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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Contemporary popular music > Country & western
Before he achieved his dream of being an internationally known rock
personality, Ryan Adams had a band in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Whiskeytown led the wave of insurgent-country bands that came of
age with No Depression magazine in the mid-1990s, and for many
people it defined the era. Adams was an irrepressible character,
one of the signature personalities of his generation, and as a
singer-songwriter he blew people away with a mature talent that
belied his youth. David Menconi witnessed most of Whiskeytown's
rocket ride to fame as the music critic for the Raleigh News &
Observer, and in Ryan Adams, he tells the inside story of the
singer's remarkable rise from hardscrabble origins to success with
Whiskeytown, as well as Adams's post-Whiskeytown self-reinvention
as a solo act. Menconi draws on early interviews with Adams,
conversations with people close to him, and Adams's extensive
online postings to capture the creative ferment that produced some
of Adams's best music, including the albums Strangers Almanac and
Heartbreaker. He reveals that, from the start, Ryan Adams had an
absolutely determined sense of purpose and unshakable confidence in
his own worth. At the same time, his inability to hold anything
back, whether emotions or torrents of songs, often made Adams his
own worst enemy, and Menconi recalls the excesses that almost, but
never quite, derailed his career. Ryan Adams is a fascinating,
multifaceted portrait of the artist as a young man, almost famous
and still inventing himself, writing songs in a blaze of passion.
Sure to elicit an "aw shucks" from fans of old country legends and
new tabloid faves, this whimsical book moseys through a variety of
classic activities, such as connect-the-dots, coloring, and simple
puzzles. Cowboys and girls with a loaded six-shooter of crayons can
help Willie Nelson escape the taxman's maze, outline Billy Ray
Cyrus's mullet, insert a hat on Dwight Yoakam's head, and draw
Dolly Parton's notorious curves.
A riveting tale of unfathomable success great joy deep pain, and
redemption that can come only from above. From a working-class
background in North Carolina to a job as a cook and club singer in
Nashville to his "overnight success" with his smash 1986 album
Storms of Life--which launched the neotraditional movement in
country music--Randy's first three decades are a true
rags-to-riches story. But in 2009, this seemingly charmed life
began a downward spiral. His marriage dissolved, he discovered that
his finances had unraveled, and his struggles with anger led to
alcohol abuse, public embarrassment, and even police arrest in
2012. Then, just as he was putting his life back together, Randy
suffered a devastating viral cardiomyopathy that led to a massive
stroke which he was not expected to survive. Yet he not only
survived but also learned to walk again and, in 2016, accepted his
induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame by singing the hymn
that explains his life today: "Amazing Grace." Filled with
never-before-told stories, Forever and Ever, Amen is a fascinating
behind-the-scenes look at dizzying success and the miraculous road
to restoration.
For more than half a century, Kenny Rogers has been recording some
of the most revered and beloved music in America and around the
world. In that time, he has become a living legend by combining
everything from R and B to country and gospel to folk in his unique
voice to create a sound that's both wholly original and instantly
recognizable. Now, in his first-ever memoir, Kenny details his
lifelong journey to becoming one of American music's elder
statesmen-a rare talent who's created hit records for decades while
staying true to his values as a performer and a person. Exploring
the struggles of his long road, his story begins simply: growing up
in Depression-era Texas, living in the projects, surviving in
poverty, and listening to his mother, who always had just the right
piece of wisdom. Recounting his early years, first as a jazz
bassist and later as a member of the pioneering folk group the New
Christy Minstrels, Kenny charts how he came into his own as an
artist with the First Edition, only to have the band's breakup in
the 1970s raise questions about his musical future. Yet, as Kenny
explains, it was precisely this soul-searching that led him to a
new direction on his own in Nashville. Telling the stories that
have become legends in a town that's seen many of them, he recalls
the making of his career in country music and his most memorable
songs, including Lucille, The Gambler, Lady, and Islands in the
Stream. Along the way, he shares the friendships, both big and
small, that have meant the most to him, describing the good times
he's had with Dottie West, Lionel Richie, and, of course, Dolly
Parton, and how through it all he continues to make music with the
passion that has defined him from the start. Staring across the
decades, Kenny writes a story seemingly straight from one of his
songs. The end result is a rollicking ride through fifty years of
music history, which offers a heartwarming testament to a time when
country music wasn't just a brand but a way of life.
There are many biographies and histories of early country music and
its creators, but surprisingly little attention has been given to
the actual songs at the heart of these narratives. In this
groundbreaking book, music historian Tony Russell turns the
spotlight on seventy-eight original 78rpm discs of songs and tunes
from the 1920s and 1930s, uncovering the hidden stories of how they
came to be recorded, the musicians who sang and played them, the
record companies that marketed them, and the listeners who absorbed
them. In these essays, based upon new research, contemporary
newspaper accounts, and previously unpublished interviews, and
copiously illustrated with rare images, readers will find songs
about home and family, love and courtship, crime and punishment,
farms and floods, chain gangs and chain stores, journeys and
memories, and many other aspects of life in the period. Rural
Rhythm not only charts the tempos and styles of rural and
small-town music-making and the origins of present-day country
music, but also traces the larger rhythms of life in the American
South, Southwest, and Midwest. What emerges is a narrative that
ingeniously blends the musical and social history of the era.
Recorded in 1949, "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" changed the face of
American music. Earl Scruggs's instrumental essentially transformed
the folk culture that came before it while helping to energize
bluegrass's entry into the mainstream in the 1960s. The song has
become a gateway to bluegrass for musicians and fans alike as well
as a happily inescapable track in film and television. Thomas
Goldsmith explores the origins and influence of "Foggy Mountain
Breakdown" against the backdrop of Scruggs's legendary career.
Interviews with Scruggs, his wife Louise, disciple Bela Fleck, and
sidemen like Curly Seckler, Mac Wiseman, and Jerry Douglas shed
light on topics like Scruggs's musical evolution and his working
relationship with Bill Monroe. As Goldsmith shows, the captivating
sound of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" helped bring back the banjo
from obscurity and distinguished the low-key Scruggs as a principal
figure in American acoustic music.Passionate and long overdue, Earl
Scruggs and Foggy Mountain Breakdown takes readers on an
ear-opening journey into two minutes and forty-three seconds of
heaven.
Merle Haggard enjoyed numerous artistic and professional triumphs,
including more than a hundred country hits (thirty-eight at number
one), dozens of studio and live album releases, upwards of ten
thousand concerts, induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame,
and songs covered by artists as diverse as Lynryd Skynyrd, Elvis
Costello, Tammy Wynette, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Willie Nelson, the
Grateful Dead, and Bob Dylan. In The Running Kind, a new edition
that expands on his earlier analysis and covers Haggard's death and
afterlife as an icon of both old-school and modern country music,
David Cantwell takes us on a revelatory journey through Haggard's
music and the life and times out of which it came. Covering the
breadth of his career, Cantwell focuses especially on the 1960s and
1970s, when Haggard created some of his best-known and most
influential music: songs that helped invent the America we live in
today. Listening closely to a masterpiece-crowded catalogue
(including "Okie from Muskogee," "Sing Me Back Home," "Mama Tried,"
and "Working Man Blues," among many more), Cantwell explores the
fascinating contradictions-most of all, the desire for freedom in
the face of limits set by the world or self-imposed-that define not
only Haggard's music and public persona but the very heart of
American culture.
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