{"id":68982,"date":"2020-05-24T01:27:50","date_gmt":"2020-05-24T05:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=68982"},"modified":"2020-05-24T01:34:29","modified_gmt":"2020-05-24T05:34:29","slug":"weegee-sun-ra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2020\/05\/24\/weegee-sun-ra\/","title":{"rendered":"The Eternal Return of Weegee &#038; Sun Ra"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The best way to reach us with orders or questions, is to email: BookBeatOrders@gmail.com -please include; 1. your name. 2. your phone number. 3. Your question or request. Curbside pickup is available locally or we can ship within the USA for $3. per box. Your book orders keep us going. Shop local and stay healthy! Thank you!<\/p>\n<p>Recent arrivals and restocks, including a beautiful new facsimile  of Weegee&#8217;s <em>Naked City<\/em>, one of the greatest photo books of the 20th century.  Soundtrack from &#8220;Idle Moments&#8221; by Grant Green (1963): <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Pandemic Book Selling #1\" width=\"635\" height=\"357\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/379EpXpcj_o?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/weegee.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/weegee.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"280\" height=\"355\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-68986\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/weegee.jpg 280w, https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/weegee-118x150.jpg 118w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 280px) 100vw, 280px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A loner and an outlier, Weegee took news snaps of people on the margins \u2013 which went on to influence photographers after his death. A new reissue of his classic photobook Naked City reveals the extraordinary power of his images. &#8211;BBC, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/culture\/article\/20200227-weegee-photos-of-crime-scenes-and-people-on-the-margins?referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F\">Weegee photos of a seedy underworld<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Usher Fellig was a greenhorn, a hungry shtetl child from eastern Europe who spoke no English. When he came through Ellis Island in 1909, at ten years old, he reinvented himself, as so many immigrants do&#8230; As a young man, he was shy, awkward, broke, and unpolished, and at fourteen, he became a seventh-grade dropout. He was also smart, ambitious, funny, and (as he and then his fellow New Yorkers and eventually the world discovered) enormously expressive when you put a camera in his hands.&#8221; &#8211;Paris Review, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/06\/05\/the-man-behind-the-weegee\/\">The Man Behind the Weegee<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/sunRa.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-68985\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/sunRa-1024x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"635\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/sunRa-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/sunRa-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/sunRa-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/sunRa-600x600.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/sunRa-1320x1320.jpg 1320w, https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/sunRa.jpg 1440w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 635px) 100vw, 635px\" \/><\/a>\u201cWhen the world was in darkness and darkness was ignorance, Along Came Ra!\u201d \u2014Sun Ra<\/p>\n<p><em>Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra<\/em> by John Szwed was just reissued today and is one of the greatest jazz biographies ever written.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Szwed has produced a rare jazz biography\u2014one that takes full account of the history that shaped the music and its central personalities.\u201d \u2014 Brent Staples, New York Times<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[Szwed] succeeds in prying open countless enigmas within enigmas, revealing much that has eluded historians until now.\u201d \u2014 Stuart Nicholson, Observer<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[An] extraordinary biography.\u201d \u2014 Chris Morris, Billboard<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAgainst the odds, Szwed carves out a central image of Sun Ra as a man whose sincerity was unquestioned, whose heart was pure. Essential reading for the millennium.\u201d \u2014 David Toop, Village Voice<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSzwed also makes a strong case for Sun Ra as creative genius.\u201d \u2014 Kirkus Reviews<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe book consistently succeeds in making the idiosyncrasies of [Sun Ra] much less strange by placing them within the mainstreams of African American culture. . . . Szwed is especially convincing when he documents the origins of Sonny&#8217;s unique blend of mysticism, Egyptology, Afrocentrism, and nonsense. . . . Thanks to Sun Ra, and to this extraordinary book by John Szwed, jazz must be conceived as something much richer than an austere art music.\u201d \u2014 Krin Gabbard, American Music<\/p>\n<p><strong>In honor of Sun Ra\u2019s arrival date May 22, 1914, we also have in stock; <em>This Planet is Doomed; The Science Fiction Poetry of Sun Ra, Prophetika; Book One<\/em> by Sun Ra, and <em>A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The narrative of <em>A Polar Solar World<\/em> is basically chronological, but it is organized around key concepts that explain the sources of Ra\u2019s aesthetic philosophy and demonstrate the range of his influence. Youngquist wisely doesn\u2019t try to replay or substantially revise the story told by John F. Szwed in his definitive biography <em>Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra<\/em>. Rather, he leverages those details to serve as the foundation for higher flights of critical analysis and cultural observation. &#8211;Vince Carducci, <a href=\"https:\/\/publicseminar.org\/2016\/12\/a-pure-solar-world\/?fbclid=IwAR1CxrlI7cymXpUIvjsZ3tnHAuOMVZ8LFPSF6gBvqXZdc2bV74_6rhQaCFc\">reviewing A Pure Solar World <\/a><\/p>\n<p>Sun Ra&#8217;s Arkestra performing Mack the Knife, Rome, 1988:<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sun Ra Arkestra  live Bule Lab Rome 1988\" width=\"635\" height=\"476\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iX9jmpZVmsM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The best way to reach us with orders or questions, is to email: BookBeatOrders@gmail.com -please include; 1. your name. 2. your phone number. 3. Your question or request. Curbside pickup is available locally or we can ship within the USA for $3. per box. Your book orders keep us going. Shop local and stay healthy! [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68986,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[217,158,13],"tags":[494,495],"class_list":["post-68982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-african-american","category-jazz-and-blues","category-photography","tag-sun-ra","tag-weegee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}