A key figure in the folk music boom of the late 1950s, Canadian-born singer/songwriter Bonnie Dobson composed ‘Morning Dew’ as a solo acoustic performer in 1961. Along the way, her iconic song has been recorded by everyone from Robert Plant to the Grateful Dead, Rod Stewart to Nazareth. But when American singer Tim Rose covered the song in 1967, he boldly added his name to the songwriting credit. For decades, Rose collected royalties and claimed the song as his. Dobson spent decades battli...

Widely hailed as a genius, Arthur Lee was a character every bit as colorful and unique as his music. In 1966, he was Prince of the Sunset Strip, busy with his pioneering racially-mixed band Love, and accelerating the evolution of California folk-rock by infusing it with jazz and orchestral influences, a process that would climax in a timeless masterpiece, the Love album Forever Changes.Shaped by a Memphis childhood and a South Los Angeles youth, Lee always...

In the 1980s, Manitoba country-rock group The C-Weed Band scored a half dozen Top Ten hits on the country music charts beginning with their #1 hit single "Evangeline". As an Indigenous band, they broke ground for other Indigenous artists on the Canadian music mainstream. Starting out in the tough Main Street Winnipeg bars, the band faced daunting odds including poverty, discrimination, and racism throughout their rise to success. The members of The C-Weed Band, whose nucleus was the three ...

Their classic "Four Strong Winds" is widely considered to be one of the greatest songs of all time. Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, and Joni Mitchell count among their admirers. Their music, including hits like "You Were On My Mind" and "Someday Soon," has been recorded by everyone from Dylan and Johnny Cash to Sarah McLachlan and The Tragically Hip. Their influence on music—has endured over generations and surpassed genres. Yet until now, we have known little of th...

Emerging from a period of protest and social unrest, 1968 was the year that ushered in gut-punching sounds that would define classic and hard rock—the formation of bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath rolled away the light sounds of psychedelic music and Flower Power. Celebrated music journalist & author John Einarson provides the first detailed account of this crucial period.Einarson begins by examining the birth of psychedelic music and experimentation beginning in 1965 and ...

As told by the musicians who made it happen, Desperados: The Roots of Country Rock revisits country rock's rise to the top of the charts. Music scholar John Einarson delves into the years from 1963, when Buck Owens and his Buckaroos brought an electric edge to their Texas honky-tonk tunes, to 1973, when The Eagles released their album "Desperado" on David Geffen's label. Einarson examines how folk, rockabilly, blues, Nashville country, Tejano, bluegrass, and other musical idioms i...

A Canadian icon on his longstanding love of the West and his life in "one of the last true cowboy countries on either side of the border.""I live on a ranch about six miles east of the town of Longview and the old Cowboy Trail in the foothills of the Rockies. On a perfect day, like today, I can't imagine being anywhere else in the world. Of course, I'm not going to say there aren't those other days when you think, 'What am I doing here?' It's beautiful country and it can be brutall...

Whispering Pines is the first comprehensive history of Canada’s immense songwriting legacy from Gordon Lightfoot to Joni Mitchell. Canadian songwriters have always struggled to create work that reflects the environment in which they were raised while simultaneously connecting with a mass audience. For most of the 20th century that audience lay outside Canada making the challenge that much greater. While nearly every songwriter who successfully crossed this divide did so by immersing themse...

The #1 National BestsellerShortlisted for the 2019 Speaker’s Book AwardNominated for the 2019 Heritage Toronto Book Award“Barclay combines his admiration of the band with his knowledge of the music industry to make a clever, touching, and very informative book that may well be the definitive work on an important piece of Canadian pop culture.” — Publishersweekly.com, starred reviewTh...

Acclaimed music writer Robert Hilburn’s “epic” and “definitive” (Rolling Stone) biography of music icon Paul Simon, written with Simon’s full participation—but without his editorial control—that “reminds us how titanic this musician is” (The Washington Post).For more than fifty years, Paul Simon has spoken to us in songs about alienation, doubt, resilience, and empathy in ways that have established him as one of the most beloved artists in America...

Modern pop began in 1952 when the first British chart was published and the first 7" singles were released. It ended (perhaps) in 1995 when Robson and Jerome reached the top of the charts with the first number one not to be available on vinyl since 1953. The internet age ushered in the death rites of over 40 years of pop.A Complete History Pop describes the journey that leads from 'Rock Around the Clock' to 'Crazy in Love'. Raw, thrilling, surprising and sometimes downrigh...

From a legendary music journalist with four decades of unprecedented access, an insider's behind-the-scenes look at the major personalities of rock and roll.Lisa Robinson has interviewed the biggest names in music--including Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, John Lennon, Patti Smith, U2, Eminem, Lady Gaga, Jay Z and Kanye West. She visited the teenage Michael Jackson many times at his Encino home. She spent hours talking to John Lennon at his Dakota apartment--and ...