For the Country Music Fans

Authors Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns bring us Country Music: An Illustrated History.

"The rich and colorful story of America's most popular music and the singers and songwriters who captivated, entertained, and consoled listeners throughout the twentieth century--based on the upcoming eight-part film series to air on PBS in September 2019

This gorgeously illustrated and hugely entertaining history begins where country music itself emerged: the American South, where people sang to themselves and to their families at home and in church, and where they danced to fiddle tunes on Saturday nights. With the birth of radio in the 1920s, the songs moved from small towns, mountain hollers, and the wide-open West to become the music of an entire nation--a diverse range of sounds and styles from honky tonk to gospel to bluegrass to rockabilly, leading up through the decades to the music's massive commercial success today.

But above all, Country Music is the story of the musicians. Here is Hank Williams's tragic honky tonk life, Dolly Parton rising to fame from a dirt-poor childhood, and Loretta Lynn turning her experiences into songs that spoke to women everywhere. Here too are interviews with the genre's biggest stars, including the likes of Merle Haggard to Garth Brooks to Rosanne Cash. Rife with rare photographs and endlessly fascinating anecdotes, the stories in this sweeping yet intimate history will captivate longtime country fans and introduce new listeners to an extraordinary body of music that lies at the very center of the American experience." (from Amazon.com)

Musical Biographies and Memoirs

     “Waylon: Tales of My Outlaw Dad” is a biography of the late Waylon Jennings written by his son, Terry Jennings, with David Thomas. Terry was born when Waylon was only nineteen years old, so he was coming of age when his father’s career began its meteoric rise with hits like “I’ve Always Been Crazy” and “Good Hearted Woman”—one of Waylon’s most popular duets with Willie Nelson. Terry dropped out of high school to join his father on the road and the two became more like brothers than father and son. As a result, Terry spent formative years with legends like Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and Jessi Colter—Waylon’s fourth and final wife. There was also a lot of hard partying, women, and drugs. Even as his father’s success grew with his critical acclaim, bestselling albums, sold-out tours, and even TV stardom with The Dukes of Hazzard, Waylon suffered from a myriad of demons. He went through three divorces, crippling debt, and bouts of depression that Terry believes traces back to the premature death of Buddy Holly. (Waylon was supposed to be on that doomed flight.) Terry debunks myths and shares never-before-told stories of his father with the great love and honesty.

     “Un-Ashamed” is an autobiography of rap artist Lecrae with Johnathan Merritt. This two–time Grammy winning artist has been through his share of adversity. He suffered through childhood abuse, drugs and alcoholism with a stint in rehab, an abortion, and an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Somewhere along the way, however, Lecrae found an unshakeable faith in Jesus and began turning to God for affirmation. He learned the lesson, “if you live for people’s acceptance, you’ll die from their rejection.” Now, he ignores the haters and makes peace with his craft. Lecrae holds nothing back as he reveals the most intimate details of his life as well as sharing handwritten journal entries and models how to be a Christian in a secular world.

     “Porcelain: A Memoir” is by DJ and musician Moby. There are many reasons why Moby should not have been as hugely popular in the unchecked, drug fueled, hedonism of the pumping underground dance clubs of NYC in the late 1980s and 1990s. First, he was a poor skinny white kid from Connecticut, but he was also a devout Christian, a vegan, and a teetotaler. He learned what it meant to be spat upon and to live on almost nothing. With the rise of AIDS and crack, it was a tough time for an artist to live on almost nothing in New York City, but it was also the time of a defiantly festive underworld culture. Moby managed to make his way, but he prepared to put his career behind him and poured all of his emotion into what he thought would be his swan song. Instead, it was the beginning of a surprisingly new phase in his life: the multimillion-selling album Play. This sincere portrait of a man with a passion for making music that steadied him in rough seas will inspire anyone pursuing a dream.

     “Kill ‘Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul” is a biography written by James McBride. For the author, this book is about more than James Brown. It is a metaphor for American life: the tension between North and South, black and white, rich and poor. McBride’s travels take him to the country town where Brown’s family and thousands of others were displaced by America’s largest nuclear power bomb-making facility; a South Carolina field where a long-forgotten cousin recounts, in the dead of night, a richer history of Brown’s sharecropping childhood—which had always been shrouded in mystery. He also seeks out the American expat in England who co-created the James Brown sound, visits the trusted manager who was Brown’s right hand for forty-one years, and relates the visit of Michael Jackson to the Augusta, Georgia funeral home where he sat all night with his musical godfather. Finally, McBride discusses the monster legal battles fought over Brown’s estate which prevented money from reaching the poor schoolchildren in Georgia and South Carolina, cost the estate millions in legal fees, and left James Brown’s body to lie in a gilded coffin in his daughter’s yard in South Carolina for more than eight years.

Two Beautiful Photography Collections

We don't get a great many photography collections here at the library, but two new collections we have just received are Abandoned America: The Age of Consequences by Matthew Christopher and American Ballads: The Photographs of Marty Stuart edited by Katherine E. Delmez for the First Center for the Visual Arts Vanderbilt University Press. Both of these books contain beautiful photos and brief explanations of the history of the pictures.

In, Abandoned America, the author gives us a glimpse of what happens when man-made structures are left to weather the ravages of time without humans to keep them in top shape. These beautiful and eerie photographs include old schools, hospitals, theaters, factories, and churches. Slowly, everything returns to the Earth. Plaster walls crumble and tumble to the floor. Ceilings cave in and allow the wind and rain to wear down the interior of buildings. Machinery, too, rusts and falls victim to the ravages of weather and time. All manner of creatures come in and make themselves at home in the ruins of once-splendid architecture. As you can see below, these haunted photos give a a glimpse at what a post-human world would look like.

The other book of photographs, American Ballads, is a collection from country music legend, Marty Stuart.

This collection is introduced by Stuart himself. After a brief history of Stuart, his career in music and his love of photography, readers are given three distinct sections of photographs to ogle. The first section is entitled "The Masters" and includes photographs and portraits of some of the most famous names in music; especially Country Music. There are portraits of Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Bill Monroe, George Jones, and Jerry Lee Lewis to name a few.

The next section is called "Blue Line Hotshots" and includes photos of every day folks from all over small-town America. These are the unsung heroes of the truck stops, county fairs, and everyday life in what some call the "fly-over states."

The final section is named "Badlands" and it contains photographs from the native peoples of South Dakota. These photos were taken over many years and many trips to visit the Pine Ridge Reservation and the Lakota.

These photos are sometimes whimsical, sometimes pensive, but all of them evoke the emotion of the subjects being photographed.