It can be fairly argued that only three rock icons from the hippy-dippy ’60s have really endured: Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones and Neil Young, who is the subject of the massive, keenly detailed and anecdote-laden authorized biography Shakey.

With style and intelligence, veteran music journalist Jimmy McDonough tells the amazing tale of Young’s emergence from the Canadian folkie scene into the wild post-Beatles, pre-psychedelic mayhem of mid-1960s L.A., where he first made his mark as a member of the legendary (and legendarily dysfunctional) pop-rock group Buffalo Springfield. Hailed as a songwriter of genius, Young struggled a bit thereafter, mostly in the face of criticism of his reedy, strangely iconoclastic vocal stylings. Yet a string of groundbreaking solo albums Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After the Gold Rush, Harvest were followed by a highly publicized stint as a member of the acclaimed Crosby Stills Nash and Young, and superstardom was his, with all the attendant professional madness and personal heartache. While most of Young’s contemporaries dropped off the industry road map due to natural attrition, he continued to produce music through the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, building new audiences and maintaining a touring presence while also retooling his act through seemingly unlikely alliances with bands such as Devo and Pearl Jam.

McDonough’s analysis of Young’s musical vision and brilliance is matched with fascinating insights into the life of a man who has certainly experienced his share of physical and psychic pain his parents’ early breakup, childhood polio, extended bouts with epilepsy, failed relationships and marriages (including his very public liaison with actress Carrie Snodgrass), the premature deaths of musical friends from drug overdoses, and the birth of a son with cerebral palsy.

On the surface, Young has always been perceived as a somewhat frail, introspective and private individual. Yet, if nothing else, McDonough’s exhaustive, eminently readable account serves as testament to one man’s abilities to survive the dog-eat-dog music business and triumph through his art.

In the shadow of Clinch Mountain in Scott County, Virginia, lies what is called Poor Valley. Out of this hardscrabble environment emerged the legendary musical pioneers the Carter family. A.P. (Alvin Pleasant) Carter, his wife Sara and her cousin Maybelle sang and played their way to fame and fortune, creating in many ways the basis for the entire American traditional, folk and country music industries.

In Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?: The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music, documentary filmmaker Mark Zwonitzer teams up with veteran journalist Charles Hirshberg to capture the historic lives of the Carters, from the moment they were discovered by music producer and publisher Ralph Peer in the 1920s, through their groundbreaking careers as recording artists, to their deaths in the late 1970s. In between is an incredible tale of poverty, sudden celebrity and wealth, seminal recording dates, national radio exposure to a country mired in the Great Depression, unceasing concert performances in towns both small and large, appearances on the Grand Ole Opry and associations with musical greats like Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Chet Atkins, Roy Acuff and Elvis Presley.

There’s also an interesting profile of the young Johnny Cash, who eventually after a great deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth became daughter June’s third husband in the 1960s and has kept the family tradition going ever since. This volume is thoroughly researched, and the authors don’t stint on coverage of the Carter forebears, the details of their simple country life and the idiosyncrasies and squabbles that characterized, in particular, the lives of A.P. and Sara, who divorced fairly early on, yet continued working together for the sake of the music (and the money). The text paints intriguing portraits of all the major players but throws rays of especially revelatory light on A.P.’s brother Eck, who was not simply Mother Maybelle’s devoted husband but also a reliable and organized manager for his wife and a loving father to their singing daughters (June, Helen and Anita).

Music fans will be particularly fascinated with accounts of how A.P. in need of recording material scoured the countryside collecting folk and gospel songs from local citizens, tinkered with the words and melodies as necessary and then, innovator that he was (or scoundrel, depending on your point of view), parlayed his finds into copyrightable gems that netted him (and Peer) a king’s ransom in royalties. In the right place at the right time, the Carters brought to the world the spirit of Wildwood Flower, Keep on the Sunny Side and Will the Circle Be Unbroken, among many other classic tunes. This book is an essential work of musical Americana.

Aspiring musician Martin Brady writes on the arts.

You don’t have to remember the ’50s to get lost in Great Pretenders: My Strange Love Affair with ’50s Pop Music. After all, author Karen Schoemer only barely does. Yet even as she wrote about modern, angst-heavy rock as a Newsweek staffer, shades of Fabian, Tommy Sands, Georgia Gibbs and, above all, Connie Francis, hovered alongside specters of her parents at the edge of her imagination, demanding the chance to reverse history’s merciless judgment.

And so Schoemer’s search is about more than music. As her breathless, ironic and engaging prose suggests, it’s about family no, actually, it’s about love. For 30 years her parents had lived a few miles apart yet barely acknowledged each other’s existence. Somehow this becomes just as important as her portraits of the stars that set the pre-boom tune. You sense this in the quick intimacy she establishes with these singers singers she had been raised to dismiss as irrelevant, empty of talent or just plain icky.

Schoemer hurls herself into their lives, like a whirlwind sucking up a sea of research factoids yet drowning in uncertainties. Invariably she sheds her cynicism and becomes a trusting believer, much like her parents must have been before their premonitions of divorce. She sits in the backseat as Patti Page and her husband drive through their tiny town, wondering if maybe she could stay and join their family. She perches on Pat Boone’s lap, ready to devote herself to him forever despite his purity. She stands on her chair and screams along with the happy geriatrics at a Frankie Laine concert.

In other words, Schoemer doesn’t write about this music and the people who made it: she lives it, and gets it tangled up in her daydreams and anger and innocence. And, almost without anyone noticing, her odyssey leads her to where her memory began not just into the home of Connie Francis but, wildly and improbably, into her bed, where a moment of terrifying revelation reminds us that even pop music at its worst packs enough magic to set us all free. Robert L. Doerschuk is a former editor of Musician magazine.

Songs are the bookmarks in our memory that were either crafted painstakingly over a long period of time or dashed off in inspirational or deadline-imposed frenzy. But the circumstances of their creation, as Will Friedwald demonstrates in Stardust Melodies, is seldom as fascinating as tracing the routes by which they have insinuated themselves into our consciousness.

The songs Friedwald chronicles in his book are Star Dust, The St. Louis Blues, Mack the Knife, Ol’ Man River, Body and Soul, I Got Rhythm, As Time Goes By, Night and Day, Stormy Weather, Summertime, My Funny Valentine and Lush Life. Each of these classics was composed between 1914 and 1938. Making no claim that these are the finest, most popular or best-selling tunes of their genre, Friedwald proposes that each has triumphantly survived decades of changing tastes on its own intrinsic power. And yes, he does offer a plausible excuse for not including any Irving Berlin songs.

For each of his choices, Friedwald provides the historical context of the composition, an analysis of its musical structure and an account of how the song gained popular momentum. He ends each biography with Bonus Tracks, a brief discussion of noteworthy recordings of the song. For example, he cites his candidate for the zaniest version of As Time Goes By (Louis Prima’s on The Prima Generation album) and speculates as to who could have sung the best versions of Stormy Weather but didn’t (Jimmy Rushing, Helen Humes and Joe Williams). Much of the pleasure of reading this book is seeing the fun Friedwald has with his subject. Although he quotes fragments of lyrics from the songs he anatomizes, Friedwald doesn’t include the entire lyrics for any of the selections. This failure may stem from the cost of acquiring reprint permission. But aside from this omission, Stardust Melodies provides a penetrating and exhaustive introduction to 12 timeless tunes.