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.

A salty little music sampler, Squeeze My Lemon: A Collection of Classic Blues Lyrics is a compilation of choice outtakes from some of the most soulful songs ever captured on wax. These sound bites, culled from tunes by the likes of Willie Dixon, Robert Johnson and Sonny Boy Williamson, have all the spirit and sass of the South. Full of lively metaphors, they’re brief and simple yet surprisingly profound, tackling timeless topics like death, religion, and love gone wrong. Squeeze My Lemon was edited by Randy Poe, a former executive director of the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame. He’s grouped the lyrics into revealing categories (“Women-The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” “Blues and Booze”) that reflect the tough lives and world-weary attitude behind the music. The rootsy anthology also features a discography of recommended albums and a selection of wonderful black-and-white photographs of major blues figures, including Ma Rainey, Muddy Waters, Big Joe Turner and Howlin’ Wolf. With a foreword by B.B. King, this bouncy book will spice up your holiday season.

<B>It’s only rock ‘n’ roll</B> Revisit the mod, mad days of the British Invasion with <B>According to the Rolling Stones</B>, a comprehensive scrapbook of the band that’s filled with rare images, sensational stories and an invaluable reference section. Narrated by the Stones themselves, the volume represents the collective efforts of Mick, Keith, Charlie and Ron as they pull out all the stops to provide an uncensored history of their 40-year career. Candid and direct, the foursome share a fascinating array of personal and artistic anecdotes, shedding light on the music-making process and the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. Featuring 350 photographs many never seen until now and memorabilia from the band’s own archive, as well as a timeline and discography, the book is a must-have for fans of the brashest band in the music biz. Mixed in with the Stones’ own stories are remembrances contributed by major players in the group’s career, including Ahmet Ertegun, head of Atlantic Records, producer Don Was and photographer David Bailey. A provocative look at a timeless band, <B>According to the Rolling Stones</B> is a dynamic, vital and colorful portrait of a group that’s only improved with age.

In the late 1950s, an ambitious, enterprising young Detroit songwriter named Berry Gordy Jr. got his feet wet in the music business. He went on to start Motown Records, a history-making organization that cranked out hit after hit in the mid-1960s and launched the careers of a who’s who of R&andB, soul and pop vocalists. Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Mary Wells and Jackie Wilson were the label’s earliest big successes, but following rapidly on their heels were Martha and the Vandellas, the Temptations, the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and later the Jackson 5, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and the Commodores. These artists sold millions of catchy, slickly produced records, successfully bridging the gap between black-made music and the massive white record-buying audience. Four decades later, in Motown: Money, Power, Sex, and Music, author Gerald Posner takes on the daunting task of telling the Motown story. Posner admits that many people affiliated with the company would not grant him interviews. Consequently, he relies heavily on biographies, autobiographies (including those of Gordy and singer Diana Ross) and other published accounts to craft a readable if, at times, somewhat overly glib chronicle of events. The Motown story is mostly Gordy’s, and Posner focuses in detail on the head honcho’s predilection for authoritarian and paternalistic control, his many marriages and affairs, his eight children with a variety of partners, his exorbitant lifestyle and his attempts to shepherd Motown’s growth in the ever-changing music market. Despite Posner’s effort to humanize his subject, Gordy comes across as an egomaniac devoid of moral compass or business ethics a black man who exploited black artists. Lawsuits about royalties, rights and ownership remain pending even today. Eventually, after the company moved its headquarters to Los Angeles and sales of new material continued to spiral downward, Motown was sold to outside interests in 1988. With Gordy at the helm, it was said that Motown was like a family, albeit a dysfunctional one, where talent got gypped and bosses scooped up the gravy. Along the way, many individuals connected with the company tanked their careers, fell into a life of drugs, or headed for an early grave. But make no mistake the music was, and remains, great. Posner offers a fascinating look at this slice of pop culture history. Martin Brady is a writer in Nashville.