Since 1926, Pelican Publishing Company has been committed to publishing books of quality and permanence that enrich the lives of those who read them.
General
This extraordinary life history is the result of more than fifteen years of recorded conversations, pieced together into a narrative of a uniquely American experience. Pleasant “Cousin Joe” Joseph’s colorful portrayals of the characters that parade through his life document more than seventy years of changing relationships between blacks and whites. In his own words, he describes growing up in Louisiana, working a rice plantation, and how Gospel music put him on a career path. His candid remarks underscore the economic struggles prevalent in a musician’s life.
Today, hundreds of thousands of people swarm to the New Orleans Fairgrounds to experience the cornucopia of culture that is the world-famous New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Who could imagine that at the very first Jazz Fest, the musicians and volunteers outnumbered the members of the audience by about six to one?
New Orleans Jazz Fest: A Pictorial History is an extraordinary documentation through photographs of the evolution of this yearly festival that in New Orleans has become a seasonal ritual comparable only to the revelry of Mardi Gras. Dividing the book into four sections of five-year periods, photographer Michael P. Smith has compiled a running history of the Fest from its first year, when it drew a crowd of only several hundred people to a small site in Congo Square, up through its third decade and its present thirty-five-acre site on the Fair Grounds Race Track.
John Broven returns to update his comprehensive look into the history of this distinctive music of the Cajun Bayous.