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NonfictionMusicBiography

King of the Blues

Review by Henry Carrigan

When B.B. King died in May 2015, the world lost an artist whose distinctive style shaped several generations of musicians. King’s fluid guitar riffs and lead runs still define the blues for many fans. Eric Clapton called King “the most important artist the blues has ever produced,” but as journalist Daniel de Visé points out in his absorbing new biography, King of the Blues: The Rise and Reign of B.B. King, King’s journey to such acclaim was never easy. Even King himself might have deferred to other blues artists, such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, as more worthy of Clapton’s accolade.

Drawing on extensive interviews with almost every surviving member of King’s inner circle, including family, friends and band members, de Visé chronicles King’s life from his birth into a sharecropper family in Mississippi, to his parents’ split, to his early years being raised by his grandmother. King loved gospel music and sang in the choir at Elkhorn Baptist Church, but as much as he liked the Soul Stirrers and other gospel groups, he noticed they didn’t have a guitar, the instrument he most wanted to learn. One of his ministers taught King three chords on the guitar, and when he turned 16, King bought the fire-red Stella that would kick off his journey to becoming a master of the instrument. Recalling his exquisite joy at having a guitar in his hands, King said, “Never have been so excited. Couldn’t keep my hands off her. If I was feeling lonely, I’d pick up the guitar . . . happy, horny, mad, or sad, the guitar was right there, a righteous pacifier and comforting companion.”

Soon enough, King left Mississippi for Memphis and became an international star. As de Visé points out, though, King always looked over his shoulder at the poverty and scenes of racial injustice out of which he had grown, incorporating those deep feelings of loss into his music so that his listeners could feel his sorrow as he bent the blues through his guitar strings. King of the Blues is the first full and authoritative biography of King, and it accomplishes what all good music books should: It drives readers to revisit King’s music and savor it again.

King of the Blues is the first authoritative biography of B.B. King, and as all good music books should, it will drive readers to revisit King’s iconic music.
MusicArts & Culture

Review

Review by bookpagedev

With Visions of Jazz, Gary Giddins has set out to do the impossible, and come surprisingly close to succeeding. The task is to recap the first, and only, century of America’s indigenous music, in a fashion which is interesting to the novice as well as the veteran jazz listener. One reason he is able to pull this feat off is the excellent organization of the book. The main reason, however, is Giddins’s obvious passion for the music, complemented by his impressive knowledge of jazz history and the artists who shaped it.

The book is divided into seven sections from Precursors to A Traditional Music. While the organization is primarily a chronology, or an evolution of the first 100 years of jazz, it does not strictly adhere to dates. For example, sandwiched between discussions of Al Jolson and Louis Armstrong is a section on contemporary musicians Hank Jones and Charlie Haden. I was surprised to see this initially, but after reading the section, which is a discussion of spirituals and their place in jazz history, I appreciated this more fluid approach to what is primarily a history lesson. Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington also recur several times throughout the book, which is deserving since their presence was felt in different ways at different times. With most of the book dedicated to giants in jazz history, the inclusion of some lesser-knowns is a real treat. These people, such as Spencer Williams, Bobby Hackett, Spike Jones, and Chico O’Farrill really set this book apart from others of it’s kind, not just by their inclusion, but in the fact that Giddins makes sense out of their place in history. Giddins clearly wants to make the reader understand and appreciate all the steps that this music has taken, as well as how the social and political climate affected it, and vice versa.

Visions of Jazz is a richly rewarding book, one that has a huge payoff if the reader invests the time and energy. Giddins’s style is deliberate, with the material leaning more toward analysis than anecdote, and does a wonderful job of conveying his enthusiasm to the reader (one can glimpse just how affected he is by the music he has spent his life critiquing). A double CD produced by Giddins is available from Blue Note to coincide with this publication featuring many of the artists discussed in the book. This should be a great help, especially for those listeners who aren’t as familiar with the people and styles being discussed. It could well serve as a primary teaching tool for jazz history courses, or just be enjoyed, listened to artist by artist.

Giddins has written about jazz for the last 25 years, chiefly as jazz critic for the Village Voice and has served as Music Director of the American Jazz Orchestra, which he founded in 1986. This is to say that he brings a lot of experience and knowledge to the subject he is examining. Perhaps the largest compliment I could pay Gary Giddins is one which he pays to many of his subjects: he has a distinct, unique voice. This is the goal for many a jazz musician, and many a writer, and Giddins achieves it in Visions of Jazz, one of the best books on the subject in quite some time.

Bill Carey is a graduate student in Music at DePaul University.

With Visions of Jazz, Gary Giddins has set out to do the impossible, and come surprisingly close to succeeding. The task is to recap the first, and only, century of America's indigenous music, in a fashion which is interesting to the novice as well as…

Music

Hitting the high notes

Feature by Ron Wynn

Music lovers have always welcomed the chance to read about their favorite musicians and the sounds they create. Though newspaper and magazine coverage of music has declined, those outlets are now augmented by a seemingly endless array of websites and blogs devoted to music reviews, critiques, commentary, gossip and profiles. For more in-depth appraisals, readers turn to books, and the six in this sampling represent various approaches to writing about music. Some lean toward technical appraisal, while others represent fond appreciations or reflective treatises, but they’re all informative, valuable and enjoyable treats for music lovers.

A fresh look at famous men
Current Wall Street Journal drama critic and former jazz musician Terry Teachout’s superb biography Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong mixes sociological observation, analytical examination and psychological portrait, while correcting inaccuracies and offering new, often stunning information about the man considered by many critics the greatest jazz soloist of all time. Teachout rejects that claim, instead labeling Armstrong the greatest “influence” in jazz history, citing him as the figure numerous other players, regardless of instrument, credited with championing the value of artistry, developing a personalized sound and being both innovative and entertaining.

Indeed, his showmanship frequently led to vicious criticism of Armstrong by more militant blacks, who felt his mugging and clowning on stage were a throwback to the Jim Crow and minstrel eras. Drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished material, including letters, private recordings and backstage conversations and accounts, Teachout shows that Armstrong was a driven, sophisticated performer with a quick-trigger temper and penchant for denouncing conduct by both blacks and whites as counterproductive.

Teachout also brings more perspective to events only briefly or incorrectly covered in previous biographies. These range from Armstrong’s longtime love of marijuana (something that got him arrested in 1930) to the simmering quarrel with President Dwight Eisenhower that encompassed more than just his anger at Eisenhower’s reluctance to protect the rights of black students trying to integrate Central High School in Arkansas. The book contains so many new bits of information—such as the revelation that his embouchure (the way he held his lips to the trumpet) was incorrect—that even the most ardent fan might be surprised. Teachout has crafted a definitive work that dissects the personality and motivations of a genius.

Journalist and filmmaker Antonino D’Ambrosio’s exhaustive A Heartbeat and a Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears is equally thorough, though it mainly sticks to one subject. Widely considered exclusively a country musician, Johnny Cash had a range, thematic impact and sound that were much broader. He was politically farther to the left than many industry comrades, and one subject close to his heart was the nation’s history and treatment of Native Americans. Cash joined forces with folk artist Peter LaFarge in 1964 to create the striking, unforgettable album Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian.

As D’Ambrosio’s work shows, the eight-song LP brought Cash some of the fiercest attacks and criticism he’d ever received. When the controversial album was released squarely in the middle of a turbulent era, Cash was called “unpatriotic” in some circles and the Ku Klux Klan even burned a cross on his lawn. But he stood resolute against the pressure, even as Columbia pulled its advertising for the album and retail stores quietly and quickly took it off their shelves. D’Ambrosio adds numerous interviews with Cash’s bandmates, associates and friends while telling a story of corporate cowardice and artistic integrity that remains remarkable 45 years later.

Bob Dylan Revisited isn’t nearly so encyclopedic or socially powerful, though it still proves compelling. A much shorter book than the others described here, it contains 13 graphic interpretations of vintage Bob Dylan tunes, among them “Blowin’ In The Wind,” “Positively 4th Street,” “Desolation Row” and “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.” Each song’s lyrics are matched with a graphic artist who creates a visually provocative viewpoint to embellish the text. Personal favorites include Thierry Murat’s interpretation of “Blowin’ In The Wind,” Benjamin Flo’s colorful treatment of “Blind Willie McTell” and Francois Avril’s dashing illustrations for “Girl Of The North Country,” but all are delightful. This is a book with special appeal for hardcore Dylan fans.

Capturing a moment
Sam Stephenson’s The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957-1965 covers an art form whose greatest stars were unknown to most music fans. Even within the notoriously insular jazz universe, the style known as “loft jazz” never had a wide following. The music was made by instrumentalists coming to New York from many places, including the West Coast, as well as some city residents. They found artistic solace and living space in previously abandoned buildings like the one at 821 Sixth Avenue, which was the home of photojournalist W. Eugene Smith. Stephenson’s book focuses on the exhaustive materials Smith amassed between 1957 and 1965.
Musicians well-known (Thelonius Monk) and obscure (David X. Young, Hall Overton) recorded there, while Smith took their pictures in all manner of situations. Some accounts are funny, others sad or odd, but all are intriguing and memorable. Part of an ongoing research project conducted by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University (there’s also a radio series and photographic exhibition), the book spotlights a valuable collection of vignettes and snapshots that chronicle an underreported, vital part of jazz and cultural history.

There’s not exactly a wealth of unknown material or lack of familiar faces in our final pair of books. Indeed, top photographer Jim Marshall proclaims in the introduction to Gail Buckland’s Who Shot Rock and Roll: A Photographic History 1955-Present that “too much [expletive] is written about photographs and music.” While the accounts of great people manning the camera are often quite entertaining, it’s famous shots like Johnny Cash flipping the bird at San Quentin in 1969 (taken by Jim Marshall) or David Gahr’s picture of Janis Joplin leaning off to the side in 1968 that make Who Shot Rock and Roll far more than simply another photo book.

Rather than a collection of pictures by a multitude of photographers, Elvis 1956  is a showcase for the dazzling, frequently surprising photos of Alfred Wertheimer, whose majestic work is also featured in the Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition “Elvis at 21.” Rather than just gathering concert footage (though the book contains incredible on-stage shots of Presley, Scotty Moore and company doing acrobatics and charismatic maneuvers), Wertheimer sought places and situations that conveyed the attraction of Presley and his magnetism off the bandstand. These great scenes include one of an elderly black woman poised right behind Presley at a Southern restaurant at a time when segregation was a fact of life. Her presence, and Presley’s easy, nonchalant manner sitting a few feet away, speaks volumes about the simmering racial explosion on the horizon. Likewise, shots of him with Steve Allen or sequences showing waves of girls fighting to touch him at shows convey the enormous sex appeal of the youthful Elvis.

While no book will ever be a worthy substitute for the thrill of hearing great music or the sense of achievement felt by those who play it, these volumes effectively communicate the sense of community among music lovers and the importance it holds in our lives.

Ron Wynn writes for the Nashville City Paper and other publications.

Music lovers have always welcomed the chance to read about their favorite musicians and the sounds they create. Though newspaper and magazine coverage of music has declined, those outlets are now augmented by a seemingly endless array of websites and blogs devoted to music reviews,…

Music

Gift books that hit the right note

Feature by Edward Morris

This is a rich season for readers whose imaginations (and libidos) were first unleashed back when vinyl was the dominant musical medium and Broadway was still a wellspring of popular songs. Five new books provide a kaleidoscopic view of that charmed era.

MAN WITH THE GOLDEN THROAT
James Kaplan’s Frank: The Voice is a gossipy, immensely readable account of Frank Sinatra’s rise from sweet-singing mama’s boy to teen idol to Academy Award-winning actor. (The biography ends on the night of March 25, 1954, with Sinatra walking the streets of Beverly Hills and brandishing his best supporting Oscar for From Here To Eternity.)

Kaplan could have just as accurately subtitled his book The Groin, since he focuses as much on that busy region as he does on the entertainer’s golden throat. Central to his chronicle is Sinatra’s love affair with and marriage to Ava Gardner, the one woman whose temper and sense of entitlement were as formidable as the singer’s own. “Like Frank,” says Kaplan, “she was infinitely restless and easily bored. . . . Both had titanic appetites, for food, drink, cigarettes, diversion, companionship, and sex. Both loved jazz and the men and women, black and white, who made it. Both were politically liberal.” The author also assesses the influences of such other Sinatra intimates as Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, bandleaders Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, songwriters Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, Sinatra’s long-suffering publicist George Evans and his even longer-suffering first wife, Nancy. There are few new facts or insights here, but Kaplan does a masterful job of stitching the reams of previously published material into a vivid, fast-paced narrative.

BEYOND THE BEATLES
Howard Sounes’ Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney is impressively thorough and up-to-date. The author devotes a mere 22 pages of his mammoth text to McCartney’s youth—that is, the period before he joined his first real band, the Quarrymen—and he polishes off the Beatles era less than halfway into the book. That’s as it should be, given the substantial body of work and public presence McCartney has created on his own. While Sounes did not talk with McCartney or the other surviving Beatle, Ringo Starr, he did interview well over 200 other people who were closely or tangentially connected with the star. The picture that emerges is of a man well aware of his place in musical history but given to taking artistic short cuts, not quite demanding as much from himself as his talent could render. Still, his bedrock of compassion and generosity generally shows through. Sounes allots plenty of space to McCartney’s disastrous marriage to Heather Mills, a test of character if there ever was one.

A PROPHET OF HIS TIMES
No one else has anatomized Bob Dylan, his music and his personality as relentlessly or as minutely as Greil Marcus. Witness now the culmination of that obsession in Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968-2010. Marcus first came face to face with Dylan in 1963 at a Joan Baez concert in New Jersey. That experience was so transformative that he has since viewed the iconic singer/songwriter as something of a cultural weathervane. These essays and speeches tend either to sigh with admiration or seethe with contempt as Dylan goes through his various stages from folkie to rocker to Christian convert to elder statesman to enigma-in-residence. No album or gesture goes unnoticed. All the pieces aren’t strictly about Dylan, though; in some, he’s just a footnote, a shadow passing by. Readers who are not into Dylan minutiae can still follow what Marcus is talking about, since most of these writings were for publications that catered to broad audiences. But this is more than a study of Dylan—it’s a jagged portrait of the age.

BACKSTAGE WITH ROCK GODS
Spurned by rock critics for being over-hyped, depraved and savage toward the press, Led Zeppelin finally decided in 1975 that it might be a business advantage to invite a handful of top-tier reporters to accompany the band on what was certain to be a triumphant tour of America. One of the chosen few was Stephen Davis, a former writer for Rolling Stone who, on this trip, would be on assignment for The Atlantic. The upshot is LZ-’75. Zeppelin proved to be just as thorny and exhausting to cover as expected. As Davis chronicles it, the tour was a transcontinental bacchanal, in which each member of the band had his own peccadilloes and flash points; imagine Spinal Tap with higher IQs and better management. Davis, who would later write the much-disputed Led Zeppelin biography Hammer of the Gods, misplaced his notes of the tour (The Atlantic declined his proposed article) and didn’t find them until 30 years later. Thus the delay, and the sense that we’ve read all this before, though the material and the gossip still compel.

A LIFE IN THE THEATER
Readers are hereby warned not to start on Stephen Sondheim’s Finishing the Hat if they have vital appointments pending. His prose is just too alluring to put aside. This is the first of two planned volumes in which the great lyricist recounts his experiences writing songs for musical theater; the book covers 13 plays from 1954 to 1981. Besides providing and discussing the lyrics to all his songs in these plays, Sondheim also offers illuminating critiques of fellow Broadway songwriters. He is a hard man to please, finding literary fault with such master stylists as Oscar Hammerstein II (his mentor), Lorenz Hart, Alan Jay Lerner, Ira Gershwin and Noel Coward. He is more admiring of Dorothy Fields, Irving Berlin and Frank Loesser, although not unreservedly so. It’s astounding the number of classics Sondheim can claim, among them “Maria” and “Tonight” from West Side Story, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” from Gypsy, “Everybody Ought to Have a Maid” from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music—the list goes on, and fortunately, so does Sondheim.
 

This is a rich season for readers whose imaginations (and libidos) were first unleashed back when vinyl was the dominant musical medium and Broadway was still a wellspring of popular songs. Five new books provide a kaleidoscopic view of that charmed era.

MAN…

NonfictionPop CultureMusicBiography

Let’s hear it for the boys

Feature by Martin Brady

For the men on your list, this year’s selection has a sporty bent, with side trips into macho movies, manly pursuits and muscular journalism.

EYE OF THE TIGER
Leading off the pack—and combining good reporting with a story ripped from the headlines—is Tom Callahan’s His Father’s Son: Earl and Tiger Woods. Callahan, author of the acclaimed bio Johnny U, brings a two-tiered approach to the story of the two Woods men, outlining father Earl’s life and maverick mindset and placing the great golfer Tiger’s own life and career into that broader context. Is the child father to the man? Perhaps so, though Callahan seems better able to profile Woods the father, with his varied markers as military man, Vietnam vet, college athlete and major influence on Tiger. We also gain some insight—if not outright understanding—into the Woodses’ way with women, and that should interest many readers, this being the first major volume to grapple with Tiger’s personality since his endlessly publicized fall from grace in late 2009. (That said, Tiger still comes off here as pretty elusive emotionally.) Callahan infuses his text with many accounts of Tiger’s achievements at major tournaments and also quotes notable golf figures such as Ernie Els, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer on Tiger—the athlete and the man.

ALL ABOUT B-BALL
Two seasons ago, The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac took the sports publishing world by storm with its offbeat collaborative writing and unique graphics approach. The writers identified with FreeDarko.com are at it again, in The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History, which applies the same on-the-edge journalism to analysis of the game’s past, from the development of the early leagues, to the rise of the NBA, to rundowns of the impact on the sport by figures such as Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson, Elgin Baylor, Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain through to the more modern era of Bird, Magic, Jordan, Barkley, Shaq, Kobe, etc. The text, as quirkily readable as ever, further ranges over pop culture, books, movies and on- and off-court events that have become emblazoned in the public mind in the television age.

BONE, JAMES BOND
For the escapist, movie-fan guy, two new entries in the Bond Collection offer fun reading and browsing. With text by Alastair Dougall, Bond Girls and Bond Villains present nostalgic, evocative pictorial coverage of all the evil geniuses, henchmen and seductive and/or poisonous ladies encountered by the seven cinema James Bonds, in films ranging from Dr. No (1962) to Quantum of Solace (2008). These are fabulously entertaining volumes, though curiously, the actors who played the many roles, men and women, are never identified by name in the text, nor are the Bonds (spanning Sean Connery through Daniel Craig). In that case, the book is particularly recommended for those who think of the Bond phenomenon—and its many personalities—as more fact than fiction.

BLOWING SMOKE
“A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke,” wrote Rudyard Kipling. In an age where tobacco is anathema to most—a sneaky killer and a social no-no—there are still folks who treasure the singular culture surrounding the cigar (which still goes nicely with brandy, by the way). Churchill, for example, supposedly smoked 8 to 10 of them a day (and Sir Winston lived to be 90). Don’t forget George Burns, Bill Cosby, Groucho Marx, Mark Twain and Fidel Castro, to name but a few on the long and worthy list of tokers. For those who embrace the occasional habit, Lawrence Dorfman’s The Cigar Lover’s Compendium: Everything You Need to Light Up and Leave Me Alone is pretty much a must-have volume. Like cigars themselves, Dorfman’s guidebook is, uh, thoroughly satisfying—from the history of cigar-making to connoisseur considerations to anecdotes and aphorisms. Plus, there’s a useful list of cigar bars and shops in the U.S. and Canada; also a glossary of terms. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.

THE BEST OF THE BEST
Finally, in praise of good writing—and an interesting gift for the guy who appreciates it—is The Silent Season of a Hero: The Sports Writing of Gay Talese. Talese is internationally known as a purveyor of the so-called New Journalism and author of literary nonfiction classics like The Kingdom and the Power and Thy Neighbor’s Wife. Yet Talese was also a sportswriter, first plying that trade as a teenager for the Ocean City (N.J.) Sentinel-Ledger. Later, he wrote for the University of Alabama’s Crimson-White and eventually the New York Times, Esquire and other major publications. This anthology gathers his pieces from every era—the earliest dating from 1948­—and displays his interest in more than merely the final score, with notably atypical, sometimes surprising reportage on basketball, football, baseball, golf, horse racing and even speed-skating, with a 1980 profile of Olympians Eric and Beth Heiden. He weaves discussion of race, media and society into these stories, and, apropos to his age group (Talese is now 78), there’s a good deal of coverage on boxing, as befits its former standing as a major, print-ready sport. Though Talese famously sympathized with underdogs, the book’s title derives from his famous 1966 Esquire article on Joe DiMaggio—still, decades later, a sports icon.

For the men on your list, this year’s selection has a sporty bent, with side trips into macho movies, manly pursuits and muscular journalism.

EYE OF THE TIGER
Leading off the pack—and combining good reporting with a story ripped from the…

MusicMemoir

Tuneful bios strike the right note

Feature by W.S. Lyon

This year brings thoughtful looks back at the careers of legendary musicians, whose public lives and stirring songs have moved listeners from the 1940s to the instantaneous now.

ALTERNATIVE VIEW
Pearl Jam Twenty is a book to get lost in, the kind to open slowly, a book that draws you in by its feel, its heft, its outward austerity. Like liner notes, it at once celebrates the band’s cool and invites you to find in them some piece of yourself—the conversations scrawled on concert tickets, the set lists smoothed out after having been balled up and cast aside, the image of 50,000 arms raised in the air. The message is clear: We can’t believe we created all this, and we couldn’t have done it without you.

Twenty is a fan book, both a companion piece for and a thing apart from the Cameron Crowe documentary of the same name. Crowe sets the tone with an adoring and personal introduction to the book: Defying the stereotypes of self-destructive American rock bands, Pearl Jam has managed to stay true to their own creative process with a “clear-eyed spirit that comes from believing in people and music and its power to change.” Through snippets of interviews and conversations that span more than two decades, Twenty is a nearly week-by-week account of the band’s triumphs, failures and history-making success.

STILL MY GUITAR
As a boy, George Harrison was bad in school and curious about guitars. In Hamburg, Harrison transformed from a boy into a man and, with his mates, into the most beloved musical act of all time. As a Beatle, he marveled at the mania circling his life, often turning a skilled and curious lens back at those swirling hordes. Eventually, his curiosity would again transform him, this time sending him Eastward and inward toward the mysticism of LSD and Hindu spirituality. Later, out of pure interest, he would go on to bankroll Monty Python’s Life of Brian and sponsor a young Formula One champion.

An ode to “the quiet Beatle,” George Harrison: Living in the Material World is linear and chronological. Its author, Harrison’s widow Olivia Harrison, shies away from direct personal commentary. Despite the near lack of point of view, the images themselves tell a story of two Georges: the public and the spiritual, the wry and the despondent. It’s a striking companion piece to the recent Martin Scorsese documentary of the same name that aired on HBO.

The two most powerful images in the book were taken by Harrison himself. One is of a cadre of faceless photographers shooting away at him from beneath the giant, menacing blade of an airplane propeller, an unbroken ring of onlookers gawking from the sidelines of the landing strip. The other is a self-portrait in the mirror, years later, of a hollow, bearded face holding a ball of pure light and ringed, Christ-like, by the reflected aura of the flash.

With 260 images and hundreds more diary clippings, quotes and reminiscences from his famous friends, Living in the Material World exposes Harrison in a manner true to his legacy: richly, with quiet steps, into an open-ended finish.

DAYLIGHT COME
Harry Belafonte’s My Song: A Memoir is a surprising, captivating portrait of the plucky singer and actor. From an impoverished boyhood with his stern Jamaican mother, to the showbiz break given him by jazz legends Charlie Parker and Max Roach, to his integral role in the nonviolent civil rights movement, and on to his continued passions as an entertainer and activist in Africa and around the world, this is an American life sustained by humanity and well worth its weight in words.

Co-author Michael Shnayerson writes deftly and with great power in a highly readable style. The story never flies too high, grounding itself in the humble past each time it nears soaring. This plays well for Belafonte, who comes across as entirely genuine. He’s equally frank when sharing the stories of his counsel with civil rights leaders, his friendship with Sidney Poitier and his mischievous pursuits of the women in his life. But the book focuses on Belafonte’s lifelong fight against injustice, a fight he continues today. After all, “Banana Boat Song” might sound like a romp, but day-o! is the cry of an abused working class.

BIRD ON THE WIRE
Part memoir of a lifelong struggle with alcohol, part litany of names, places and events associated with the folk movement of the 1960s, Judy Collins’ Sweet Judy Blue Eyes is on all counts a ballad in a familiar key. Collins is famous for her crystal-clear voice and weepy eyes, and for transfiguring the songs of others. Here, she sings in her own words, telling her own tale. But her deep connection to her father, who passed on to her the gift of music and the curse of booze, is sweetly recounted, and the struggles behind the music are told with a light touch. Collins has a remarkable set of memories to share, a view from the inside of America’s most legendary musical moment—Baez, Dylan, Stills, Cohen—and she paints it vividly with a sharp if occasionally odd sense of detail.

This year brings thoughtful looks back at the careers of legendary musicians, whose public lives and stirring songs have moved listeners from the 1940s to the instantaneous now.

ALTERNATIVE VIEW
Pearl Jam Twenty is a book to get lost in, the kind to open slowly, a…

NonfictionMusicMemoirBiography

Their stars still shine

Feature by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

As Pete Seeger reminds us in his now-iconic ballad, “Turn, Turn, Turn,” there’s a season for everything. This fall is the season for a cavalcade of music memoirs and biographies, books that will make music lovers weep, laugh and sing.

IT'S ONLY ROCK AND ROLL
This year the Rolling Stones will gather no moss but rake in the coin, as no fewer than four new books celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary. In music critic Philip Norman’s admiring and adoring biography of rock’s legendary bad boy, Mick Jagger, we meet the entire cast of characters who’ve feasted at the Stones’ banquet over the years—from Marianne Faithfull and Brian Jones to Jagger’s first girlfriend, Chrissie Shrimpton, Ronnie Wood and many others. At the center of it all is the canny middle-class Jagger, who carefully controlled and orchestrated his rebellious image to distinguish himself and the band from the well-scrubbed lads from Liverpool. Gathering interviews from everyone in Jagger’s life except Jagger himself, Norman takes us for a revealing walk down the moonlight mile of Jagger’s life, from his youthful embrace of the blues through the controversies surrounding the Altamont Music Festival, the arguments with band mate Keith Richards, and Jagger’s own constant need to reinvent himself as performer. Wild horses can’t drag Stones fans away from this riveting tale of a rock legend who’s still trying to find satisfaction.

MY MAN'S GOT IT MADE
In the early 1970s, one of the frequent guests at the Stones’ banquet was a star-crossed lad from Waycross, Georgia. Gram Parsons’ story is well known to many: Charming, handsome and talented young man with a trust fund grows up in a dysfunctional family, leaves home to carry his crystal voice and brilliant songwriting to music circles, rises quickly to radiant stardom, dies young in 1973 and is immortalized as the founder of cosmic American music and country rock. Journalist Bob Kealing rehearses this familiar story in his mesmerizing Calling Me Home: Gram Parsons and the Roots of Country Rock, but he also draws upon dozens of new interviews with Parsons’ family, friends and fellow musicians. Kealing offers a compulsively readable and intimate portrait of a young man who introduced the pure strains of country stars such as the Louvin Brothers and Merle Haggard to rock.

LIKE A BIRD ON A WIRE
When Leonard Cohen returned to the stage to much acclaim in 2007 after an extended absence, his fans embraced him as a long-lost pilgrim, and indeed he had been holed up in a Buddhist retreat center, looking for tranquility and order in his life. In I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen, music critic Sylvie Simmons vividly chronicles the life of a musician whose song “Hallelujah,” affirming his faith in life and love, has become one of the most-recorded songs in pop history. Simmons draws extensively on Cohen’s private archives, unpublished writings and his vast store of published writings, as well as interviews with close friends, rabbis and Buddhist monks as she traces Cohen’s path from his early life in Montreal through his rise to fame as a raspy-voiced singer-songwriter in the 1960s and ’70s, his retreat from the public eye and his return. In this elegantly crafted biography, Simmons captures the artist who, in spite of all his highs and lows, is still sharp at the edges, a wise old monk, a trouper offering up himself and his songs.

AIN'T I A WOMAN
While Cohen has recently returned to the music scene, soul singer Bettye LaVette never left it, and she’s finally getting some long-overdue recognition for her powerful, heart-wrenching singing. Unflinchingly honest, LaVette, with writer David Ritz, shares the searing story of her struggle to gain recognition for her tremendous talent—praised by her friends Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and others—and the many obstacles along the way that kept her from stardom in A Woman Like Me. As a teenager, she hit the charts with “My Man—He’s a Lovin’ Man,” and though life continued to push her down, LaVette never lost hope. Her stunning rendition of the Who’s “Love Reign o’er Me” at the Kennedy Center Honors catapulted her back into the spotlight in 2008. Energetic and frank, LaVette’s unforgettable memoir spotlights a star that still shines.

THE GAMBLER
On a train bound for nowhere, country legend Kenny Rogers met up with success. In his aw-shucks, sit-down-and-listen-for-a-spell memoir, Luck or Something Like It, the singer-songwriter who has sold tens of millions of records asks us onto his front porch as he reminisces in never-before-told stories about his upbringing in a poor part of Houston, his love for his parents and family, his love of music at an early age, his five marriages and his artistic partnerships with Dolly Parton and Barry Gibb, among others. With a twinkle in his eye and a song in his heart, Rogers gracefully recalls the ups and downs on his wild ride to fame, grateful to have had the good fortune to remain in the spotlight as an entertainer for more than 50 years.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE
Read a review of Neil Young’s Waging Heavy Peace.

As Pete Seeger reminds us in his now-iconic ballad, “Turn, Turn, Turn,” there’s a season for everything. This fall is the season for a cavalcade of music memoirs and biographies, books that will make music lovers weep, laugh and sing.

IT'S ONLY ROCK AND ROLL
This…

NonfictionPhotographyMusic

Memories of musical greats

Feature by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Whether through letters, lyrics or rare photos, a number of this season’s books capture the magic of the music we love so much.

Acclaimed Beatles biographer Hunter Davies has gathered, for the first time, all of John Lennon’s correspondence in a groundbreaking collection. The John Lennon Letters, published on what would have been Lennon’s 72nd birthday, includes almost 300 letters, notes, doodles, handwritten Beatles set lists, grocery lists and lyrics to never-recorded songs. Ranging from 1951 to Lennon’s reclusive years with Yoko Ono in the late 1970s, this fascinating volume contains thank-you notes to family and friends; love notes to Cynthia, his first wife (including a homemade card that celebrates their first Christmas together); a page from a homemade book, A Treasury of Art and Poetry, that he wrote when he was 11; and letters to record executives and other Beatles. With affection and insight, Davies provides elegant introductions to each of the book’s sections, setting each of the items into the fuller context of Lennon’s life and times.

SHINE A LIGHT

Fifty years after they kicked off their rollicking and raucous career at The Marquee Club in London, the Rolling Stones continue to prance across stages with their hard-driving anthems celebrating sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. The band marks the anniversary with The Rolling Stones 50, by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood. More than 1,000 illustrations from the archives of the Daily Mirror chronicle now-legendary events in the Stones’ career—from the band’s first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show to the 1969 concert at the Altamont Speedway. Captions from band members accompany the photographs; in a concert photo of the Stones in the Brighton Ballroom in 1964, packed with fans screaming, fainting and fist-fighting, Jagger remarks that “it was getting to be the same old thing, night after night. There was every chance that someone would get seriously hurt if this kept up.” Because it contains many rare and never-before-seen photos, this essential collection is a perfect gift from the Stones to their fans.

ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?

An entire generation of guitarists grew up imitating Jimi Hendrix’s blazing guitar solos. Yet, as Hendrix’s sister, Janie, illustrates so forcefully in her lovingly crafted collection, Jimi Hendrix: The Ultimate Lyric Book, Hendrix excelled as much at lyrics as he did at licks. Published in time for what would have been Hendrix’s 70th birthday, this collection of handwritten lyrics, some scribbled on hotel stationery, offers powerful insights into Hendrix’s passionate imagination and lyrical genius. Photos accompany each song, bringing to life Hendrix’s enduring legacy and his ability, in his sister’s words, to build a “bridge from past to present to future.”

Whether through letters, lyrics or rare photos, a number of this season’s books capture the magic of the music we love so much.

Acclaimed Beatles biographer Hunter Davies has gathered, for the first time, all of John Lennon’s correspondence in a groundbreaking collection. The John Lennon…

PhotographyMusicMemoirBiography

The song remains the same

Feature by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Hitting the shelves this fall are several new biographies and autobiographies of rock, country and jazz stars that reveal never-before-heard refrains of personal anguish, as well as triumph.

In 1969, Crosby, Stills & Nash emerged as a supergroup, showcasing sweet harmonies and tight arrangements. One year later, Neil Young joined the band, and the quartet rocketed to superstardom on the strength of Graham Nash’s song “Teach Your Children.” Behind the scenes, though, life wasn’t so harmonious. In his honest and well-crafted memoir, Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life, Nash reveals the fierce struggles between Stills’ and Young’s titanic egos that eventually destroyed the group (although they have never officially broken up). With the lyrical flights of his best songs (“Carrie Anne,” “Our House,” “Chicago”), Nash carries readers on a journey from his often difficult childhood in the industrial north of England and the formation with Allan Clarke of the band that eventually became the Hollies, to his encounters with Mama Cass Elliot (who introduced him to David Crosby), Joni Mitchell, the Everly Brothers and Bob Dylan. While Nash holds back little, unveiling his disappointments with his own work and that of others, his love of songwriting and harmony remains: “I am a complete slave to the muse of music.”

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

While Nash tells his own story in his own words, Led Zeppelin front man Robert Plant told journalist Paul Rees that he had no intention of writing a memoir because it was “too early in his career to do so.” Instead, Plant allowed Rees to have unparalleled access to his closest friends and associates to tell the story in Robert Plant: A Life. Rees chronicles Plant’s childhood as the son of an engineer in England’s industrial Midlands, where he would often hide behind the sofa and pretend to be Elvis. Deeply influenced by the blues (in particular the music of Robert Johnson), Plant began singing with local bands around Birmingham and left home at 17 to pursue a music career. But it was not until he teamed with Yardbirds guitarist Jimmy Page in 1968 that his ascension to rock-god status truly began. A few months later, after the band’s name was changed to Led Zeppelin, their rapid rise to fame exceeded even Plant’s wildest expectations. Rees traces the successes and excesses of Led Zeppelin, from limos, groupies and sudden wealth to plagiarism charges and “poisonous” reviews. He also explores Plant’s recent work, including his acclaimed collaboration with bluegrass fiddler Alison Krauss. Plant comes across as a confident but agreeable superstar, a “preening peacock” whose long locks and powerful voice secured his place in the rock pantheon.

HELLO, I’M JOHNNY CASH

Although Johnny Cash told his own story on at least two occasions—in Man in Black (1975) and, with Patrick Carr, Cash: The Autobiography (1997)—he nevertheless remains an enigmatic figure whose life story is surrounded by as much legend as truth. Until now. Drawing on previously unpublished interviews with Cash as well as previously unseen materials from the singer’s inner circle, former L.A. Times music critic Robert Hilburn gives us the definitive biography of the Man in Black in Johnny Cash: The Life. In intimate detail, Hilburn—the only music journalist at Cash’s legendary Folsom Prison concert in 1968—elegantly traces the contours of Cash’s life and career. After a hardscrabble childhood in Dyess, Arkansas, Cash built on his early love of music and made insistent attempts to get Sam Phillips’ attention at Sun Records. Hilburn chronicles Cash’s early hits such as “Folsom Prison Blues,” his foray into television in the late 1960s with “The Johnny Cash Show,” his failed first marriage and his deep love for June Carter, as well as his drug addictions. Most importantly, Hilburn compiles an exhaustive record of Cash’s enduring contributions as a songwriter and singer to both rock and country music.

TAKE THE “A” TRAIN

In the almost 40 years since his death, Duke Ellington has remained an enigmatic figure, even as his reputation as one our greatest and most culturally prominent orchestra leaders and jazz composers continues to grow. Following his acclaimed biography of Louis Armstrong, Pops, culture critic Terry Teachout draws on candid unpublished interviews with Ellington, oral histories of the orchestra leader and his times, and other little-known primary sources to tell a mesmerizing story in Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington. Teachout follows Ellington from his childhood in Washington—where he gained his name “Duke” because of his stylish dress—and the first band he formed at 20, to his move to Harlem at the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance and his emotional distance from family and friends for the sake of composing his music. Teachout traces Ellington’s deep influence on various cultural movements, from the Harlem Renaissance to the Duke’s own renaissance at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival. Teachout brings Ellington to life in this richly detailed and engrossing biography.

OLD FRIENDS

We often remember our favorite album covers and photos of our favorite musicians as much as their music. For more than four decades, Columbia Records staff photographer Don Hunstein snapped memorable shots of figures as diverse as Aretha Franklin, Sly Stone, Miles Davis, Leonard Bernstein, Mitch Miller, Tony Bennett and Bob Dylan, catching rare private moments of public lives. A collection of gorgeous, never-before-seen photos from the Columbia Records archive, Keeping Time: The Photographs of Don Hunstein illustrates Hunstein’s ability to capture artists relaxing and being themselves. Photos of Johnny Cash on his family’s farm in 1959, a weary Duke Ellington talking to Langston Hughes at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, and Cassius Clay and Sam Cooke teaming up in the recording studio in 1964 are just a few of the gems included here. In the words of New York Times music writer Jon Pareles, who contributes the book’s brief text, Keeping Time is “a quietly revealing close-up of artists who graced and transfigured the twentieth century.”

Hitting the shelves this fall are several new biographies and autobiographies of rock, country and jazz stars that reveal never-before-heard refrains of personal anguish, as well as triumph.

In 1969, Crosby, Stills & Nash emerged as a supergroup, showcasing sweet harmonies and tight arrangements. One year…

NonfictionMusicBlack HistoryBiographyAmerican History

Turning points on the road to equality

Feature by John T. Slania

African Americans have been struggling for independence, equality and respect from the moment they were brought to the New World in chains. As that struggle continues today, it’s instructive to look back on our turbulent history to learn from the past and hopefully improve on the future. The five books featured here can help us to do just that, examining historical themes that serve as milestones on the journey of progress.

DESPERATION & DECEPTION

It’s ironic that Captain Amasa Delano was on the high seas in pursuit of seals when he came upon what appeared to be a slave ship. Hunting for seals and slaves were equally predatory professions. And while seal hunting was a lucrative industry, the slave trade would prove to be even more profitable. Not that Delano would grasp the irony; he was an idealistic, anti-slavery New Englander. And when he boarded the battered vessel, his idealism would leave him vulnerable to a deception that had deadly consequences.

This page-turning history lesson is found in The Empire of Necessity by Greg Grandin, author of the acclaimed Fordlandia. Delano’s ship happened upon a distressed Spanish vessel one day in 1805. It appeared to be merely a lost slave ship. In reality, the 70 West Africans on board, seeking their freedom from slavery, had commandeered the ship. The clever slaves forced the Spanish captain to go along with the ruse. Delano believed the charade for nine hours, but when he discovered he’d been tricked, he ordered his men to attack the West Africans.

While Grandin’s narrative is a gripping read on its own, the underlying theme is profound: The deception in this incident is symbolic of America’s willingness to ignore the hypocisy of slavery in a supposedly free society. Unfortunately, it would take the United States another 60 years before it would acknowledge the falsehood.

FAILED EXPERIMENT

When the Civil War ended slavery in 1865, the U.S. embarked on an effort to provide reparations to Southern landowners and expanded rights to newly freed slaves, including suffrage and education. That policy, called Reconstruction, was a noble idea that failed.

In The Wars of Reconstruction, Le Moyne College history professor Douglas R. Egerton details the myriad factors that led to the collapse of Reconstruction: the replacement of Abraham Lincoln with an inept Andrew Johnson; Southern resistance to the granting of equal rights to blacks; and the premature withdrawal of federal troops. But Egerton contends that an ongoing pattern of violence in the South doomed Reconstruction from the beginning. “Reconstruction . . . was violently overthrown by men who had fought slavery during the Civil War and continued that battle as guerrilla partisans,” Egerton writes.

The Wars of Reconstruction offers a fresh perspective on why the grand experiment of Reconstruction failed and how it took nearly a century afterward for African Americans to gain any semblance of equal rights in the South.

SIREN SONG

In the early 1900s, many African Americans—shackled by an inability to earn a living or cast a vote—began a Great Migration from the rural South to the industrialized cities of the North. Jobs in the car factories of Detroit and steel mills of Chicago beckoned, while also fostering a black middle class. For the first time, African Americans earned enough money to own homes, buy cars and spend money on entertainment. One of the people they went to see was trumpeter Louis Armstrong.

In Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism, Duke University music professor Thomas Brothers chronicles Armstrong’s own Great Migration. After gaining notoriety as a musician in New Orleans, Armstrong heard a siren song in 1922 calling him north to Chicago, where there was a thriving black nightclub scene on the city’s South Side. There, Armstrong honed his crafts playing alongside jazz greats such as King Oliver, Earl “Fatha” Hines and Cab Calloway.

While this biography highlights the maturation of a great entertainer during the Jazz Age, it parallels the evolution of many African Americans in the early 20th century as they earned respectable livelihoods and carved out their own cultural enclaves in the North.

BARRIER TO PROGRESS

Unfortunately, the prosperity of the Jazz Age gave way to the Great Depression, and over the next several decades, many African Americans suffered from poverty and segregation in Northern cities. Some returned to the South, only to encounter further discrimination. The hatred experienced by a race was crystallized in the life of James Meredith, a trailblazer best known as the first African-American student to attend the University of Mississippi. Meredith is the central figure in Down to the Crossroads, an intriguing new book about the civil rights movement by historian Aram Goudsouzian.

Down to the Crossroads focuses on the so-called Meredith March, which the civil rights leader began on June 5, 1966, to register black voters in Mississippi. He started the march in Memphis with the goal of reaching Jackson, Mississippi, but he was soon wounded by a mysterious gunman. While Meredith recovered from his wounds, other black leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr. and Stokely Carmichael, traveled to Mississippi to continue the Meredith March.

Goudsouzian uses the march to capture the divergent leadership styles of the era’s civil rights leaders. There was the defiant Carmichael, who led marchers in “black power” chants, while King preached nonviolence. This single march, captured in detail in Down to the Crossroads, gives readers a clearer understanding of the tensions that often dominated the civil rights movement. 

CONTINUING THE DREAM

When King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968, some thought it was the end of the dream of equality for African Americans. In his new book, Waking from the Dream, David L. Chappell turns the spotlight onto those who stepped in to continue the cause in King’s wake, albeit in a less unified fashion.

Waking from the Dream describes the attempts by black leaders such as Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson to further the movement, only to see the struggle slowed by politics and in-fighting. Despite the splintered movement, Chappell details how this new generation of leaders helped gain the passage of the Fair Housing Act and launched the presidential campaign of Jackson.

While it would take another 40 years before Americans would vote in their first black president, Waking from the Dream makes a strong case that Barack Obama would never have been elected were it not for the efforts of the leaders who followed in King’s wake.

African Americans have been struggling for independence, equality and respect from the moment they were brought to the New World in chains. As that struggle continues today, it’s instructive to look back on our turbulent history to learn from the past and hopefully improve on the future. The five books featured here can help us to do just that, examining historical themes that serve as milestones on the journey of progress.

NonfictionMusicMemoirBiography

That’s what makes the jukebox spin

Feature by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

This fall, music keeps playing around in our heads thanks to a crop of books by and about some of rock's most elusive artists, as well as its most treasured songs. 

WHOLE LOTTA SHAKIN’
Over a two-year period, maverick Southern author Rick Bragg (All Over but the Shoutin’) sat down with Jerry Lee Lewis and let the Killer walk “day after day through the past and come back, sometimes bloody, with the stories in this book.” Not simply an “as-told-to” memoir, Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story is a harmonious blend, with Lewis providing the details of his life and Bragg weaving a narrative around them to add historical and cultural context. “He did not want to do a first-person book,” Bragg writes, “and I had no interest in trying to pretend to be him. Instead, this is one man talking of a remarkable life and another man writing it down and shaping it into a life story so rich that, if I had not been there, I would have wondered if it was real.”

And Lewis’ story is definitely remarkable: Full of life from birth—“I come out jumpin’, an’ I been jumpin’ ever since”—Lewis discovered his “reason for being born” when he saw a piano in his aunt’s house as a child. He knew he wanted to be a star, so he pursued his dream relentlessly, appearing in clubs when he was 14 and lying about his age. Lewis burned down many roadhouses with his raucous style, rising to fame with songs such as “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Great Balls of Fire,” and leaving in his wake broken marriages and mangled friendships. The book candidly catalogs his problems with drugs, alcohol, taxes and women (his seven marriages included a union with his 13-year-old second cousin that caused an international scandal). Lewis also acknowledges his fear that he may have led people astray with his music, but confesses that music was the purest part of his life. Lewis tells his story here for the first time, and it’s every bit as frantic, ugly, joyful and searing as you’d expect from the Killer.

A NATURAL WOMAN
While Lewis hypnotized audiences with manic energy, Aretha Franklin grew up in the Detroit church where her father preached, playing soulful gospel piano and developing her unmistakable voice. Franklin collaborated with music writer David Ritz in 1999 on a less-than-revealing memoir, Aretha: From These Roots. As Ritz explains in his new book, Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin, Franklin asked him to work with her on a second volume, but he declined, citing her insistence on steering clear of certain topics. Instead, Ritz chose to write an independent biography, drawing on his earlier conversations with the singer, her friends and family to provide a full and frank account of the Queen of Soul’s career. Moving album by album, the book recounts her rise to the top of the soul charts in the late 1960s and her fall from the throne in the early 1970s. She struggled to find her style in the disco era, and reinvented herself in 1985 with the hit “Freeway of Love.” Franklin isolated herself for almost 20 years after the deaths of her father, sisters and brother, only to come out of the shadows once again in 2008 to sing at President Obama’s first inauguration. Franklin’s life is rarely pretty, however, and Respect is ultimately a poignant and disappointing tale of a singer who never reached the pinnacle for which she aimed.

SOUL SACRIFICE
In 1966, a young guitar player named Carlos Santana filled in one night at Bill Graham’s famous Fillmore West with an impromptu group of musicians; the rest, as they say, is history. Three years later, Santana and his band mesmerized the crowd at Woodstock, and soon after, the band’s first album climbed to #4 on the Billboard charts. Reaching this level of success wasn’t easy, as Santana reveals in his new memoir, The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light, which he co-wrote with Ashley Kahn and Hal Miller. Although the book’s prose is sometimes flat and repetitive, the details of Santana’s story are nevertheless compelling. He traces his path from his childhood in the Mexican town of Autlán to his earliest gigs at El Convoy in Tijuana. Santana recounts his sometimes ragged family life and reveals for the first time the sexual abuse he suffered at age 11 at the hands of a man who took him to San Diego and molested him, leaving the boy with “an intense feeling of pleasure mixed with confusion, shame, and guilt for letting it happen.” Above all, however, Santana’s memoir recounts his spiritual quest to find the “story behind the stories, the music behind the music. . . . I call it the Universal Tone, and with it you realize you are not alone; you are connected to everyone.”

 

Paul McCartney added psychedelic illustrations to his handwritten lyrics for “The Word,” a song on 1965’s Rubber Soul album. 
From The Beatles Lyrics, reprinted with permission. Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing.

 

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE
Although the life stories of musicians continue to fascinate us, we’re just as intrigued and perplexed by the lyrics of popular songs. Few songs have been as scrutinized as those by the Beatles, and in his new book, The Beatles Lyrics, Beatles biographer Hunter Davies not only probes the meanings of the Fab Four’s songs but also gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at their writing process. For John Lennon and Paul McCartney, songwriting could happen anywhere—songs might begin as a scribble on the back of an envelope or on hotel stationery. “Strawberry Fields,” for example, was written by Lennon when he was in Spain, far from home and thinking back on his childhood in Liverpool. This stunning collection explores the stories behind all the Beatles’ classics and includes more than 100 original handwritten manuscripts.

CRYING, WAITING, HOPING
The hallways of rock ’n’ roll history are littered with volumes that move mechanically through a year-by-year chronicle of important events. Noted cultural critic Greil Marcus wasn’t interested in writing a typical history of the genre, however. His provocative The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs chronicles the music through an exploration of 10 songs recorded between 1956 and 2008. In his typical gnostic style, Marcus examines the ways in which each song transcends its era, gathering meaning as it is recorded by artists in completely new times and places. For example, he observes that the Teddy Bears’ 1958 hit, “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” took 48 years to find its voice. “When Amy Winehouse sang it in 2006, her music curled around Phil Spector’s [who wrote the song], his curled around her, until she found her way back to the beginning of his career, and redeemed it.”

Marcus’ unconventional history captures the unruly, unpredictable nature of rock ’n’ roll.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

This fall, music keeps playing around in our heads thanks to a crop of books by and about some of rock's most elusive artists, as well as its most treasured songs.
NonfictionMusicMemoirBiography

Following the beat of their own drummers

Feature by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

The lives of musical greats continue to fascinate us, and this fall once again features biographies and memoirs of key players, from the producer credited with inventing rock ’n’ roll to a woman at the forefront of feminist rock.

On December 4, 1956, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash got together in Memphis’ Sun Studio for an impromptu jam session. Behind the console was Sam Phillips, the man who not only discovered Presley, Cash and Lewis, but who also dreamed of bringing together black and white voices in the studio in a deeply divided South. Peter Guralnick, the dean of rock historians, draws on extensive interviews from his 25-year friendship with Phillips in the epic, elegant and crisply told Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ’n’ Roll. Guralnick charts Phillips’ path from his birth near Florence, Alabama, to the founding of Sun Records—and chronicles his enduring contributions to rock ’n’ roll. When he produced Rufus Thomas’ version of “Hound Dog,” for example, Phillips thought it didn’t live up to Big Mama Thornton’s original, but “Rufus carried off his performance with genuine conviction—the one unwavering test Sam applied to any material he let out of the studio.” In the end, as Guralnick points out, what drove Phillips was his dream of allowing the voices he had heard singing chants in the cotton fields to express themselves in their own way. “[M]usic was not confined to the drawing room . . . there was great art to be discovered in the experience of those who had been marginalized and written off because of their race, their class, or their lack of formal education.” 

LONG AS I CAN SEE THE LIGHT
John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival serves as a cracking good storyteller in Fortunate Son: My Life, My Music. Born in El Cerrito, California, in 1945, Fogerty sought music as both escape and solace after his parents’ divorce. He traces the early incarnations of Creedence and the band’s rise to the top of the charts in 1969 with “Proud Mary” and “Born on the Bayou.” He also offers backstory on his lyrics: “Bad Moon Rising,” for instance, grew out of hearing people talk in astrological lingo such as “I’m a Virgo with Libra rising.” Although Creedence was flying high in the late 1960s and early ’70s, the group soon descended into an inferno of contentious legal battles. Fogerty expresses his anger and disappointment with bandmates Stu Cook and Doug Clifford, and for the first time shares what he believes were the outlandish courtroom tactics of lawyers who knew nothing about music. After a period away from the public eye, he has immersed himself in songwriting once again—“all good songs engage you because they get you to feel something”—and emerged thankful for the journey, even the hard parts.

THE LOVE YOU SAVE
Rolling Stone writer Steve Knopper chronicles the King of Pop’s rise to fame in the compulsively readable MJ: The Genius of Michael Jackson. Drawing on 400 interviews with friends, family and others, Knopper traces Jackson’s musical genius from his early days with the Jackson 5 through his out-of-this-world solo success with “Beat It” and “Thriller.” When Jackson met Quincy Jones in the mid-1970s, he saw Jones as a father figure who could take the place of the abusive Joe Jackson, and by the end of the ’70s, Jackson was working with Jones, moving toward a solo career and developing his signature dance moves. With the release of videos for “Billie Jean” and “Thriller,” he successfully “integrated radio and MTV,” Knopper writes. Through much of the 1990s and early 2000s, Jackson lived under the shadow of child sexual abuse charges, and he sank into oblivion from prescription drug use before his death in 2009. Still, for nearly three decades, he was “supernaturally graceful, the rare show-business Renaissance man who could sing, dance, and write songs.” 

PAINTED FROM MEMORY
Unlike most traditional memoirs, Elvis Costello’s Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink eschews any narrative structure, moving freely out from his childhood in Liverpool and London, where he accompanied his father to dance halls, soaking up the chords and vibes. In school, he managed to talk a couple of friends out of an “unhealthy fascination with the music of Emerson, Lake & Palmer” and turn them on to the acoustic music then flowing out of Laurel Canyon. Costello mulls over his associations with musicians from Emmylou Harris to Kris Kristofferson, discussing the influence each has had on him. A prolific songwriter, he also shares insights into the composition of his songs. For “Allison,” which is based on the imagined life of a grocery checkout cashier, he writes, “I have no explanation for why I was able to stand outside reality and imagine such a scene as described in the song and to look so far into the future.” Costello’s aim is true in these peripatetic musings about his life and music.

MODERN GIRL
Guitarist Carrie Brownstein co-founded the group Sleater-Kinney, pushing the boundaries of punk and indie rock and emerging as a central figure of the riot grrrl movement. In Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, she probes her life with an honesty that is at once painful and spirited. Growing up in a suburb of Seattle, Brownstein attended her first concert—Madonna—in fifth grade, a “moment I’ll never forget, a total elation that momentarily erased any outline of darkness.” By the time she was in high school, she was alienated from her parents and immersed in Bikini Kill, whose music provided a haven from the turmoil of her teenage life. She and Corin Tucker eventually formed Sleater-Kinney and made a name for themselves in the Seattle scene and around the world. Brownstein bubbles over with fiercely blunt insights about the male-dominated music business: “[P]ersona for a man is equated with power; persona for a woman makes her less of a woman.” When Sleater-Kinney broke up in 2006, Brownstein went on to co-write, produce and star in the television show “Portlandia.” She declares that, for her, performing and playing and living the life of a working artist constitutes her search for a home: “the unlit firecracker I carried around inside me in my youth . . . found a home in music.”

 

This article was originally published in the November 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The lives of musical greats continue to fascinate us, and this fall once again features biographies and memoirs of key players, from the producer credited with inventing rock ’n’ roll to a woman at the forefront of feminist rock.
NonfictionMusicMemoir

The defining sounds of a generation

Feature by Hilli Levin

The nostalgia wave rippling through today’s culture may seem troublesome to some, but music has always been an art form that builds upon and pays homage to what has come before. Five new books chronicle some of the most earth-shaking, history-making artists who changed our cultural landscape. From the story behind the sweet and soulful sounds of Motown to Bruce Springsteen’s long-awaited memoir, each is worthy of a spot alongside any record collection.

THE LEGEND OF MOTOWN
On my first trip to Detroit this year, the only site on my list was the original Motown headquarters. There are many remarkable things to see in that venerable building, but for me, the most astonishing was the size of the garage recording studio where some of the biggest songs in the American musical canon were put to tape: It’s tiny! But that studio is a powerful testament to the magic of Berry Gordy’s larger-than-life empire, and Adam White’s Motown does an incredible job of examining just what happened in the building that housed America’s most influential record label. This beautifully packaged book holds a staggering amount of interviews with the label’s influencers and recording artists along with absolutely stunning photographs from all of the eras and iterations of Motown, from Tamla in 1959 to the opening of Motown: The Musical in 2013. Go behind the scenes with Motown artists like Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder and The Jackson 5, starting with their discoveries, first records and those early days on tour. While this is an all-out celebration of African-American music, glitz, glamour and Motown’s cultural impact, White also highlights the abysmal state of the political landscape during the label’s rise in chapters like “We Don’t Serve Coloured People,” which makes the incredible success, resilience and power of the Motown sound shine that much brighter. 


The Temptations perform their signature hit, "My Girl," in 1965. From L to R: Melvin Franklin, Eddie Kendricks, Otis Williams, Paul Williams and David Ruffin. Motown Records Archives. Courtesy of the EMI Archive Trust and Universal Music Group.

SATISFACTION SONG BY SONG
Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon sum up the reason why the Rolling Stones are still one of the biggest bands in the world in their introduction to The Rolling Stones All the Songs: “The music of the Stones comes across as authentic because it is the music of a never-ending party, of a categorical refusal to grow old.” Their ambitious tome delivers on the title’s claim, opening with a brief history of the band’s formation in London in 1962 and wading through their entire catalog in a whopping 704 pages. Of course, there’s no pressure to read from cover to cover—fans are sure to go straight for their favorite songs and hop around from there. With fun facts “For Stones Addicts,” standalone “Portraits” of important Stones collaborators like Ian Stewart (the oft-forgotten “Sixth Stone”), along with full details on the writing and recording process as well as the reception of each track, Margotin and Guesdon make what could be a bit of a slog into a rip-roaring journey through the discography of the kings of cool. 

THE FREEWHEELIN' BARD
Is there any songwriter worthier of a sumptuous lyrics collection than the inimitable Bob Dylan? The Lyrics: 1961-2012 is an updated edition of the stunning 2014 volume with new edits supplied by Dylan himself on dozens of his classic songs. Running chronologically from his early Greenwich Village days to 2012’s “Tempest,” this collection is comprised of the lyrics from 31 Dylan albums. Full-page photos and a few facsimiles of his handwritten drafts—there were quite a few interesting changes to “Blowin’ in the Wind”—put his poetic mastery on full display. 

With more than 100 million records sold, Dylan is not only one of our most artful songwriters, but one of the bestselling of all time. A great coffee-table book, this could easily provide hours of study, or you could just grab your favorite Dylan record, put the needle down and read along.

YOU WANT A REVOLUTION?
There have likely been more books written about the Beatles than any other figures in music history, and when the field is this crowded, it’s hard to find a read that stands out. But Steve Turner’s Beatles ’66: The Revolutionary Year is a wonderfully compelling look into the year that changed everything for the band. By 1966, the hysteria of Beatlemania and the strain of public life had taken quite a toll. After their joyless show at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, George suggested, and the rest of the band readily agreed, that it was time to quit the touring life for good. From there, John, Paul, George and Ringo took control—pushing boundaries in the studio and grappling with more adult issues in their lyrics in order to “stretch the limits of pop.” Turner immerses readers in their lives: the art and media they were consuming, the drugs they were taking, the creative breakthrough they were seeking—all of which resulted in “Revolver,” which Turner argues is the most innovative and compelling album the Beatles ever recorded. A chronology of the year’s historical events and a selection of each member’s favorite songs from the period round out this entertaining study.

A TRAMP LIKE US
Readers, I’ll admit: I am late to the Bruce Springsteen fandom. Maybe it was the macho stage histrionics or his cheesy nickname (“The Boss”) that kept me away. But after my first three-hour Springsteen show, it made sense. His anticipated memoir, Born to Run, is similar to his live shows, inviting you along on an emotional marathon. Herein lies the Springsteen I’ve been hoping to find: raw and poignant with plenty of punk attitude. Some will undoubtedly be surprised by the amount of casually crass and sexed-up passages, but the cheeky Springsteen makes no apologies. Superfans will love the details of his musical beginnings, the fledgling days of the E Street Band and his recording process for each of his records, but he doesn’t leave out the less glamorous details of sleeping rough and scraping by for decades. In passages like his account of seeing Elvis for the first time—“THE BARRICADES HAVE BEEN STORMED!! A HERO HAS COME.”—hearing the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and the life-altering birth of his first child, his writing mirrors his rock ’n’ roll preacher stage-speak. But his true gifts as a writer come through in the quieter passages that lay bare his struggles with deep depression, the scars of his Catholic upbringing and his tumultuous relationship with his mentally ill father.

With high praise for each movement and artist chronicled in the other four books featured here, it’s clear that The Boss may be one of biggest music geeks of us all. Born to Run may not be as lyrical as his friend Patti Smith’s Just Kids, but it’s a haunting and hopeful triumph.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The nostalgia wave rippling through today’s culture may seem troublesome to some, but music has always been an art form that builds upon and pays homage to what has come before. Five new books chronicle some of the most earth-shaking, history-making artists who changed our cultural landscape. From the story behind the sweet and soulful sounds of Motown to Bruce Springsteen’s long-awaited memoir, each is worthy of a spot alongside any record collection.

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