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.

It’s a long way from Stovall, Mississippi, to the South Side of Chicago. Yet once Muddy Waters had his fill of sharecropping and made the trek north in 1943, he would embark on a legendary career that established him as a pre-eminent American bluesman. Veteran music writer and Memphis resident Robert Gordon has written a well-documented, anecdote-filled biography of Waters (born McKinley Morganfield) in Can’t Be Satisfied, a book that also functions as a mini-history of American blues, focusing on Waters contemporaries such as Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon and Big Bill Broonzy, as well as the important recording work accomplished at Chicago’s Chess Studios. Waters first came to the attention of folklorist Alan Lomax, who made some vital yet primitive recordings of his distinctive slide-guitar stylings in 1941. When Waters finally left his hardscrabble Mississippi Delta roots behind, he became an icon of the blues world, with all the attendant adulation and personal ups and downs that status entails. Gordon’s compellingly written narrative captures Waters’ amazing life on the road, the incredible cast of generally unknown but gifted sidemen who surrounded him, including pianist Otis Spann, harmonica player Little Walter and guitarist Jimmy Rogers, as well as the local color of life in the Windy City, where the blues was revered but remained almost a cultish pursuit until British rockers like The Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton brought international attention to it in the 1960s. In many ways, modern-day gangsta-rappers have nothing on Waters, who often held court over a music culture characterized by cash money, guns, booze, a welter of wives and lovers, and often-illegitimate offspring. Yet while many of his contemporaries were left by the wayside imprisoned, victimized by drugs or just plain tired of the life Waters persevered, continuing to sing and play almost to his death in 1983 at the age of 70. The blues were around way before I was born, Waters once said. They’ll always be around. Long as people hurt, they’ll be around. Gordon’s book captures this truth in riveting fashion, providing a portrait of a man who was certainly no saint but was, without question, an essential and vastly influential artist. The book’s extensive footnotes offer a treasure trove of interesting facts and fascinating stories about the American blues scene. The volume also includes a brief but poignant foreword by Keith Richards and 16 pages of black-and-white photos.

Some of the most prominent figures in early jazz and the glory days of pop music make their bows in Richard M. Sudhalter’s Stardust Melody: The Life and Music of Hoagy Carmichael and James L. Dickerson’s Just for a Thrill: Lil Hardin Armstrong, First Lady of Jazz. Had Hoagy Carmichael (1899-1981) written no other song but Star Dust, his place in music history would be secure. But that tune, which dates back to 1926, was essentially just the beginning of his luminous career. Ahead lay such destined-to-be standards as Georgia on My Mind, Heart and Soul and In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening. Sudhalter, who is a jazz musician himself and a prodigious researcher, presents a sensitive, meticulously documented account of Carmichael’s life as a composer, recording artist, actor and radio and television personality. Central to understanding Carmichael, Sudhalter asserts, is understanding his unwavering affection for his home state of Indiana. To Carmichael, Indiana symbolized the mythic rural home and simple life (both metaphors for youth) that he yearned for. He was born in Bloomington, spent most of his early years there and attended Indiana University. Although he studied law and was finally admitted to practice, it was always jazz that fascinated him. His bands played proms and fraternity parties throughout the region. During this period, he met and began performing with his major musical influence, the brilliant but doomed cornetist Bix Beiderbecke. A procession of gifted lyricists, including Frank Loesser and Johnny Mercer, wrote the words to Carmichael’s melodies. But Sudhalter’s research shows that Carmichael often came up with themes and key phrases and sometimes heavily edited the lyrics provided him. This goes a long way toward explaining why his songs have such a consistent voice and point of view. After Carmichael moved to Hollywood to write songs for the movies, he gradually began to act in them as well. His signature role was Cricket, “the laid-back, laconic, piano-playing sage,” in the 1944 Bogart and Bacall classic To Have and Have Not. Later, he moved into television drama. His big disappointments, Sudhalter says, were that he never wrote a successful Broadway musical nor a long-form “serious” piece, even though he tried both. With the advent of rock n’ roll in the mid-1950s, Carmichael’s run as a popular songwriter came to an end. Just for a Thrill, Jim Dickerson’s biography of Lil Hardin Armstrong, is built more on admiration than information. Except for her songs, documentary remnants of this second wife of Louis Armstrong are scarce. But this doesn’t make Dickerson’s assertion of her musical importance any less valid, and he has performed heroically in tracking down and interpreting the biographical tidbits that do remain.

Lillian Beatrice Hardin was born in Memphis in 1898. She studied piano there and enrolled briefly at Fisk University in Nashville before moving with her mother to Chicago in 1917. After taking a job demonstrating sheet music, she was invited to join a local band. From then on, she worked principally as a performer. Both she and Louis Armstrong were married to other people when they met. But in 1924, they tied the knot, and she became, in fact if not in name, his manager. She also wrote songs for him to record and played on many of his sessions. As Armstrong’s career flowered, however, and his infidelities became more flagrant, the artistic commonality that once held them together slowly vaporized. They divorced in 1938.

Dickerson credits Lil with nagging Armstrong to become a headliner with his own band instead of playing the loyal sideman in someone else’s group. Although he was a supreme trumpet player even as a young man, Dickerson says, Armstrong was too shy and reticent to assert himself. This was where Lil came in. To compensate for a paucity of autobiographical material, Dickerson contextualizes what he has, describing in great detail, for instance, the turn-of-the-century Memphis Lil grew up in. He also chronicles Armstrong’s life. In her later years, Lil Hardin Armstrong saw such stars as Ray Charles, Nancy Wilson and Peggy Lee record her songs. She ran a restaurant, designed clothing (including stage costumes for her ex-husband) and taught music and French. On Aug. 27, 1971, just over a month after Louis Armstrong died, she performed at a concert in his memory. As she finished her opening selection, St. Louis Blues, she collapsed at the piano and died. She was rumored to have been working on her autobiography, but Dickerson says it has never surfaced. Edward Morris reviews from Nashville.

Ain’t got nothin’ but love babe: the Beatles invade America<p> Whether you’re old enough to have lived through Beatlemania or young enough to know only that one of these guys went on to play in Wings, Martin Goldsmith offers new twists on a fascinating subject in <b>The Beatles Come to America</b>. In this reflective account of the Beatles’ explosive arrival on the U.S. music scene in 1964, Goldsmith digs into the tale with such attention to detail that its freshness seems never to have faded. Discovering what went into designing the stage set for the Beatles’ first appearance on <i>The Ed Sullivan Show</i>, for instance, makes clear how portentous that broadcast turned out to be.<br />
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The story is put into a personal context as the author inserts himself into the narrative, both as a teenager bearing witness and an adult now looking back with some perspective. The opening pages, for example, take us along on his pilgrimage to Liverpool on a recent summer day. Where the Britney generation might see an unremarkable urban panorama, Goldsmith finds evidence of miracles a street called Penny Lane, a dank reliquary in the shadows of the Cavern Club and, briefly but gloriously, bonds with a couple of Russians drawn on their own <i>hadj</i> to the center of Strawberry Fields.<br />
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This magic blows through the book, past delightfully obscure anecdotes and insightful reflections that present the Beatles as both a tonic for the malaise that followed the Kennedy assassination and a harbinger of the feminist revolution. When the Fab Four, a little bewildered at what they had just unleashed, wave goodbye to America and fly back home, Ringo wonders, &quot;How in the world are we ever going to top this?&quot; Even the four &quot;mop-topped lads&quot; themselves had no idea how lasting their appeal would be. In the last chapter, Goldsmith takes us back to where it all began, to an epiphany so unexpected and yet so appropriate that we are left wondering how it could have been any other way than it was a world changed, forever and for better, by song. <i>Robert L. Doerschuk of Nashville is the former editor of Musician magazine.</i> </p>
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Blues musician B.B. King turned 80 in September, and The B.B. King Treasures: Photos, Mementos &and Music from B. B. King’s Collection is a warm tribute to this legendary American performer who, with guitar Lucille, has traveled the road entertaining audiences for nearly 60 years. Born Riley B. King to sharecropper parents in Itta Bena, Mississippi, King’s lived a real rags-to-riches story. But the book is also a love song to the blues, and a testament to hard work and respect for others. Says a colleague, “if we had pictures instead of words in the dictionary, under the word Ôgraciousâ’ would have to be B.B. King.” B.

B. King Treasures is a montage scrapbook that traces King’s first Delta days through his musical odyssey to Memphis, Chicago and into mainstream America. It is an intriguing collection of biography, interviews, photography, a CD and memorabilia (reproductions inserted in the book via parchment sleeves), such as concert promotional ephemera, contracts and booking sheets there’s even B.B.’s business card, which proclaims “Blues is King King is Soul.” Though B.

B. King Treasures is mainly King’s biography, the book reveals tangential stories of the cutthroat music business, of struggles for racial equality and of the spread of the blues into the musical mainstream and across the globe. Co-author Dick Waterman, who has known King for nearly 40 years, marvels at his tenacity, about which has been said: “He’s just a tough, tough dude.”

It’s a little bit like religion: country music inspires a fervor in its fans that gives their attachment to it a nearly divine dimension. As music lovers go, a more zealous lot cannot be found. Devotees who believe in a hillbilly heaven know that Hank Williams occupies a special spot in paradise. Authors Kira Florita and Colin Escott pay tribute to the man in the snow white suit with Hank Williams: Snapshots from the Lost Highway, a photo-filled tour of the singer’s brilliant, brief career. From his impoverished Alabama childhood, to his success in the 1940s with hits like "Honky Tonkin’" and "Lovesick Blues," to his tragic death in 1953 at the age of 29, Snapshots offers a compelling portrait of a man who revealed much of himself through song but remained strangely elusive.

Telling the stories behind tunes like "Kaw-Liga" inspired by Alabama’s Kowaliga Bay Snapshots is generously illustrated with never-before-seen pictures, private correspondence and pages of roughly scrawled song drafts. "He spelled things the way they sounded . . . and punctuated them with sorrow, love and regret," Rick Bragg writes in the book’s foreword. Hank’s volatile private life the blondes, the brawls, the alcohol also gets treated here, with commentary by his two wives that is, to put it politely, colorful. A montage of voices that includes Little Jimmy Dickens, George D. Hay and Hank’s daughter Jett, comprises the text of the book, which has an introduction by Marty Stuart. For Williams’ many disciples, Snapshots will read like a revelation. If you require conversion to the country sound, then American Roots Music should sway your spirit. A majestic, memorabilia-filled volume based on the PBS television series that aired in the fall, this wide-ranging book brings history and geography to bear upon the evolution of America’s traditional musical genres. Authoritative chapters on country music’s early years, the history of the blues and the ’60s folk explosion are graced by the faces of greats like banjo maestro Uncle Dave Macon, bedrock bluesman Memphis Slim and America’s premier seer, Bob Dylan. Testifying to the diversity of American musical expression, the book includes sections on the Tex-Mex, Native American and gospel genres. Each chapter opens with a timeline chronicling significant events from the death of Bessie Smith to Dylan’s decision to go electric in the life of a particular musical category. The book’s unforgettable visuals close-ups of cracked 45s and yellowed songbooks, stark shots of chain gangs and cotton fields and unfurling Southern highways hint at the cultural landscape that produced our country’s distinctive sounds. Editors Robert Santelli, Holly George-Warren and Jim Brown, working with the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution, have produced a monumental volume that is the ultimate tribute to our musical heritage.

Blues fans can stop wailin’ and moanin’: Bass great Bill Wyman has written a slick, comprehensive history of the music that’s filled with classic quotes, rare photographs and one-of-a-kind artifacts. From Memphis to Rosedale, Chicago to St. Louis, Bill Wyman’s Blues Odyssey: A Journey to Music’s Heart and Soul logs the miles required to tell the fascinating story of this venerated genre. How did Wyman, a white Brit, get the blues? The answer lies in his working class roots. Like countless other listeners, Wyman says, in the bruised but defiant sound of the blues, in songs about hardship and heartache, he heard his own experience articulated. Otherwise known as a Rolling Stone, he left that band in 1992 and now plays bass in a blues group called The Rhythm Kings. For Odyssey, Wyman dipped into his personal collection of photographs to create a book full of visual treasures, amply illustrated with classic cartoons, old postcards and playbills, and sidebars on musical subgenres and important blues figures. At once intimate and historical, personal and universal, Odyssey traces the music from its African origins to its American flowering, and explores blues hybridizations like Western swing and rock n’ roll. All the blues greats get their due here, from Ma Rainey to Stevie Ray Vaughan. For collectors, the book also lists Wyman’s listening picks, an inventory of great albums that draws on prewar, country and white rock blues categories. As musical journeys go, Odyssey is one hip trip.

It’s a little bit like religion: country music inspires a fervor in its fans that gives their attachment to it a nearly divine dimension. As music lovers go, a more zealous lot cannot be found. Devotees who believe in a hillbilly heaven know that Hank Williams occupies a special spot in paradise. Authors Kira Florita and Colin Escott pay tribute to the man in the snow white suit with Hank Williams: Snapshots from the Lost Highway, a photo-filled tour of the singer’s brilliant, brief career. From his impoverished Alabama childhood, to his success in the 1940s with hits like "Honky Tonkin’" and "Lovesick Blues," to his tragic death in 1953 at the age of 29, Snapshots offers a compelling portrait of a man who revealed much of himself through song but remained strangely elusive.

Telling the stories behind tunes like "Kaw-Liga" inspired by Alabama’s Kowaliga Bay Snapshots is generously illustrated with never-before-seen pictures, private correspondence and pages of roughly scrawled song drafts. "He spelled things the way they sounded . . . and punctuated them with sorrow, love and regret," Rick Bragg writes in the book’s foreword. Hank’s volatile private life the blondes, the brawls, the alcohol also gets treated here, with commentary by his two wives that is, to put it politely, colorful. A montage of voices that includes Little Jimmy Dickens, George D. Hay and Hank’s daughter Jett, comprises the text of the book, which has an introduction by Marty Stuart. For Williams’ many disciples, Snapshots will read like a revelation. If you require conversion to the country sound, then American Roots Music should sway your spirit. A majestic, memorabilia-filled volume based on the PBS television series that aired in the fall, this wide-ranging book brings history and geography to bear upon the evolution of America’s traditional musical genres. Authoritative chapters on country music’s early years, the history of the blues and the ’60s folk explosion are graced by the faces of greats like banjo maestro Uncle Dave Macon, bedrock bluesman Memphis Slim and America’s premier seer, Bob Dylan. Testifying to the diversity of American musical expression, the book includes sections on the Tex-Mex, Native American and gospel genres. Each chapter opens with a timeline chronicling significant events from the death of Bessie Smith to Dylan’s decision to go electric in the life of a particular musical category. The book’s unforgettable visuals close-ups of cracked 45s and yellowed songbooks, stark shots of chain gangs and cotton fields and unfurling Southern highways hint at the cultural landscape that produced our country’s distinctive sounds. Editors Robert Santelli, Holly George-Warren and Jim Brown, working with the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution, have produced a monumental volume that is the ultimate tribute to our musical heritage.

Blues fans can stop wailin’ and moanin’: Bass great Bill Wyman has written a slick, comprehensive history of the music that’s filled with classic quotes, rare photographs and one-of-a-kind artifacts. From Memphis to Rosedale, Chicago to St. Louis, Bill Wyman’s Blues Odyssey: A Journey to Music’s Heart and Soul logs the miles required to tell the fascinating story of this venerated genre. How did Wyman, a white Brit, get the blues? The answer lies in his working class roots. Like countless other listeners, Wyman says, in the bruised but defiant sound of the blues, in songs about hardship and heartache, he heard his own experience articulated. Otherwise known as a Rolling Stone, he left that band in 1992 and now plays bass in a blues group called The Rhythm Kings. For Odyssey, Wyman dipped into his personal collection of photographs to create a book full of visual treasures, amply illustrated with classic cartoons, old postcards and playbills, and sidebars on musical subgenres and important blues figures. At once intimate and historical, personal and universal, Odyssey traces the music from its African origins to its American flowering, and explores blues hybridizations like Western swing and rock n’ roll. All the blues greats get their due here, from Ma Rainey to Stevie Ray Vaughan. For collectors, the book also lists Wyman’s listening picks, an inventory of great albums that draws on prewar, country and white rock blues categories. As musical journeys go, Odyssey is one hip trip.

It’s a little bit like religion: country music inspires a fervor in its fans that gives their attachment to it a nearly divine dimension. As music lovers go, a more zealous lot cannot be found. Devotees who believe in a hillbilly heaven know that Hank Williams occupies a special spot in paradise. Authors Kira Florita and Colin Escott pay tribute to the man in the snow white suit with Hank Williams: Snapshots from the Lost Highway, a photo-filled tour of the singer’s brilliant, brief career. From his impoverished Alabama childhood, to his success in the 1940s with hits like "Honky Tonkin’" and "Lovesick Blues," to his tragic death in 1953 at the age of 29, Snapshots offers a compelling portrait of a man who revealed much of himself through song but remained strangely elusive.

Telling the stories behind tunes like "Kaw-Liga" inspired by Alabama’s Kowaliga Bay Snapshots is generously illustrated with never-before-seen pictures, private correspondence and pages of roughly scrawled song drafts. "He spelled things the way they sounded . . . and punctuated them with sorrow, love and regret," Rick Bragg writes in the book’s foreword. Hank’s volatile private life the blondes, the brawls, the alcohol also gets treated here, with commentary by his two wives that is, to put it politely, colorful. A montage of voices that includes Little Jimmy Dickens, George D. Hay and Hank’s daughter Jett, comprises the text of the book, which has an introduction by Marty Stuart. For Williams’ many disciples, Snapshots will read like a revelation. If you require conversion to the country sound, then American Roots Music should sway your spirit. A majestic, memorabilia-filled volume based on the PBS television series that aired in the fall, this wide-ranging book brings history and geography to bear upon the evolution of America’s traditional musical genres. Authoritative chapters on country music’s early years, the history of the blues and the ’60s folk explosion are graced by the faces of greats like banjo maestro Uncle Dave Macon, bedrock bluesman Memphis Slim and America’s premier seer, Bob Dylan. Testifying to the diversity of American musical expression, the book includes sections on the Tex-Mex, Native American and gospel genres. Each chapter opens with a timeline chronicling significant events from the death of Bessie Smith to Dylan’s decision to go electric in the life of a particular musical category. The book’s unforgettable visuals close-ups of cracked 45s and yellowed songbooks, stark shots of chain gangs and cotton fields and unfurling Southern highways hint at the cultural landscape that produced our country’s distinctive sounds. Editors Robert Santelli, Holly George-Warren and Jim Brown, working with the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution, have produced a monumental volume that is the ultimate tribute to our musical heritage.

Blues fans can stop wailin’ and moanin’: Bass great Bill Wyman has written a slick, comprehensive history of the music that’s filled with classic quotes, rare photographs and one-of-a-kind artifacts. From Memphis to Rosedale, Chicago to St. Louis, Bill Wyman’s Blues Odyssey: A Journey to Music’s Heart and Soul logs the miles required to tell the fascinating story of this venerated genre. How did Wyman, a white Brit, get the blues? The answer lies in his working class roots. Like countless other listeners, Wyman says, in the bruised but defiant sound of the blues, in songs about hardship and heartache, he heard his own experience articulated. Otherwise known as a Rolling Stone, he left that band in 1992 and now plays bass in a blues group called The Rhythm Kings. For Odyssey, Wyman dipped into his personal collection of photographs to create a book full of visual treasures, amply illustrated with classic cartoons, old postcards and playbills, and sidebars on musical subgenres and important blues figures. At once intimate and historical, personal and universal, Odyssey traces the music from its African origins to its American flowering, and explores blues hybridizations like Western swing and rock n’ roll. All the blues greats get their due here, from Ma Rainey to Stevie Ray Vaughan. For collectors, the book also lists Wyman’s listening picks, an inventory of great albums that draws on prewar, country and white rock blues categories. As musical journeys go, Odyssey is one hip trip.