Welcome to the first volume in an exciting new annual series that celebrates the year's best American writing about music and its culture, as selected by one of the genre's preeminent practitioners. Covering the gamut of contemporary styles--rock, pop, rap, jazz, blues, country--Guralnick has chosen the kind of pieces that send you right to the record store, by both established writers and bright new talents. With thirty selections drawn from more than a hundred sources, including mainstream magazines like theNew Yorker, music journals like Spin, and tiny 'zines and websites...
Welcome to the first volume in an exciting new annual series that celebrates the year's best American writing about music and its culture, as selected...
An acclaimed biographer presents a revealing portrait of Sam Cooke--a black performer who appealed to white audiences, wrote his own songs, and controlled his own business destiny. 55 photos.
An acclaimed biographer presents a revealing portrait of Sam Cooke--a black performer who appealed to white audiences, wrote his own songs, and contro...
From the moment that he first shook up the world in the mid 1950s, Elvis Presley has been one of the most vivid and enduring myths of American culture. Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley is the first biography to go past that myth and present an Elvis beyond the legend. Based on hundreds of interviews and nearly a decade of research, it traces the evolution not just of the man but of the music and of the culture he left utterly transformed, creating a completely fresh portrait of Elvis and his world. This volume tracks the first twenty-four years of Elvis' life, covering his...
From the moment that he first shook up the world in the mid 1950s, Elvis Presley has been one of the most vivid and enduring myths of American culture...
From the moment that he first shook up the world in the mid 1950s, Elvis Presley has been one of the most vivid and enduring myths of American culture. Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley is the first biography to go past that myth and present an Elvis beyond the legend. Based on hundreds of interviews and nearly a decade of research, it traces the evolution not just of the man but of the music and of the culture he left utterly transformed, creating a completely fresh portrait of Elvis and his world. This volume tracks the first twenty-four years of Elvis' life,...
From the moment that he first shook up the world in the mid 1950s, Elvis Presley has been one of the most vivid and enduring myths of American culture...
FEEL LIKE GOING HOME celebrates the building blocks of blues and early rock 'n' roll, including Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, and the Chess record label. "Brings it back alive better than any book of its kind ever published".--Charles Shaar Murray, NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS. 80 photos.
FEEL LIKE GOING HOME celebrates the building blocks of blues and early rock 'n' roll, including Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, and the C...
This masterful exploration of American roots music--country, rockabilly, and the blues--spotlights the artists who created a distinctly American sound, including Ernest Tubb, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Elvis Presley, Merle Haggard, and Sleepy LaBeef. In incisive portraits based on searching interviews with these legendary performers, Peter Guralnick captures the boundless passion that drove these men to music-making and that kept them determinedly, and sometimes almost desperately, on the road.
This masterful exploration of American roots music--country, rockabilly, and the blues--spotlights the artists who created a distinctly American sound...
Careless Love is the full, true, and mesmerizing story of Elvis Presley's last two decades, in the long-awaited second volume of Peter Guralnick's masterful two-part biography. Last Train to Memphis, the first part of Guralnick's two-volume life of Elvis Presley, was acclaimed by the New York Times as "a triumph of biographical art." This concluding volume recounts the second half of Elvis' life in rich and previously unimagined detail, and confirms Guralnick's status as one of the great biographers of our time. Beginning with Presley's army service in Germany...
Careless Love is the full, true, and mesmerizing story of Elvis Presley's last two decades, in the long-awaited second volume of Peter Guraln...
- The Year of the Blues reaches fever pitch in fall 2003 with the theatrical release (and airing on PBS) of seven documentary films, each by a noted feature director (Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders, Charles Burnett, Mike Figgis, and Clint Eastwood among them) and the release on CD of several major new blues compilations.- Peter Guralnick, celebrated for his bestselling two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love, is a master of narrative who knows the world of American roots music better than any other writer.- NIGHTHAWK BLUES was first published in hardcover...
- The Year of the Blues reaches fever pitch in fall 2003 with the theatrical release (and airing on PBS) of seven documentary films, each by a noted f...
Robert Johnson, while probably the most influential of all blues guitarists, is also one of the most obscure. Recognized as an influence on musicians like Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones, Johnson was poisoned by a jealous husband in 1938--at the age of twenty-seven. This untimely death, his supposed bargain with the devil that enabled him to play guitar, and the ferocity and tormented originality of his work have given rise to a legend that has inspired a Hollywood movie and numerous stories. Peter Guralnick?s extended essay about the life of the man and the...
Robert Johnson, while probably the most influential of all blues guitarists, is also one of the most obscure. Recognized as an influence on mus...
A major figure in American blues and folk music, Big Bill Broonzy (1903-1958) left his Arkansas Delta home after World War I, headed north, and became the leading Chicago bluesman of the 1930s. His success came as he fused traditional rural blues with the electrified sound that was beginning to emerge in Chicago. This, however, was just one step in his remarkable journey: Big Bill was constantly reinventing himself, both in reality and in his retellings of it. Bob Riesman's groundbreaking biography tells the compelling life story of a lost figure from the annals of music history.
I...
A major figure in American blues and folk music, Big Bill Broonzy (1903-1958) left his Arkansas Delta home after World War I, headed north, and bec...
