When I'm Dead All This Will Be Yours: Joe Teller - A Portrait By His Kid


Teller - 2000
    Teller asked about the people in the drawings: the streetcar operators, waitresses, soldiers, bums. And Mam and Pad (Irene and Joe) began to unfold the hidden history of their world before their Bundle of Joy came along. Out came the Hobo Shoebox, full of letters Joe wrote while riding the rails during the Great Depression; their daring photos as art students, eloping to escape their feuding families; and the War Trunk. Readers stand beside Teller as Pad teaches him why using a ruler in painting is evil; join Mam as she interprets the designs hidden in Joe's "art pancakes"; and enter the world of a most peculiar, philosophical, funny, and loving family.

Still Whispering After All These Years: My Autobiography


Bob Harris - 2015
    He continues to be a household name today and his velvety voice can be heard on Radio 2's The Bob Harris Show and Bob Harris Country. In this fully revised and updated autobiography, with a forward by Robert Plant, Bob tells his story of over 40 years of broadcasting with the BBC, from the young, passionate music fan who moved to London determined to make music his life, to being presented with an OBE for his services to music broadcasting. Much like his musical heroes, Bob's personal life has had somewhat of a rock 'n' roll vibe: he has been married three times, gone bankrupt, fought cancer, weathered a very public spat with a fellow DJ and has had to revamp his career four times. Throughout all these times, however, his love of music and talent for broadcasting has endured. The Whispering Years is a frank, vibrant and inspiring tale of one of the most influential names on the radio and reveals the story of the man behind the voice.

Schumann: The Faces and the Masks


Judith Chernaik - 2018
    With the rigorous research of a scholar and the eloquent prose of a novelist, Judith Chernaik takes us into Schumann's nineteenth-century Romantic milieu, where he wore many "masks" that gave voice to each corner of his soul. The son of a book publisher, he infused his pieces with literary ideas. He was passionately original but worshipped the past: Bach and Beethoven, Shake­speare and Byron. He believed in artistic freedom but struggled with constraints of form. His courtship and marriage to the brilliant pianist Clara Wieck--against her father's wishes--is one of the great musical love stories of all time. Chernaik freshly explores his troubled relations with fellow composers Mendelssohn and Chopin, and the full medi­cal diary--long withheld--from the Endenich asylum where he spent his final years enables her to look anew at the mystery of his early death. By turns tragic and transcendent, Schumann shows how this extraordinary artist turned his tumultuous life into music that speaks directly--and timelessly--to the heart.

The Toughest Show on Earth: My Rise and Reign at the Metropolitan Opera


Joseph Volpe - 2006
    This book is the story of Volpe's years leading up to those at the Met, from his first job as a stagehand at the Morosco Theater to the odd jobs he picked up moonlighting: setting up a searchlight or laying down a red carpet for a movie premiere, changing titles on the marquees at the Astor, Victor, and Paramount theaters. It is his Met years--from apprentice carpenter to general manager--that give us a story about New York and the business of culture. Volpe looks at the Met today, an institution full of vast egos and complicated politics, as well as its glittering past--the old Met at Thirty-ninth and Broadway, and the political and artistic intrigues that exploded around its move to Lincoln Center. With stunning candor, he writes about the general managers he worked under, including Rudolf Bing and Anthony Bliss; his own embattled rise to the top; the maneuverings of the blue-chip board; his bad-cop, good-cop collaboration with the conductor James Levine; and his masterful approach to making a family of such highly charged artist-stars as Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Teresa Stratas, and Renee Fleming, and such visionary directors as Franco Zeffirelli, Robert Wilson, and Julie Taymor.

Dusty: An Intimate Portrait of a Musical Legend


Karen Bartlett - 2014
    Never one to be shy of the spotlight, Dusty broke the mould as the first female entertainer to publicly admit she was bisexual, and was famously deported from South Africa for refusing to play to segregated audiences during apartheid in 1964, just a year after the launch of her solo career. Combining brand-new material, meticulous research and frank interviews with friends, lovers, employees and confidants, journalist Karen Bartlett reveals sensational new details about the soul diva’s unconventional upbringing, tumultuous relationships and unbridled addictions, including a lifelong struggle to come to terms with her sexuality. Named one of the Sunday Times’s best musical biographies of 2014, this is the intimate portrait of an immensely complicated and talented woman – the definitive account of one of music’s most legendary figures.

Blind But Now I See: The Biography of Music Legend Doc Watson


Kent Gustavson - 2009
    It does get into some darker areas of Doc's life, such as Merle's death, but it also is a celebration of the man through the eyes and ears of those who know him." - Steve Carr, docsguitar.com"Hard to believe it's been 50 years since Ralph Rinzler first introduced guitarist Doc Watson to the larger world. It's a fitting anniversary for the first book-length biography on Doc to appear. It was long overdue. This is a valuable, anecdotal work anyone interested in Doc's music and life will enjoy reading." - Bluegrass Unlimited"This is a highly informative, fascinating biography of the great Doc Watson. What a life. It's a page-turner that will keep you up past your bedtime. Don't miss it." - The Inland Northwest Bluegrass Association"A very well researched biography... The story of Doc Watson's life is one of tragedy and success. The author provides a vivid image of Doc's early childhood [and his] years with Merle, and gravely describes the impact of Merle's untimely death. The book is hard to put down..." - Tom Duplissey, Bay Area Bluegrass Association"Musicologists will appreciate the chapters on Doc's singing style and guitar work... Music fans will delight in the book as a whole, a splendid recounting of Doc Watson as man whose '...approach to folk music on a guitar was like Horowitz's approach to the piano...'" - Gary Presley, The Internet Review of BooksAbout the AuthorKent Gustavson, PhD is a professor of writing, language and leadership at Stony Brook University, where he is currently the faculty director of the undergraduate Leadership & Development and Community Service Living Learning Centers. As the host of Sound Authors, he has interviewed hundreds of award-winning musicians and authors, and his music has been featured on National Public Radios All Songs Considered. He lives and works in Sound Beach, New York.

Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir


Ezra Pound - 1916
    An enlarged edition, including thirty pages of illustrations (sculpture and drawings) as well as Pound's later pieces on Gaudier, was brought out in 1970, and is now re-issued as an ND Paperbook. The memoir is valuable both for the history of modern art and for what it shows us of Pound himself, his ability to recognize genius in others and then to publicize it effectively. Would there today be a Salle Gaudier-Brzeska in the Musée de L'Art Moderne in Paris if Pound had not championed him? Gaudier's talent was impressive and his Vorticist aesthetic important as theory, but he was killed in World War I at the age of twenty-three, leaving only a small body of work. Pound knew Gaudier in London, where the young artist had come with his companion, the Polish-born Sophie Brzeska. whose name he added to his own. They were living in poverty when Pound bought Gaudier the stone from which the famous "hieratic head" of the poet was made. Pound arranged exhibitions and for the publication of Gaudier's manifestoes in Blast and The Egoist. And he wrote and sent packages to him in the trenches, where Gaudier––a sculptor to the last––carved a madonna and child from the butt of a captured German rifle, just two days before he died.

A Deeper Blue: The Life and Music of Townes Van Zandt


Robert Earl Hardy - 2008
    A biography of Townes Van Zandt which traces his background as the scion of a prominent Texas family; his troubled early years and his transformation from promising pre-law student to wandering folk singer; his life on the road and the demons that pursued and were pursued by him; and the women who loved and inspired him.

Spice Girls: The Story of the World’s Greatest Girl Band


Sean Smith - 2019
    The fab five became one of the most successful music acts in history, with more than 85 million record sales world-wide and nine UK number one singles.Throughout the years, their lives have garnered unprecedented levels of media interest and fans have keenly followed their ups and downs – the personal conflicts, celebrity break-ups, controversies and parenthood. One thing’s for sure: they are never boring.In 2019, the prospect of their reunion tour has led to an outpouring of adoration and excitement, proving that the Spice Girls truly are an enduring cultural phenomenon.

Backstairs At The White House (The Civil War In The Carolinas )


Gwen Bagni - 1978
    Two white house maids, a remarkable mother and her daughter, reveal what it was really like upstairs, downstairs at the white house.

Beethoven for a Later Age: The Journey of a String Quartet


Edward Dusinberre - 2016
    Using the history of the composition and first performances of the quartets as the backbone to his story, Edward Dusinberre, first violinist of the Takács since 1993 - recounts the life of the Quartet from its inception in Hungary, through emigration to the US and its present-day life as one of the world's renowned string quartets. He also describes what it was like for him, as a young man fresh out of the Juilliard School, to join the Quartet as its first non-Hungarian member - an exhilarating challenge. Beethoven for a Later Age takes the reader inside the life of a quartet, vividly showing how four people enjoy making music together over a long period of time. The key, the author argues, is in balancing continuity with change and experimentation - a theme that also lies at the heart of Beethoven's remarkable compositions.

Fire And Rain: The James Taylor Story


Ian Halperin - 2000
    When he was seventeen years old, his demons led him to a Massachusetts mental institution where he confronted them the only way he knew how, by writing his first songs. Thirty years later, Taylor's songs are among the most popular in the annals of music, but the demons are still with him. But unlike many of his contemporaries who faced a similar struggle, Taylor managed to emerge as an inspirational figure. Fire and Rain traces this remarkable path, including his troubled marriage to pop star Carly Simon and the premature alcoholism-related death of his brother: Taylor's ten-month stay in the exclusive private psychiatric institution where he finished high school; His self-imposed exile to England where he submitted some of his music to the Beatles' Apple Records, which signed him to his first record contract in 1968. Paul McCartney mentored Taylor's early career; The story behind his second album, Sweet Baby James, which contained the song "Fire and Rain" about the hopelessness of mental illness and suicide; As Taylor's fame increased, so did his problems with heroin, alcohol, and mental illness. In the seventies, the singer nearly fell over the edge many times.

We're Desperate: The Punk Rock Photography of Jim Jocoy, SF/LA 1978-1980


Jim Jocoy - 2002
    It developed concurrently everywhere, and every region had it's own identity. But it was in San Francisco and L.A. where the most radical behavior in stateside punk rock style and attitude was exhibited. It was anti-hippie, anti-disco, anti-parent and anti-"nice". And it was shockingly new. These photos are ground zero of punk rock style—delirious innovation and a snarling takeover of youth culture still resonating more than 20 years hence.

Under a Hoodoo Moon: The Life of the Night Tripper


Malcolm John "Mac" Rebennack - 1994
    In its pages, Dr. John, the alchemist of New Orleans psychedelic funk, tells his story, and what a story it is: of four decades on the road, on the charts, in and out of trouble, but always steeped in the piano-based soulful grind of New Orleans rhythmn & blues of which he is the acknolwedged high guru. From childhood as a prodigal prodigy among 1950s legends from Little Richard and Fats Domino to sesssions with the Rolling Stones and the Band; from recording studio to juke joint to penitentiary to world tours; from Mac Rebennack to Dr. John the Night Tripper, this is the testament of our funkiest rock storyteller. Full of wit and wordplay, tales of hoodoo saints and high-living sinners, Under a Hoodoo Moon casts a spell as hard to resist as Mardi Gras itself.

The Crow: The Story Behind the Film


Bridget Baiss - 2000
    Now, ten years after the original film’s release, the full story of this seemingly cursed production can finally be told...  In The Crow’s last days of filming, its star Brandon Lee (son of Bruce Lee) was killed in a strange on-set accident, while filming his character’s death scene. Bridget Baiss describes the chain of events which led from O’Barr’s creation of the graphic novel, up to this fateful day, and beyond, to the film’s final, triumphant release. The definitive account of The Crow’s production and the phenomenon it became, packed with scores of interviews with the film’s cast and crew.