Here are 100 books that Please Be with Me fans have personally recommended if you like
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Since childhood, I have been fascinated by the culture and stories of my place, the Mississippi Delta. I began my education in the beauty shop, where my mother “fixed” hair six days a week. I continued my education in the pool hall when I was 13 or 14, listening to the braggarts and fools who pontificated about every subject under the sun. I escaped to Memphis in the late 60s and became a hippie, drinking in the experience of Memphis’ electric streets. These experiences informed my thinking and helped me become a writer and filmmaker.
The story of American music is laid out in a fascinating series of stories by musicologist and former New York Times music critic Robert Palmer. Palmer used interviews with Muddy Waters and many other bluesmen to explain how this music traveled from Africa to the American South and then up to Chicago, Detroit, and other northern cities.
It is an in-depth look at the stories and myths of the South and the people who made their escape from the brutal cotton fields and racial segregation of the times. This book is a must for anyone wanting to know the beginnings and significance of American music.
Blues is the cornerstone of American popular music, the bedrock of rock and roll. In this extraordinary musical and social history, Robert Palmer traces the odyssey of the blues from its rural beginnings, to the steamy bars of Chicago's South Side, to international popularity, recognition, and imitation. Palmer tells the story of the blues through the lives of its greatest practitioners: Robert Johnson, who sang of being pursued by the hounds of hell; Muddy Waters, who electrified Delta blues and gave the music its rock beat; Robert Lockwood and Sonny Boy Williamson, who launched the King Biscuit Time radio show…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
An academically trained historian, I'm a Music Obsessive/History Geek/Southerner/Guitarist/Public Historian/Teacher/Interpreter/Writer/Fan who studies the intersection of music, culture, history, and place. I grew up devouring Mom’s Beatles and Dad’s country records. My life changed in 6th grade when I got my first guitar and discovered the blues. In 7th grade I wrote a research paper on the hippies. That’s when I fell in love with the counterculture. Throughout my life I’ve interwoven my love of the blues, punk rock, the Allman Brothers Band, and the Jam Depression collective as a historian, fan, and musician. My enduring passion culminated in a Ph.D. and the publication of Play All Night! Duane Allman and the Journey to Fillmore East.
I’ve spent a lot of time with this remarkable book over the years.
I suppose my greatest takeaway is the way Ward explores music’s meaning from a variety of angles and intersections: musical, economic, legal, racial, gender, class, and generational.
The airwaves could not be segregated; music gave insight into the Black freedom struggle and a shared sense of humanity that helped topple Jim Crow barriers nationwide. I particularly appreciate how Ward unpacks the ways Black audiences shaped the sounds of the era. Black music reflected an optimism and an assertion of racial pride, and you’ll find the modern Civil Rights Movement at the heart of his book.
Crossroads: African American freedom struggle, Postwar America, the South
Brian Ward is Lecturer in American History at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne .; This book is intended for american studies, American history postwar social and cultural history, political history, Black history, Race and Ethnic studies and Cultural studies together with the general trade music.
An academically trained historian, I'm a Music Obsessive/History Geek/Southerner/Guitarist/Public Historian/Teacher/Interpreter/Writer/Fan who studies the intersection of music, culture, history, and place. I grew up devouring Mom’s Beatles and Dad’s country records. My life changed in 6th grade when I got my first guitar and discovered the blues. In 7th grade I wrote a research paper on the hippies. That’s when I fell in love with the counterculture. Throughout my life I’ve interwoven my love of the blues, punk rock, the Allman Brothers Band, and the Jam Depression collective as a historian, fan, and musician. My enduring passion culminated in a Ph.D. and the publication of Play All Night! Duane Allman and the Journey to Fillmore East.
Flowers in the Dustbin uses an approach I dearly love: the vignette. Miller deftly selects stories that tie together a larger narrative of “where rock & roll came from—and what it came to do.”
The book begins with the birth of rhythm & blues through one of its earliest stars, Wynonie Harris. Subsequent stories in chapter one weave together the impacts of technology, the Great Migration, racial dynamics, a booming economy, and an emerging youth culture. It culminates in Elvis’s earliest recordings, the so-called birth of rock & roll. All in the first chapter!
In the story that follows, Miller demonstrates why rock & roll emerged and how it reflected and shaped the social, cultural, and political landscape.
A prizewinning historian and journalist who has covered the pop music scene for more than three decades, James Miller brings a powerful and challenging intellectual perspective to his recounting of some key turning points in the history of rock. Arguing that the music underwent its full creative evolution in little more than twenty-five years, he traces its roots from the jump blues of the forties to the disc jockeys who broadcast the music in the early fifties. He shows how impresarios such as Alan Freed and movie directors such as Richard Brooks (of Blackboard Jungle) joined black music to white…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
An academically trained historian, I'm a Music Obsessive/History Geek/Southerner/Guitarist/Public Historian/Teacher/Interpreter/Writer/Fan who studies the intersection of music, culture, history, and place. I grew up devouring Mom’s Beatles and Dad’s country records. My life changed in 6th grade when I got my first guitar and discovered the blues. In 7th grade I wrote a research paper on the hippies. That’s when I fell in love with the counterculture. Throughout my life I’ve interwoven my love of the blues, punk rock, the Allman Brothers Band, and the Jam Depression collective as a historian, fan, and musician. My enduring passion culminated in a Ph.D. and the publication of Play All Night! Duane Allman and the Journey to Fillmore East.
Since their 1965 founding, the Grateful Dead have been one of the counterculture’s most enduring institutions.
No Simple Highway answers why, placing the band in the context of its times through three utopian ideals central to the band and its fans: Ecstasy (not just drugs, but an “urge to transcend”), Mobility, and Community. The band, Richardson argues, is “the American experiment in action.”
You’ll learn how the band wove multiple strands of American music with literature, folklore, the counterculture, and the visual arts into a truly unique musical tapestry whose express purpose was as part of a live music experience.
This music-as-participation dynamic meant the audience was as important to the Dead as the music they played. This book had a major impact on how I approached the band/audience story for my own Allman Brothers research.
Crossroads: Postwar America, youth counterculture, audience, San Francisco
For almost three decades, the Grateful Dead was America's most popular touring band. No Simple Highway is the first book to ask the simple question of why―and attempt to answer it. Drawing on new research, interviews, and a fresh supply of material from the Grateful Dead archives, author Peter Richardson vividly recounts the Dead's colorful history, adding new insight into everything from the Acid Tests to the band's formation of their own record label to their massive late career success, while probing the riddle of the Dead's vast and durable appeal.
Arguing that the band successfully tapped three powerful utopian…
A recovering newspaper journalist, I’ve lived and worked in Raleigh, North Carolina, since 1991, after growing up in Texas and Colorado. Professionally, I spent 28 years at Raleigh’s daily paper the News & Observer, primarily as a music critic, before taking my leave of the newspaper industry in 2019. Since then, I have gotten by as a freelancer writing for magazines, arts councils, alumni publications, and such. I also host a podcast – Carolina Calling, about North Carolina’s music history – while writing the occasional book. I’m also a member of the University of Colorado’s Trivia Bowl Hall Of Fame.
In its ambition and sweep across time and political upheavals as well as musical styles, this book may have been the closest thing I had to a model for my book.
Part musical memoir and part capsule history of the American South’s era of integration, Dixie Lullaby was written by longtime music journalist Mark Kemp – a man who grew up in Asheboro, North Carolina in the 1960s and ’70s and has the Lynyrd Skynyrd and Allman Brothers records to prove it.
In ""Dixie Lullaby"", a veteran music journalist ponders the transformative effects of rock and roll on the generation of white southerners who came of age in the 1970s - the heyday of disco, Jimmy Carter, and Saturday Night Live. Growing up in North Carolina, Mark Kemp burned with shame and anger at the attitudes of many white southerners - some in his own family - toward the recently won victories of the civil rights movement. ""I loved the land that surrounded me but hated the history that haunted that land,"" he writes. Then the down-home, bluesy rock of the Deep…
Where Are Your Boys is the book I always wanted to write. Watching emo bands like My Chemical Romance and Paramore soar from suburbs to stardom during my high school years inspired me to take writing seriously, that a kid like me growing up in New Jersey with few connections to the media industry could find a backdoor in, because those bands did, too. With its dense population, adjacency to New York City, and a multitude of record stores and all-ages shows, New Jersey was the setting for much of emo's 2000s boom and the home of My Chemical Romance and many other important bands.
This book gave me a drive. Goodman’s account of the Strokes’ debaucherous rise in 9/11-era New York City ignited my passion for oral history and to tell the story of the music that made me. Downtown cool kid garage rock shaped popular culture immensely, but so did My Chemical Romance and their cohort (even more so, I’d argue). Up to this point (MMITB was published in 2017), 2000s emo was frequently misconstrued by those too old to have understood its impact or left out of the conversation entirely.
As I conducted interviews for my book, I challenged my own hypotheses (and personal biases) about these two scenes. I learned they intermingled more than I thought. I talked to Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz about DJing the ultra-hip downtown party Misshapes and My Chemical Romance’s Mikey Way about trying to catch a glimpse of Madonna at the same place.
A SUNDAY TIMES, ROUGH TRADE, ROLLING STONE, MOJO AND UNCUT BOOK OF THE YEAR LONGLISTED FOR THE PENDERYN MUSIC BOOK PRIZE
New York, 2001. 9/11 plunges the US into a state of war and political volatility-and heralds the rebirth of the city's rock scene. As the old-guard music industry crumbles, a group of iconoclastic bands suddenly become the voice of a generation desperately in need of an anthem.
In this fascinating and vibrant oral history, acclaimed journalist Lizzy Goodman charts New York's explosive musical transformation in the early 2000s. Drawing on over 200 original interviews, Goodman follows the meteoric rise…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
Richard Niles was born in Hollywood but grew up in London where his 50-year professional career as a composer, arranger, record producer led to work with some of the most acclaimed artists of our time, including Paul McCartney, Ray Charles, James Brown, Tina Turner, Cher and jazz icon Pat Metheny. He has worked on 20 Gold and 28 Platinum records. He has published many books on music including The Pat Metheny Interviews, The Invisible Artist, From Dreaming to Gigging, Piano Grooves, Songwriting – The 11-Point Plan, Adventures in Arranging, Adventures in Jazz Composition, What is Melody?, and How to be an Employable Musician. Dr. Niles' PhD is from Brunel University and he has lectured internationally.
Mo Foster was one of rock’s great sidemen, performing with artists such as Jeff Beck, Phil Collins, Eric Clapton, Gerry Rafferty, Van Morrison, and George Martin.
Mo tells the stories of the greatest players who developed what is arguably the most important instrument of the 20th century, the guitar, talking to some of its greatest players including Hank Marvi, Eric Clapton, and Brian May. Mo was one of the funniest men I have ever known, and I can guarantee that if you read this book, you will be learning and laughing on every page!
A renowned bass player, Mo Foster has played his guitar with the greats, and with their backing, contributions and memories has written an insightful, passionate and very humorous book. British Rock Guitar is illustrated with original advertisements, memorabilia and photographs, many from many artist's private collections. Mo Foster, draws upon his own recollections and those of some of the greatest exponents of the rock guitar, from Hank Marvin to Eric Clapton and Brian May. Mo Foster has written the definitive history of the importance of the guitar in the development of British music over the last 50 years. British Rock…
I describe myself as equal parts Deadhead and student of the Bible. I have been active in a Presbyterian church for twenty years, which, being adjacent to a seminary, takes a very thorough approach to Bible study. We were deep into the Book of Acts during the Fare Thee Well events (2015), where I was re-acquainted with the intensity of the Deadheads’ devotion and their unfailingly positive spirit. My good wife, new to the scene, commented on how nice everyone was, that no one present was a stranger to any other. It occurred to me that these would all make good church members if only someone would reach out.
I think this is the most thorough history of the band, which is likely the result of it being written by a trained historian.
McNally had a very privileged access by travelling with the band for many years as their principal press contact. One chapter after another is chockfull of invaluable insights into the behind-the-scenes workings of the band, both in its artistic development and business decisions.
I listen to some of their songs differently now after learning more about the context that produced them.
The complete history of one of the most long-lived and legendary bands in rock history, written by its official historian and publicist—a must-have chronicle for all Dead Heads, and for students of rock and the 1960s’ counterculture.
From 1965 to 1995, the Grateful Dead flourished as one of the most beloved, unusual, and accomplished musical entities to ever grace American culture. The creative synchronicity among Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan exploded out of the artistic ferment of the early sixties’ roots and folk scene, providing the soundtrack for the Dionysian revels…
I started singing and playing guitar in garage bands in high school, about the same time that I began thinking of myself as a serious writer, so for me the two endeavors have always gone hand in hand. Over the decades, I’ve continued to write creatively—while teaching thousands of students along the way—and also to play in a number of bands that have specialized in everything from country-folk to raucous punk. Like many writer-musicians, I love reading good stories about the challenges and joys of people joining together, and falling apart, as they attempt to transcend ordinary life through the power of music.
The book begins with short chapters on a couple of blues players—Harmonica Frank and the mysterious Robert Johnson, who allegedly sold his soul to the devil so he could play guitar—before moving to extended chapters on Elvis, and others.
Marcus’s project is to cross-reference American history with American music and to try and make sense of them both. It sounds like something an academic would get up to, and plenty of research went into the making of Mystery Train (at 224 pages, the Notes and Discographies section of the 2015 edition is considerably longer than the original book).
However, Marcus is one of the great rock writers, and he’s as keen on crafting unforgettable sentences as he is in explaining the meaning of rock and roll.
The perfect gift for music fans and anyone who loves artists like Elvis Presley, Randy Newman, Sly Stone, Robert Johnson, and Harmonica Frank.
In 1975, Greil Marcus’s Mystery Train changed the way readers thought about rock ’n’ roll and continues to be sought out today by music fans and anyone interested in pop culture. Looking at recordings by six key artists—Robert Johnson, Harmonica Frank, Randy Newman, the Band, Sly Stone, and Elvis Presley—Marcus offers a complex and unprecedented analysis of the relationship between rock ‘n’ roll and American culture. In this latest edition, Marcus provides an extensively updated and rewritten…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
Richard Niles was born in Hollywood but grew up in London where his 50-year professional career as a composer, arranger, record producer led to work with some of the most acclaimed artists of our time, including Paul McCartney, Ray Charles, James Brown, Tina Turner, Cher and jazz icon Pat Metheny. He has worked on 20 Gold and 28 Platinum records. He has published many books on music including The Pat Metheny Interviews, The Invisible Artist, From Dreaming to Gigging, Piano Grooves, Songwriting – The 11-Point Plan, Adventures in Arranging, Adventures in Jazz Composition, What is Melody?, and How to be an Employable Musician. Dr. Niles' PhD is from Brunel University and he has lectured internationally.
One of the most legendary producers in music history, Visconti enabled the talent and genius of ground-breaking artists such as David Bowie, Iggy Pop, T Rex, Thin Lizzy, Wings, and U2.
This is an insider’s view from a brilliant musician and arranger, an intimate view from a man whose talent earned the trust of the talented. The book is filled with fascinating personal tales of his work, and photos from his private collection.
A name synonymous with ground-breaking music, Tony Visconti has worked with the most dynamic and influential names in pop, from T.Rex and Iggy Pop to David Bowie and U2. This is the compelling life story of the man who helped shape music history, and gives a unique, first-hand insight into life in London during the late 1960s and '70s.
This memoir takes you on a roller-coaster journey through the glory days of pop music, when men wore sequins and pop could truly rock. Featuring behind-the-scenes stories of big names such as Bowie, Visconti's unique access to the hottest talent, both…
