Understanding Charles Seeger,
Pioneer in American Musicology
edited by Bell Yung and
Helen Rees
University of Illinois Press
ISBN 0-252-02493-1 (1999); 192 pp.

Charles Seeger was a man of many hats — composer, folklorist, musicologist, inventor, critic, and champion of the proletariat. By the time he died in 1979 at the age of 92, his name had become legend in all fields of musical endeavor. He is renowned for his dense yet brilliant writing.
The editors have selected eight writings that speak to different aspects of Seeger's distinguished career. Leonora Saavedra discusses his embrace of proletarian music. Judith Tick takes a personal, feminist viewpoint in her article on Seeger's work with his second wife, composer Ruth Crawford. Nimrod Baranovitch covers Seeger in the role of musical anthropologist.
Yung and Rees have done a fine job of pulling together the disparate threads that made up Seeger's career. Having all of these threads woven into a single volume is a godsend for students of Seeger's work.
— Peggy Latkovich
(Cleveland Heights, OH)

Southern Exposure: The Story of Southern Music in Pictures and Words
by Richard Carlin and
Bob Carlin
Billboard Books ISBN 0-8230-8426-4 (2000); 160 pp.; $24.95 (paper)

This striking photo album covers a rough hundred years of shots from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries. A few are well known, like the pictures of Robert Johnson or Ben Shahn's 1935 photo of street musicians in Maynardsville, Tennessee, but the vast majority are unfamiliar, many having been collected by individuals from antique dealers and the like. In these cases, the photos have often outlived the memories of the identities of the subjects. The pictures are organized under chapters about family bands, street musicians, work gangs, and so on, and the commentary is well conceived, well written, and informative. Posed shots of professionals are interspersed with candid snaps of working folk, all extremely evocative. Even hardcore fanatics may be edified to learn of Indian musicians who dressed the part as thoroughly as their cowboy counterparts, or intrigued by the description of the "womanless wedding," a kind of backwoods spoof. This is really a beautiful book.
— Duck Baker (Richmond, CA)

2000 Flatpicking
Mel Bay MB98369BCD, ISBN 0-7866-5289-6 (2000); $29.95; (w/2 CDs)

This publication is part of a series of books from Mel Bay targeting specific instruments and styles. This book brings together an impressive collection of acoustic flatpicking guitarists, including Russ Barenberg, Norman Blake, Dan Crary, Tony Cuffe, John McGann, Zan McLeod, Doc Watson, and Tony Rice. There are 38 guitarists here in all, with tablature for 50 tunes. The book includes a short bio for each of the artists, and then at least one of their arrangements of a tune. All of the tunes are also available, played by the guitarist, on the two CDs which come with the book. Some of the material is aimed at the intermediate guitarist, such as Norman Blake's "President Garfield's Hornpipe" or Eric Thompson's "Paddy on the Turnpike." However, Beppe Gambetta's "On the Road with Mama" or Tony Rice's "Gasology" will prove to be much more demanding. The transcriptions appear to be taken from a variety of other publications, as the tablature and standard notation varies somewhat throughout the book. Beyond the fine material located here, this publication will also give the reader an insight into the playing of the greats of the flatpicking world.
— Ivan Emke (Corner Brook, NF, Canada)

Basic Mastering
by Paul White
Sanctuary ISBN 1-86074-289-0 (2000)
Basic Mixing Techniques
by Paul White
Sanctuary ISBN 1-86074-283-1 (2000)
Basic Home Studio Design
by Paul White
Sanctuary ISBN 1-86074-272-6 (2000)

These three pocket-size guides, first in a series about audio production, are straightforward and clear in their explanations, yet walk the fine line between being too simple for the person with some knowledge and too abstruse for the beginner. While there is some repetition among the volumes, it's not enough to be annoying, and the owner of a small studio, for example, could benefit from owning all three. Basic Home Studio Design offers methods of creating a studio in less than ideal acoustic conditions, while Basic Mixing gives instrument and vocal micing tips, as well as ideas to guide the planning of a mixing session. Basic Mastering offers clear explanations of an often overlooked area of home or project studio recording: how to create a master recording so your music can be duplicated for the outside world.
— Kerry Dexter (Tallahassee, FL)

They Can't Hide Us Anymore
by Richie Havens with
Steve Davidowitz
Harper Collins ISBN 0-380-80378-X (1999); $14.00

For baby boomers, Richie Havens may still be best known as the musician who went on stage first at the original Woodstock and ended up playing for hours to a delighted crowd. This wasn't planned, Havens reveals at the beginning of his autobiography, but it turns out to be somewhat a metaphor for Havens' life. He presents himself as a man working with purpose but always ready to take advantage of the unexpected, in life and in music. Growing up in the Bedford -Stuyvesant section of New York City, Havens brought his musical career to maturity as the folk music revival began to flourish in Greenwich Village. He vividly describes encounters with performers both known and unknown who influenced the course of his life, including Bob Dylan, Peter Yarrow, Jimi Hendrix, and Joan Baez. A man of definite opinion, Havens pulls no punches in his assessment of the music business and the social and political situations he often chronicles in his music and his poetry. He lets the reader in on his life beyond music, as well, including his involvement in a marine studies foundation and his work for peace in the Middle East. It's a vivid portrayal of a life lived to the hilt, with a lot of good music along the way.
— Kerry Dexter (Tallahassee, FL)