Table of Contents
Foreword David Yaffe ix
I B'S World 1
The Man Who Was Too Hot Billy Eckstine 3
II Whose Standards? 19
Mos Def and the American Songbook 21
Rodgers and Hart 27
Two Lives Sammy Davis, Jr. 34
Anita O'Day 40
Roman Candle Bobby Darin 45
Susannah McCorkle 50
III Blues and The Abstract Truth 55
A Hundred Years of Blues 57
Alan Lomax 66
Dinah Washington: Queen 74
Ray Charles 81
IV Growing Up 87
Elvis Costello at Fifty 89
Brian Wilson and the Lost Masterpiece 96
Sting the Lutenist 103
Joe Sacco and Daniel Clowes 108
The White Stripes 116
Abbey Lincoln and Mark Murphy 122
Three Women in Pop Taylor Swift Beyonce Lucinda Williams 128
V Cultural Machinery 135
The Blogging of American Pop 137
MySpace 144
The Music of Starbucks 150
Rick Rubin and Kanye West 156
Open-Source Remixing 162
VI Life with the Lions 169
Woody Guthrie Ramblin' Man 171
Will Eisner 178
Elvis and the Colonel 187
Ken Burns and the Great Men of Jazz 194
The Life John Lennon 201
Paul McCartney's Chaos and Creation 206
Joni Mitchell's Shine 212
Wynton Marsalis 218
VII Otherwise Engaged 237
Harry Partch 239
Elmer Fudd 250
Walt Whitman and Fred Hersch: The Jazz Leaves of Grass 255
Michel Petrucciani 261
Book of Longing Philip Glass Leonard Cohen 270
Jules Feiffer at the Village Voice 276
John Zorn 283
Josh Groban 289
Marjane Satrapi 295
Acknowledgments 305
Credits 307
Index 309