was at Channel 4, London from 1994 to 2015, serving as Controller of Arts and Entertainment and then Head of Programmes (Nations and Regions).
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Farah Jasmine Griffin
Farah Jasmine Griffin is a professor of English and comparative literature and African American Studies at Columbia University, where she has served as director of the Institute for Research in African American studies.
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In addition to editing several collections of letters and essays she is the author of Who Set You Flowin’: The African American Migration Narrative (Oxford, 1995), If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday (Free Press, 2001) and Clawing At the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever (Thomas Dunne, 2008). She is also the editor of Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends: Letters from Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus (Knopf, 1999) co-editor, with Cheryl Fish, of Strang -
Duane Tudahl
As a Baltimore native, Duane Tudahl got his start as a medical photographer for Johns Hopkins Hospital. Since moving to California in 1987, he has worked in entertainment, producing and/or directing documentary programming for The History Channel, CBS, GTV, Fox, Discovery, Pax, The Gospel Music Channel, the Food Channel, Tru-TV and HGTV. He was an Executive Producer for a documentary about the Special Olympics which was hosted by Vanessa Williams and featured Stevie Wonder, Bono, Jordin Sparks, Run DMC, and Jimmy Iovine.
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Tudahl is a former stand up comic and has spoken at conventions around the country about the documentaries he produced for The History Channel. He has also been an editor on multiple Emmy nominated programs including INTERVE -
Nelson George
Nelson George is an author, filmmaker, television producer, and critic with a long career in analyzing and presenting the diverse elements of African-American culture.
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Queen Latifah won the Golden Globe for playing the lead in his directorial debut, the HBO movie 'Life Support'. The critically acclaimed drama looked at the effects of HIV on a troubled black family in his native Brooklyn, New York. He recently co-edited, with Alan Leeds, 'The James Brown Reader (Plume)', a collection of previously published articles about the Godfather of Soul that date as far back the late '50s. Plume published the book in May '08.
He is an executive producer on two returning cable shows: the third season of BET's American Gangster and the fifth airing of VH1 -
Robert Franklin Williams
Robert Franklin Williams was a civil rights leader, author, and key figure in promoting both integration and armed Black self-defense in the United States.
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After a stint in the army during WWII, Williams returned to his hometown in Monroe, North Carolina where he built a uniquely militant NAACP chapter and attracted international attention to racist hypocrisy. When eventually forced by the KKK and an FBI dragnet to flee the U.S. with his family in 1961, he found safe harbor in revolutionary Cuba, where he produced Radio Free Dixie, a program of politics and music broadcast to America.
In 1965, he and his wife left Cuba to settle in China where he was well received. He lived comfortably there and associated with higher functionaries of the Ch -
Henry Highland Garnet
Henry Highland Garnet was an African-American abolitionist, minister, educator and orator.
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Robert Palmer
Robert Franklin Palmer Jr. was a 20th century American writer, musicologist, clarinetist, saxophonist, and blues producer. Robert Palmer is best known for books he authored such as Deep Blues, his music journalism articles for The New York Times and Rolling Stone magazine, his work producing blues recordings and the soundtrack to the film Deep Blues, and his clarinet work in the 1960s band The Insect Trust.
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-Wikipedia
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Andrew K. Diemer
ANDREW DIEMER is an associate professor at Towson University. He earned his PhD from Temple University and is author of The Politics of Black Citizenship: Free African Americans in the Mid-Atlantic Borderland, 1817-1863, published by the University of Georgia Press in 2016. He lives in Philadelphia.
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Jeff Chang
Jeff Chang is a writer, host, and a cultural organizer known for his work in culture, politics, the arts, and music.
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His cultural biography of Bruce Lee called Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America (Mariner) will be published on September 23, 2025. He is the host of the Signal Award-winning podcast on artists and ideas, Edge of Reason, produced by Atlantic: Rethink and Hauser & Wirth, and of Notes From the Edge, produced by KALW Public Media.
His first book, Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, garnered many honors, including the American Book Award and the Asian American Literary Award. Slate named it one of the best nonfiction books of the past 25 years. Powell’s’ Books chose it as one of their -
Thurston Moore
Thurston Joseph Moore is an American musician best known as a singer, songwriter and guitarist of Sonic Youth. He has participated in many solo and group collaborations outside of Sonic Youth, as well as running a small record label.
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Will Hermes
Hi there. I write about music and popular culture for Rolling Stone, The New York Times and other outlets, and am a regular contributor to National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." I co-edited "SPIN: 20 Years of Alternative Music" with my pal Sia Michel.
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Michael Diamond
Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
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aka Mike D. -
Ashley Kahn
Ashley Kahn is an American music historian, journalist, and producer.
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Alan Paul
Alan Paul's last two books have been instant New York Times bestsellers: One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band, and Texas Flood: the Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan. The latter has been optioned and is being developed for both documentary and feature films. His first book, Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues, and Becoming a Star in Beijing, is about his experiences raising an American family, forming a band and becoming an unlikely rock star in Beijing.
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He also founded Friends of the Brothers, the premier celebration of the music of the Allman Brothers Band, featuring members of the Dickey Betts, Jaimoe and Gregg Allman bands. He is a regular guest on radio shows and a frequent c -
Waylon Jennings
Waylon Arnold Jennings (born Wayland Arnold Jennings; June 15, 1937 – February 13, 2002) was an American singer, songwriter, and musician. He pioneered the Outlaw Movement in country music.
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In 1958, Buddy Holly arranged Jennings's first recording session, and hired him to play bass. Jennings gave up his seat on the ill-fated flight in 1959 that crashed and killed Holly, J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson and Ritchie Valens.
During the 1970s, Jennings drove outlaw country. With Willie Nelson, Tompall Glaser and Jessi Colter he recorded country music's first platinum album, Wanted! The Outlaws. It was followed by Ol' Waylon and the hit song "Luckenbach, Texas". He was featured on the 1978 album White Mansions, performed by various artists docume -
Charles Lane
Charles Lane is a Washington Post editorial board member and op-ed columnist. A finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing, he was the Post's Supreme Court correspondent prior to joining the editorial board. As editor of The New Republic, he took action against the journalistic fraud of Stephen Glass, events recounted in the 2003 film Shattered Glass. He has also worked as a foreign correspondent in Europe and Latin America. He is the author of two previous books.
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Dan Shaughnessy
Dan Shaughnessy is an award-winning columnist for the Boston Globe and the author of several sports books, including The Curse of the Bambino, a best-selling classic. Seven times Shaughnessy has been voted one of America’s top ten sports columnists by Associated Press Sports Editors and named Massachusetts Sportswriter of the Year. He has appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, The Early Show, CNN, Nightline, NPR, Imus in the Morning, ESPN, HBO, and many others. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts.
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Sean Howe
Sean Howe is a former editor at Entertainment Weekly and The Criterion Collection. His writing has appeared in New York, the Los Angeles Times, Spin, and the Village Voice. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Asa G. Hilliard III
Asa Grant Hilliard III (August 22, 1933 – August 13, 2007) was an African-American professor of educational psychology who worked on indigenous ancient African history (ancient Egyptian), culture, education and society. He was the Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Urban Education at Georgia State University, with joint appointments in the Department of Educational Policy Studies and the Department of Educational Psychology and Special Education.
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Gregg Allman
Gregory Lenoir Allman, known as Gregg Allman (sometimes spelled Greg Allman), was a rock and blues singer, keyboardist, guitarist, and songwriter, best known as a founding member of The Allman Brothers Band. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 with The Allman Brothers Band, and personally received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 2006.
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Danzy Senna
Danzy Senna is an American novelist, born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts in 1970. Her parents, Carl Senna, an Afro-Mexican poet and author, and Fanny Howe, who is Irish-American writer, were also civil rights activists.
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She attended Stanford University and received an MFA from the University of California at Irvine. There, she received several creative writing awards.
Her debut novel, Caucasia (later republished as From Caucasia With Love), was well received and won several awards including the Book-Of-The-Month Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction, and the Alex Award from the American Library Association.
Her second novel, Symptomatic, was also well received. Both books feature a biracial protagonist and offer a unique view on life from -
Ronnie Spector
Veronica Greenfield, known as Ronnie Spector, was an American singer who formed the girl group the Ronettes in 1957 with her elder sister Estelle Bennett and their cousin Nedra Talley. Bennett fronted the group while record producer Phil Spector produced the majority of their output. - Wikipedia
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Kliph Nesteroff
Kliph Nesteroff is a best-selling author regarded for his vast knowledge of show business. Vice Magazine has called Nesteroff "The Human Encyclopedia of Comedy," and Los Angeles Magazine profiled him as "The King of Comedy Lore."
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Ron Currie Jr.
Ron Currie, Jr. was born and raised in Waterville, Maine, where he still lives. His first book, God is Dead, won the Young Lions Fiction Award from the New York Public Library and the Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His debut novel, Everything Matters!, will be translated into a dozen languages, and is a July Indie Next Pick and Amazon Best of June 2009 selection.
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His short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Alaska Quarterly Review, The Sun, Ninth Letter, Swink, The Southeast Review, Glimmer Train, Willow Springs, The Cincinnati Review, Harpur Palate, and New Sudden Fiction (W.W. Norton, 2007). -
Peter Guralnick
Peter Guralnick is an acclaimed American music critic, author, and screenwriter best known for his deeply researched works on the history of rock and roll. He earned a master’s degree in creative writing from Boston University and soon began writing about blues, country, soul, and early rock music. His two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love, is considered a definitive account of the singer’s life. Guralnick also authored landmark biographies of Sam Cooke and Sam Phillips, earning praise from critics and musicians alike. He has written liner notes for legends like Jerry Lee Lewis and Charlie Rich, winning a Grammy for his notes on Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club. His documentary scripts in
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Jim Tully
Jim Tully was an American vagabond, pugilist, and writer. He enjoyed critical and commercial success as a writer in the 1920s and 1930s.
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Amiri Baraka
Poems and plays, such as Dutchman (1964), of American writer Amiri Baraka originally Everett LeRoi Jones focus on racial conflict.
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He attended Barringer high school. Coyt Leverette Jones, his father, worked as a postal supervisor and lift operator. Anna Lois Russ Jones, his mother, worked as a social worker.
He studied at Rutgers, Columbia, and Howard universities but left without a degree and attended the new school for social research. He won a scholarship to Rutgers in 1951, but a continuing sense of cultural dislocation prompted him to transfer in 1952 to Howard. He studied philosophy and religion, major fields. Jones also served three years in the air force as a gunner. Jones continued his studies of comparative literature at Colum -
Steven Wright
Steven Alexander Wright is an American comedian, actor and writer. He is known for his distinctly lethargic voice and slow, deadpan delivery of ironic, philosophical and sometimes nonsensical jokes, paraprosdokians, and one-liners with contrived situations.
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Steve Turner
Librarian note:
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There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name
For other authors of this name
see: Steve Turner - Music Journalism
see: Steve Turner - Artist, Squidoodle
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Warren Ellis
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There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Warren Ellis is an Australian musician and composer. He is a member of the rock groups Dirty Three and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
(source: Wikipedia) -
Carlos Santana
Carlos Augusto Alves Santana is a Grammy Award-winning Mexican Latin rock musician and guitarist. He became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, Santana, which created a highly successful blend of salsa, rock, blues, and jazz fusion. Their sound featured his melodic, blues based guitar lines set against Latin percussion such as timbales and congas. Santana continued to work in these forms over the following decades, and experienced a sudden resurgence of popularity and critical acclaim in the late 1990s. Rolling Stone also named Santana number 15 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time in 2003.
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Gerald Posner
Gerald Posner is an award winning journalist, bestselling author and attorney. The Los Angeles Times dubs him "a classic-style investigative journalist." "His work is painstakingly honest journalism" concluded The Washington Post. The New York Times lauded his "exhaustive research techniques" and The Boston Globe talked of Posner's "thorough and hard-edge investigation." "A meticulous and serious researcher," said the New York Daily News.
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Posner's first book, Mengele, a 1986 biography of the Nazi "Angel of Death” Josef Mengele, was the result of a pro-bono lawsuit Posner brought on behalf of surviving twins from Auschwitz. Since then he has written ten other books from the Pulitzer Prize-finalist Case Closed, to bestsellers on political assa -
Mary-Frances Winters
Mary-Frances Winters is the founder and president of The Winters Group, Inc., a 36-year old global diversity, equity and inclusion consulting firm. She is a passionate advocate for justice and equity; a provocateur not afraid to have the difficult conversations. Mary-Frances has over three decades of experience working with corporate leaders in support of enhancing their understanding of what it is like to be the “other.”
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Ms. Winters is a master strategist with experience in strategic planning, change management, diversity, organization development, training and facilitation, systems thinking and qualitative and quantitative research methods. She has extensive experience in working with senior leadership teams to drive organizational change -
George Clinton
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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George Clinton (born July 22, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, and music producer. He was the principal architect of P-Funk, the mastermind of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic during the 1970s and early 1980s, and launched a solo career in 1981. He has been cited as one of the foremost innovators of funk music, along with James Brown and Sly Stone. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, alongside 15 other members of Parliament-Funkadelic. -
Wes Moore
Westley Watende Omari Moore (born October 15, 1978) is an American politician, investment banker, author, television producer, and nonprofit executive serving as the 63rd governor of Maryland since 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, he is the first Black governor of the state, the third Black person elected as governor of any U.S. state, and as of 2023, the only incumbent black governor of any U.S. state.
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Born in Maryland and raised largely in New York, Moore graduated from Johns Hopkins University and received a master's degree from Wolfson College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. After several years in the U.S. Army and Army Reserve, Moore became an investment banker in New York. Between 2010 and 2015, Moore published five books, includin -
Joe Harvard
Joe Harvard raised as Joseph Alia Incagnoli, Jr. in working class Jeffries Point, East Boston and has lived in Asbury Park, NJ since 2001. As he was becoming an indie rock pioneer, Joe was also learning the craft of an Ivy-trained archaeologist, working briefly in the field before settling into a long career as a musician, producer-engineer, songwriter and promoter. His studies, work and travels brought him into close contact with the art and architecture of the ancient world, with an emphasis on the history and culture of the Islamic world. This influence can be heard in his music, and seen more clearly in his work as a visual artist.
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Derrick A. Bell
Derrick Albert Bell Jr. was the first tenured African-American professor of law at Harvard Law School and is largely credited as one of the originators of critical race theory (CRT). He was a visiting professor at New York University School of Law from 1991 until his death. He was also a dean of the University of Oregon School of Law. [wikipedia]
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Shirley Graham du Bois
One of six children, and the only daughter among them, of an African Methodist Episcopal minister. She moved around often, graduating from Lewis and Clark HS in Spokane, WA in 1915, studied music composition at the Sorbonne in Paris in the 1920s and received her BA at Oberlin College in the 1930s. She had two husbands, including author and activist W.E.B. du Bois. She and du Bois emigrated to Ghana in the 1960s but, after his death, a military coup forced her to move to Cairo, Egypt. In addition to her literature, she also composed a number of musical scores including an opera that premiered in Cleveland, OH, attracting 10,000 people on its opening night.
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Married to W.E.B. Du Bois -
Graham Nash
Graham William Nash, OBE is a British singer-songwriter known for his light tenor voice and for his songwriting contributions with the British pop group The Hollies, and with the folk-rock super group Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. A dual citizen of the United Kingdom and United States, Nash became an American citizen on 14 August 1978.
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Nash is a photography collector and a published photographer. He was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Crosby, Stills & Nash in 1997 and as a member of The Hollies in 2010.
Nash was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2010 Birthday Honours List for services to music and to charity.
Nash holds four honorary doctorates, including one in Music from the Univer -
Marcus J. Moore
I'm an author and music journalist who covers jazz, soul, hip-hop, and rock for The New York Times, The Nation, Bandcamp Daily and Entertainment Weekly, among other outlets. My book, "The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America," is out Oct. 13 via Atria / Simon & Schuster.
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Walter E. Williams
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Dr. Walter E. Williams holds a B.A. in economics from California State University, Los Angeles, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from UCLA. He also holds a Doctor of Humane Letters from Virginia Union University and Grove City College, Doctor of Laws from Washington and Jefferson College and Doctor Honoris Causa en Ciencias Sociales from Universidad Francisco Marroquin, in Guatemala, where he is also Professor Honorario.
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Dr. Williams has served on the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, since 1980; from 1995 to 2001, he served as department chairman. He has also served on the faculties of Los Angeles City College, California -
Stanley Booth
Stanley Booth was an American music journalist based in Memphis, Tennessee. Characterized by Richie Unterberger as a "fine, if not extremely prolific, writer who generally speaking specializes in portraits of roots musicians, most of whom did their best work in the '60s and '50s," Booth has written extensively about Keith Richards, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, James Brown, Elvis Presley, Gram Parsons, B.B. King, and Al Green. He chronicled his travels with the Rolling Stones in several of his works.
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Chrissie Hynde
Chrissie Hynde is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist, best known as the leader of the Pretenders. Hynde released nine studio albums as the Pretenders, beginning with1980’s Pretenders, which Rolling Stone ranked in the top 15 best debut albums of all time. Most recently, she released the album Stockholm, under her own name, in 2014. She lives in London.
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David Rains Wallace
David Rains Wallace is an author of geography and geology related books. His book, The Klamath Knot, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal in 1984.
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Gayle Wald
Gayle Wald is Professor of English and American Studies at George Washington University. She is the author of Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Crossing the Line: Racial Passing in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture, also published by Duke University Press. Chester Higgins is a photographer and author based in Brooklyn, New York. The author of several books, Higgins has presented his photography at dozens of solo exhibitions throughout the world.
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Charles White
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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This si Charles^^^^^^White. -
Pete Nelson
Pete Nelson lives with his wife and son in Westchester, New York. He got his MFA from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1979 and has written both fiction and non-fiction for magazines, including Harpers, Playboy, Esquire, MS, Outside, The Iowa Review, National Wildlife, Glamour, Redbook. He was a columnist for Mademoiselle and a staff writer for LIVE Magazine, covering various live events including horse pulls, music festivals, dog shows, accordion camps and arm wrestling championships. Recently he was a contributing editor and feature writer for Wondertime, a Disney parenting magazine.
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He's published twelve young adult novels, including a six-book series about a girl named Sylvia Smith-Smith which earned him an Edgar Award nomina -
Stephen L. Harris
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There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. -
Arthur Taylor
Arthur S. Taylor Jr. was an American Jazz drummer who recorded extensively as both a sideman and bandleader.
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Woody Woodmansey
Michael "Woody" Woodmansey was the drummer for David Bowie's The Spiders from Mars from 1969-1973 on the hit albums The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory, and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars. Born in Driffield, Yorkshire, in 1951, he is the last surviving member of The Spiders from Mars. He continues to play with his band Holy Holy and lives in London.
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Miles Marshall Lewis
Miles Marshall Lewis is a pop culture critic, essayist, fiction writer and director. His latest book, Promise That You Will Sing About Me: The Power and Poetry of Kendrick Lamar (St. Martin's Press), comes in May 2021. He is the author of There’s a Riot Goin’ On (Bloomsbury), his book on the making of a classic Sly and the Family Stone album, as well as Scars of the Soul Are Why Kids Wear Bandages When They Don’t Have Bruises (Akashic Books), his debut essay collection on coming of age in the Bronx during the 1970s-80s.
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Over the past 20 years, his celebrity profiles and arts criticism have been published by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, GQ, The Washington Post, NPR, The Nation, Essence, Salon and many others. -
Kathy Valentine
Kathryn Valentine is an American musician (guitar and bass) and songwriter. She made music history as a member of the Go-Go's, the first all-female band to have a #1 album in the U.S.
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Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock is an American pianist, keyboardist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet, Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the post-bop sound. He was one of the first jazz musicians to embrace synthesizers and funk music. In his jazz improvisation, he possesses a unique creative blend of jazz, blues, and modern classical music, with harmonic stylings much like the styles of of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.
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Thad Komorowski
A graduate of Ithaca College, Thad Komorowski is a longtime animation fan and film collector. His caustic and sometimes perverse sense of humor can be seen in his blog WhatAboutThad.com.
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Grif Stockley
Stockley is the author of several books, including Race Relations in the Natural State; Daisy Bates: Civil Rights Crusader from Arkansas, winner of the Ragsdale Award from the Arkansas Historical Association and the Arkansiana Award from the Arkansas Library Association and Blood in Their Eyes: The Elaine Race Massacres of 1919, winner of the Booker Worthen Prize from the Central Arkansas Library System and recipient of a Certificate of Commendation from the American Association for State and Local History. An attorney who has worked with the Center for Arkansas Legal Services, the Disability Rights Center, and the Arkansas branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, Stockley completed Ruled by Race while serving as a historian and curric
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Gil Scott-Heron
Gilbert Scott Heron was born in 1949. His mother was a librarian and his father a soccer player from Jamaica. In his youth Heron displayed both sporting prowess and academic ability (he won a place at Pennsylvania Lincoln University, like his role model Langston Hughes, the Harlem Renaissance man). But he quit college after the first year to write his first novel, The Vulture (1970). While Heron was writing this the ferment of black politics and student radicalism was coming to a head, and his second novel The Nigger Factory (1972) reflects these developments.
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Heron has been more adventurous in his work as a musician and rapper. -
Derek Taylor
Derek Taylor was an English journalist, writer and publicist. He is best known for his work as press officer for the Beatles and the Beach Boys.
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