**NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' PICK OF 2023The drama of In Cold Blood meets the stylings of a Coen brothers film in this long-lost manuscript from musicologist Robert “Mack” McCormick, whose research on blues icon Robert Johnson's mysterious life and death became as much of a myth as the musician himself"This is a human and humane book, an insightful exploration of the biographer’s craft. [...] McCormick’s book makes you feel what we lost when Johnson died youn...

When blues master Robert Johnson's recordings were rereleased to great fanfare in the 1960s, little was known about his life, giving rise to legends that he gained success by selling his soul to the devil. Biography of a Phantom is musicologist Mack McCormick's search, from the late 1960s until McCormick's death in 2015, to uncover Johnson's life story. McCormick spent decades reconstructing Johnson's mysterious life and developing theories about his untimely death at the age of 2...

The result of careful research, this stylish biography of infamous blues musician Robert Johnson reveals the real story behind the mythical talent that made him a musical legend. According to some, Robert Johnson learned guitar by trading his soul away to the Devil at a crossroads in rural Mississippi. When he died at age 27 of a mysterious poisoning, many superstitious fans came to believe that the Devil had returned to take his due. This diligent study of Johnson’s life debunks these myt...

The remarkable true saga of an exceptional animal—and the no less exceptional man who led him to greatness: "Seabiscuit had nothing on Beautiful Jim Key." — Sacramento BeeBeautiful Jim Key—the onetime ugly duckling of a scrub colt who became one of the most beloved heroes of the turn of the twentieth century—was adored not for his beauty and speed but rather for his remarkable abilities to read, write, spell, do mathematics, even debate politics. Trained wi...

Oscar Micheaux was the Jackie Robinson of film, the black D. W. Griffith: a bigger-than-life American folk hero whose important life story is nearly forgotten today. Now, in a feat of historical investigation and vivid storytelling, one of our greatest film biographers takes on one of the most talented and complex figures in the history of American entertainment.The son of freed slaves, Micheaux grew up in Metropolis, Illinois, then roamed America as a Pullman porter before making ...

In this penetrating and riveting biography of one of Hollywood's most beloved screen icons, Donald Dewey probes beneath Jimmy Stewart, the conservative image and ideal, to reveal James Stewart, the actor and the man.Through hundreds of interviews and in-depth analysis of his seventy-five films, the author assesses how the Hollywood man-about-town of the 1930's and 40's - Stewart's lovers included Ginger Rogers, Olivia de Havilland and Marlene Dietrich - became the epitome of Americ...

On Highway 61 explores the historical context of the significant social dissent that was central to the cultural genesis of the sixties. The book is going to search for the deeper roots of American cultural and musical evolution for the past 150 years by studying what the Western European culture learned from African American culture in a historical progression that reaches from the minstrel era to Bob Dylan.The book begins with America's first great social critic, Henry D...

"The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home." So begins an American standard, first published as a minstrel song, that became dear to the hearts of millions and ultimately was enshrined as the Kentucky Derby's sonic centerpiece—a popular selling point for Kentucky tourism. Emily Bingham's masterful decoding of Stephen Foster's 1853 ballad reveals that the song was always about slavery and how white Americans wanted to remember it. Acknowledging her own entanglement in this legacy, Bing...

Dive deep into the history of Blues Music History anywhere you go: on a plane, on a mountain, in a canoe, under a tree. Or grab a flashlight and read Shmoop under the covers. Shmoop's award-winning US History Guides are now available on your eReader. Shmoop eBooks are like having a trusted, fun, chatty, expert history-tour-guide always by your side, no matter where you are (or how late it is at night).Shmoop US History Guides offer fresh analysis, timelines of important events, brief bios of...

**Shortlisted for the Plutarch Award for best biographyThe mysterious true story of Connie Converse—a mid-century New York City songwriter, singer, and composer whose haunting music never found broad recognition—and one writer’s quest to understand her life**This is the mesmerizing story of an enigmatic life. When musician and New Yorker contributor Howard Fishman first heard Connie Converse’s voice on a recording, he was convinced she could not be real. H...

In the 1920s, Southern record companies ventured to cities like Dallas, Atlanta, and New Orleans, where they set up primitive recording equipment in makeshift studios. They brought in street singers, medicine show performers, pianists from the juke joints and barrelhouses. The music that circulated through Southern work camps, prison farms, and vaudeville shows would be lost to us if it hadn't't been captured on location by these performers and recorders.Eminent blues historian Pau...

This absorbing collection of letters spans a decade in the lifelong friendship of two remarkable writers who engaged the subjects of literature, race, and identity with deep clarity and passion.The correspondence begins in 1950 when Ellison is living in New York City, hard at work on his enduring masterpiece, Invisible Man, and Murray is a professor at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Mirroring a jam session in which two jazz musicians "trade twelves"—each improvisin...