In a piano factory tucked away in Richmond, Indiana, Gennett Records produced thousands of records featuring obscure musicians from hotel orchestras and backwoods fiddlers to the future icons of jazz, blues, country music, and rock 'n' roll. From 1916 to 1934, the company debuted such future stars as Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Bix Beiderbecke, and Hoagy Carmichael, while also capturing classic performances by Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton, Uncle Dave Macon, and Gene Autry. While Gennett Records was overshadowed by competitors such as Victor and Columbia, few record companies documented the birth of America's grassroots music as thoroughly as this small-town label. In this newly revised and expanded edition of Jelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy, Rick Kennedy shares anecdotes from musicians, employees, and family members to trace the colorful history of one of America's most innovative record companies.

Jelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy: Gennett Records and the Rise of America's Musical Grassroots

Arts & Photography

Kennedy, Rick

Music

Indiana University Press

Jelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy: Gennett Studios and the Birth of Recorded Jazz

"Delightful history of Gennett Records, its parent the Starr Piano Company of Richmond, Indiana, in the 1920s, and the birth of recorded jazz... For jazz followers, not to be missed. A huge success."Â —Kirkus Reviews
"... a labor of love if ever there was one.... [Gennett] helped get everything started, and we are in Rick Kennedy's debt for paying it due tribute." —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
"... lively and anecdotal history... "Â —JazzTimes
From 1917 to 1932, in a primitive studio next to the railroad tracks, the Gennett family of Richmond, Indiana recorded some of the earliest performances of jazz, blues, and country greats—including Jelly Roll Morton, Big Bill Broonzy, King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Gene Autry, Bix Beiderbecke, and native Hoosier Hoagy Carmichael (whose "Stardust" debuted on Gennett as a dance stomp). 
ÂJelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy is the first detailed account of the people and events behind this unique company. Personalized by anecdotes from musicians, employees, and family members, it traces the colorful history of a pioneer recording company.

Kennedy, Richard Lee

Indiana Univ. Pr

Now in paperback!
Little Labels ―Big Sound Small Record Companies and the Rise of American Music
Rick Kennedy and Randy McNutt Foreword by Al Kooper
A wild ride through American popular music.
"[T]hese cats had their ears to the ground and cut vinyl that created the hip sounds of the day, sounds that still reverberate today.... Little Labels―Big Sound is a great primer into the history of these... independent record labels." ―Blue Suede News
"[L]ike the labels it celebrates and the 45s and the 78s those labels put out... full of exciting and vital content." ―San Francisco Chronicle
"In this straightforward and engaging collection of histories and profiles, the authors present a brisk overview of important indies and a look at several distinctive companies and the men who ran them..." ―Billboard
"Show me a man today who could stand up to a Syd Nathan or a Don Robey, and I’ll show you a man behind bars―not behind a desk. Why, without Sam Phillips, the founder of Sun Records and the man who unearthed Elvis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Rufus Thomas, and Howling Wolf to name but a few, there might not even have been any rock ’n’ roll, electric blues, or rockabilly music." ―Al Kooper, from the Foreword
Rick Kennedy, a media relations manager and former journalist, is author of Jelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy (Indiana University Press).
Randy McNutt, a longtime reporter with the Cincinnati Enquirer, is author of We Wanna Boogie and a book on Ohio ghost towns.
March 2001 (cloth 1999) 224 pages, 33 b&amp;w photos, 6 x 9, notes, bibl., index, append. cloth 0-253-33548-5 $24.95 t / £18.95 paper 0-253-21434-3 $17.95 t / £13.95

Little Labels -Big Sound: Small Record Companies and the Rise of American Music

Business & Money

McNult, Randy

Economics

Traces the history of Gennett Studios, an independent company which recorded young midwestern jazz and folk musicians during the 1920s

Little Labels -- Big Sound celebrates 10 legendary record labels, their founders and the artists they developed, people who created original and enduring music on the tide of social change. From the 1920s through the 1960s, scores of small, independent record companies nurtured distinctly American music: jazz, blues, gospel, country, rhythm and blues, and rock 'n' roll. These companies, run on shoestring budgets, were on the fringe of mainstream culture. Louis Armstrong, Hank Williams, James Brown, Roy Orbison, and other musicians brought regional American styles to a world audience and won enduring fame for themselves. But often forgotten are the colorful owners of small record labels who first recorded these musicians and helped to popularize their sound before the dominant, more bureaucratic competitors knew what had happened.
Rick Kennedy and Randy McNutt bring alive the glory days of the independent labels and their colorful founders, many of whom were interviewed for this book. Sometimes these men were visionaries. Ross Russell, a record-store owner in Los Angeles in the mid-1940s, risked his last dollar to create Dial Records because he was convinced that an obscure jazz saxophonist named Charlie Parker was creating a music revolution with his bebop jazz. Sam Phillips in Memphis had recorded white country and black R&amp;B singers in the early 1950s, so he knew exactly what he was looking for when a shy, teenaged Elvis Presley walked into his storefront studio in 1954 and asked to make a record.
Other owners had little appreciation for the music but were street-smart entrepreneurs. The white-owned ""race"" labels of the 1920s, for example, recognized a black consumer market thatthe recording business had previously ignored. Operating out of such cities as Houston, Memphis, Cincinnati, and New Orleans, these savvy business people promoted regional sounds that were to reverberate around the world.
But influencing the development of music wasn't what these record-label owners had in mind; they were just trying to earn a living. Today, when most of the independent record labels have gone under or have been gobbled up by big conglomerates, the music they produced on primitive equipment remains fresh -- and bigger than life.
Little Labels -- Big Sound tells with verve and affection the story of the people and the small homegrown companies who gave America its beat.

Little Labels--Big Sound: Small Record Companies and the Rise of American Music

McNutt, Randy

Written in the genre of Henry David Thoreau's travel-thinking essays, Jesus, History, and Mount Darwin: An Academic Excursion is the story of a three-day climb into the Evolution Range of the High Sierra mountains of California. Mount Darwin stands among other near-14,000-foot high mountains that are named after promoters of religious versions of evolutionary thinking. Rick Kennedy, a history professor from a small college, uses the climb as an opportunity to think about general education and how both the natural history of evolution and the ancient history of Jesus can find a home in the Aristotelian diversity of university methods. Kennedy offers the academic foundations for the credibility and reliability of accounts of Jesus in the New Testament, while pointing out that these foundations have the same weaknesses and strengths that ancient history has in general. Natural history, Kennedy points out, has a different set of strengths and weaknesses from ancient history. Overall, the book reminds students and professors of the wisdom in being humble.

Jesus, History and Mount Darwin: An Academic Excursion

Religion & Spirituality

Christian Books & Bibles

Lutterworth Press

An accurate, sympathetic account of influential colonial Christian leader Cotton Mather Cotton Mather (1663-1728) was America's most famous pastor and scholar at the beginning of the eighteenth century. People today generally associate him with the infamous Salem witch trials, but in this new biography Rick Kennedy tells a bigger story: Mather, he says, was the very first American evangelical. A fresh retelling of Cotton Mather's life, this biography corrects misconceptions and focuses on how he sought to promote, socially and intellectually, a biblical lifestyle. As older Puritan hopes in New England were giving way to a broader and shallower Protestantism, Mather led a populist, Bible-oriented movement that embraced the new century — the beginning of a dynamic evangelical tradition that eventually became a major force in American culture. Incorporating the latest scholarly research but written for a popular audience, The First American Evangelical brings Cotton Mather and his world to life in a way that helps readers understand both the Puritanism in which he grew up and the evangelicalism he pioneered.

The First American Evangelical: A Short Life of Cotton Mather (Library of Religious Biography (LRB))

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Professor Rick Kennedy knows the wariness some Christians take with them to public universities. After all, not too many years ago he went off to school, leaving behind parents concerned for the status of his faith.But now, after years of public education and more years of teaching at state universities, Kennedy is convinced that Christians who attend such schools should be coached in more than just fear. Large secular colleges are filled with the foolish and the wise, the good and the evil. "Christians," Kennedy insists, "can thrive."Faith at State offers excellent, encouraging guidance on understanding and relating to professors, performing in the classroom, and being a Christian presence non-Christians can respect.

Faith at State: A Handbook for Christians at Secular Universities

Religious Studies

Intervarsity Pr

Good Tokyo Restaurants

Industries

KODANSHA AMERICA +

Home, Sweet Tokyo: Life in a Weird and Wonderful City

Travel

Morita, Akio

Asia

Kodansha Amer Inc

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Books by Kennedy, Rick