Steve Cushing’s third volume of interviews from Blues Before Sunrise puts fans face-to-face with music legends and industry figures. The volume kicks off with a roundtable featuring drumming all-stars Earl Phillips, S.P. Leary, Odie Payne, Clifton James, and Fred Below discussing their lives and craft. Cushing segues to one-on-one interviews with Howlin’ Wolf sideman Phillips; Leary, a fellow Wolf alum and player with Sonny Boy Williamson II; Payne, known for his kick drum technique; longt...

This second volume of Music in Black American Life offers research and analysis that originally appeared in the journals American Music and Black Music Research Journal, and in two book series published by the University of Illinois Press: Music in American Life, and African American Music in Global Perspective. In this collection, a group of predominately Black scholars explores a variety of topics with works that pioneered new methodologies and modes of inquiry for hear...

Willie Nelson shares his life story in this captivating bestselling memoir of true love, wild times, best friends, and barrooms."Unvarnished. Funny. Leaving no stone unturned." ... So say the publishers about this book I've written. What I say is that this is the story of my life, told as clear as a Texas sky and in the same rhythm that I lived it.It's a story of restlessness and the purity of the moment and living right. Of my childhood in Abbott, Texas, t...

The national bestseller celebrated as "the ultimate Johnny Cash biography . . . Rock writer great Robert Hilburn goes deep." -- Rolling StoneIn this, the definitive biography of an American legend, Robert Hilburn conveys the unvarnished truth about a musical superstar. Johnny Cash's extraordinary career stretched from his days at Sun Records with Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis to the remarkable creative last hurrah, at age 69, that resulted in the brave...

"Refreshing . . . candid . . . poignant. . . . One of the best of country's tell-alls, as warm, peculiar, and individualistic as Jennings's music itself." — Entertainment WeeklyEqual parts outlaw, renegade, and legend, Waylon Jennings enjoyed a stellar music career for four decades and this no-holds-barred autobiography reveals the story of a man who infused country music traditions with the energy of rock and roll to rewrite the rules of ...

"A colorful account of [Guy's] 50-year-long tenure as perhaps the most influential guitar slinger in Chicago blues." — Los Angeles TimesAccording to Eric Clapton, John Mayer, and the late Stevie Ray Vaughn, Buddy Guy is the greatest blues guitarist of all time. An enormous influence on these musicians as well as Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck, he is the living embodiment of Chicago blues.Guy's epic story stands at the abso...

A "compulsively readable" history of how Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson redefined country music ( Publishers Weekly, starred review).Outlaw delves into the country music scene of the late '60s and early '70s, when three rebels—Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson found themselves in Music City writing songs and vying for record deals. Channeling the unrest of the times, all three Country Music Hall of Famer...

Not many memoirs are generational events. But when Sly Stone, one of the few true musical geniuses of the last century, decides to finally tell his life story, it can’t be called anything else.As the front man for the sixties pop-rock-funk band Sly and the Family Stone, a songwriter who created some of the most memorable anthems of the 1960s and 1970s (“Everyday People,” “Family Affair”), and a performer who electrified audiences at Woodstock and elsewhere, Sly Sto...

The greatest Southern storyteller of our time tracks down the greatest rock and roller of all time—and gets his own story, from the source, for the very first time.The New York Times BestsellerOne of Rolling Stone's 10 Best Music Books of the YearA monumental figure on the American landscape, Jerry Lee Lewis spent his childhood raising hell in Ferriday, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi; galvanized ...

A companion book to the PBS documentary series exploring the history of the blues and its contribution to American culture and music worldwide.A companion to the groundbreaking documentary series, this volume is a unique and timeless celebration of the blues, from writers and artists as esteemed and revered as the music that moved them.Included in this stunning collection are:Essays by David Halberstam, Hilton Als, Suzan-Lori Parks, Elmore Leo...

In the vein of the classic Johnny Cash: The Life, this groundbreaking work explores the wild life and extraordinary musical career of "the definitive country singer of the last half century" ( New York Times), who influenced, among others, Bob Dylan, Buck Owens, Emmylou Harris, John Fogerty, George Strait, Alan Jackson, and Garth Brooks.In a masterful biography laden with new revelations, veteran country music journalist/historian Rich Kienzle offers a definitive,...

The multi-Grammy Award-winning pioneering soul musician tells the story of his childhood, career, and legacy—in this own words.Ray Charles (1930-2004) led one of the most extraordinary lives of any popular musician. In Brother Ray, he tells his story in an inimitable and unsparing voice, from the chronicle of his musical development to his heroin addiction to his tangled romantic life.Overcoming poverty, blindness, the loss of his parents, and the ...