Books like Simple Dreams — picked by fans

Iconic feminist, philosopher, and activist Angela Y. Davis put African American women at the center of the story of the blues, expanding our understanding of a genre usually presented as the purview of male artists. Discussing the music and careers of 1920s blues superstars Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith and 1930s jazz vocalist Billie Holiday, who was deeply influenced by the blues, Davis approaches the blues as music innovated, popularized, and consumed by African American women. She pays close attention to the impact of gender, race, and class on artists and audiences, and shows how these artists and their fans used blues music as entertainment, self-expression, social commentary, political critique, resistance, and survival.

Not everyone who loves and admires this folk musician, the half-sister of Pete Seeger and a longtime collector of English folk ballads, knows her as the songwriter behind Roberta Flack’s hit “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face;” hence the title. The quirky style of this real page-turner provides fantastic stories of folk heritage, song collecting, love, child-rearing, radio performance activism, encounters with English Travelers, travels to China, and life growing up as a daughter of the ethnomusicologist Charles Seeger.

The child of Communist parents, Alix would grow up to be one of the most profound movers and shakers of the lesbian music movement, producing the first full-length lesbian album, Lavender Jane Loves Women, in 1973. But this memoir is a series of chapters on her early years growing up in the 1950s with progressive activists and folk club life, embarking on her own career in the folk circuit, singing against the backdrop of repressive politics, and coming into the women’s movement as a married mother about to fall in love with another woman.

A lead vocalist of the Billboard-charting girl group Fanny, a rock sensation of the 1970s, June continues to publish rollicking memoirs of growing up in the Philippines, relocating to white American suburbia, and starting a band with her sister Jean. Now featured in the independent documentary film “Fanny: The Right to Rock,” June and her former bandmates hope to see Fanny inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The book covers years of wild gigs, how the band negotiated twin pressures of racism and sexism, and recording alongside a range of celebrities--including Barbra Streisand.

If there is any cultural icon that defines this era, it is music.

Positively 4th Street chronicles the personal and musical lives of these four, a portrait of extravagant, quarrelsome genius and the transformation of folk music from academic song-collecting to an era-defining musical form, by way of Greenwich Village, the anti-war movement, and shifting personal entanglements.

When my son was a rocking toddler, he needed everything just so—a twisted guitar strap could ruin his gig. We both drew inspiration from Elizabeth Cotten, who managed to play guitar despite being left-handed and teaching herself upside down and backwards. By the age of 11, Cotten had written “Freight Train,” one of the most famous folk songs of the last century. Take that, perfectionism.

“Joni Mitchell painted with words,” begins this beautifully lyrical book on the well-known singer/song-writer. The colorful and imaginative collage illustrations jump off the page, telling the story of the girl from a small town in Canada who vanquished polio to go on to become a household name. Joni Mitchell used poetry to paint her feelings into song. We know her music and lyrics as a familiar soundtrack to our lives; now children can learn about the enigmatic spirit behind all that creative musicality.

Nashville-based singer-songwriter Margo Price is the real deal.

Her beginnings were humble, and her struggles have been many. Her memoir takes you on the road with her through bad low-paying, low-attended early gigs, drinking, and drugs. Price's marriage/creative partnership is tender and beautiful, yet becomes fragile as it shoulders the unbearable loss of a newborn son.

Through it all, you can feel Price’s grit and determination to survive with her soul intact, making it in an industry that pressures artists to conform to its priorities and sets them up to fail when they resist- or simply try to be themselves.

Price’s music is the soundtrack to her courageous story in progress. In the best possible way, this book reads like the liner notes: honest, heartfelt, and profound.   

Kristin Hersh’s book documents a pivotal year in the Throwing Muses’ singer and songwriter’s life. The book is at times funny and warm, sometimes confounding – she befriended Betty Hutton, an American film star in the 30s. What?! As I was reading the book, memories of seeing her band in the early 90s kept flashing through my mind – the intensity of her performances and songs make a lot more sense after reading her story.

I love books that inspire me and remind me that there is a way to overcome every hardship, if we will just keep our heads up and make the right choices. Tess Wakefield makes me remember too, that no matter what, there is always someone who will want to help, in the best way they know how. Her main characters, Cassie and Luke, do all the right things for all the wrong reasons, or maybe all the wrong things, for all the right reasons. They do suffer the consequences of those choices, but they learn a lot about themselves along the way. My favorite thing about Purple Hearts is how it teaches us that life is short and that we shouldn’t live with regrets.