Celebrating Black music month, June 2005.

A Bad Woman Feeling Good: Blues and the Women Who Sang Them by Buzzy Jackson W.W. Norton & Company, February 2005 $25.95, ISBN 0-393-05936-7

From Gertrude "Ma" Rainey to Billie Holiday to Etta James and Janis Joplin, these women are just a few who have helped to define the blues through their self-expression, toughness, and their own distinctive voices.

Black Notes: Essays of a Musician Writing in a Post-Album Age by William C. Banfield Scarecrow Press, January 2005 $30, ISBN 0-810-85287-X

Banfield, a musician who "is interested in how we live in relationship to music," calls this post 9/11, new millennium era, the "post-album" age. This collection of essays celebrates and critiques today's black music.

Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang St. Martin's Press, February 2005 $27.95, ISBN 0-312-30143-9

Incorporating a decade's worth of research and interviews, music and political journalist Jeff Chang has written what just might be the best historical book on the hip-hop culture and the people behind its formation.

The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend the Music, the Seventies in San Francisco by Joshua Gamson Henry Holt and Company, March 2005 $26, ISBN 0-805-07250-0

And a fabulous life Sylvester's was. This book illuminates the life and music of the glamorous and the bewildering disco sensation. Together, with his backup singers, Two Tons of Fun, he introduced his unique and often divalike style to San Francisco and the rest of America.

Florence Mills: Harlem Jazz Queen by Bill Egan, The Scarecrow Press, Inc. December 2004, $29.95 ISBN 0-810-85007-9

Egan reintroduces the reader to a forgotten but amazing international entertainer. Although she died relatively young (she was only 31), Mills was an inventive influence in the worlds of both jazz and ragtime in the 1920s.

I Feel Good: A Memoir of a Life of Soul by James Brown with Marc Eliot New American Library, January 2005 $24.95, ISBN 0-451-21393-9

It has been said over and over: "James Brown is the hardest working man in show business." But the Godfather of Soul has worked diligently not only at conveying his feelings and messages in his music, but also at confronting segregation in his early years and his own failings as an adult. Here is a memoir packed with rhythm and soul, as it documents the life of the legendary man himself.

I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You: Aretha Franklin, Respect, and the Making of a Soul Masterpiece by Matt Dobkin St. Martin's Press, November 2004 $24.95, ISBN 0-312-31828-6

Dobkin takes a critical look at the making of the album that helped to launch the career of a little-known gospel and jazz singer who would become the "Queen of Soul."

Jazzwomen: Conversations With Twenty-One Musicians by Wayne Enstice and Janis Stockhouse Indiana University Press, June 2004 $39.95, ISBN 0-253-34436-0

Interviews with leading ladies in jazz detail the ups and downs female musicians face in a male-dominated profession.

The Last Miles: The Music of Miles Davies, 1980-1991 by George Cole The University of Michigan Press, March 2005, $35.00 ISBN 0-472-11501-4

In this tome, Cole gives his full attention to the last decade of the jazz genius's life, after his return to the music scene from a five-year hiatus. Although numerous books have been written about Miles, this book includes details of unreleased material and interviews with many of the accomplished musicians Miles played with during that time.

Ray: A Tribute to the Movie, the Music and the Man Foreword by Taylor Hackford, Preface by Jamie Foxx New Market Press, October 2004 $30, ISBN 1-557-04649-2

This is a collectible book of high magnitude. it sheds light on how the award-winning story about the genius of Ray Charles came into being. The book also includes images of Ray with the cast, coupled with the movie's illustrated screenplay.

Soweto Blues: Jazz, Popular Music and Politics in South Africa by Gwen Ansell Continuum International Publishing October 2004, $24.95, ISBN 0-826-41662-4

Jazz columnist Ansell's well-researched book is about South African musicians who began their careers during the apartheid era. They share the stories of how the era influenced their lives, their politics and their music.

The Uncrowned King of Swing: Fletcher Henderson and Big Band Jazz by Jeffrey Magee Oxford University Press, January 2005 $30, ISBN 0-195-09022-5

This carefully researched work finally sets the record straight about the identity, talent and the genius of the bona fide "King of Swing."

To a Young Jazz Musician: Letters From the Road by Wynton Marsalis with Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, Random House, October 2004 $16.95, ISBN 1-400-06399-X

Wynton Marsalis, composer of Blood on the Fields--the first and, to date, only jazz work to win the Pulitzer Prize in music--shares his experiences and insights about leading a full life and making good music.

Up, Up and Away: How We Found the Love, Faith and Lasting Marriage in the Entertainment World by Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr., with Mike Yorkey Moody Publishers, October 2004 $21.99, ISBN 1-881-27317-2

McCoo and Davis, singers of the Grammy-winning group The 5th Dimension, offer inspirational and motivational advice to those couples--especially living in Hollywood--who desire and strive to maintain a blissful and well-balanced relationship.

Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies edited by Robert G. O'Mealy Brent Hayes Edwards and Farah Jasmine Griffin, Columbia University Press, July 2004, $24.50, ISBN 0-231-12351-5

Stemming from O'Meally's Jazz Study Group at Columbia University, this collection of essays, which are written by a panel of distinguished scholars, is an intellectually stimulating discussion of jazz and its many variations.

--Compiled by Justin Adewale Collins Justin Adewale Collins is a publisher and cofounder of LiterateNubian.org.