Unsung Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll

Author: Nick Tosches
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
A look at the early history of rock music focuses on influential, but overlooked singers and musicians, including Big Joe Turner, Louis Prima, Bill Haley, The Clovers, and Screamin Jay Hawkins.

Flying Saucers Rock 'n' Roll

Author: Jake Austen
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822348497
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Book Description
The best of the cult-favorite music magazine Roctobers conversations with overlooked or forgotten artists, from the Outlaw Country singer David Allan Coe to the frustrated interstellar glam act Zolar X.

Valor

Author: Mark Lee Greenblatt
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1589799534
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
Valor features the thrilling stories that are the fruit of Mark Lee Greenblatt’s interviews with brave American servicemen from twenty-first-century wars. These soldiers, sailors, and Marines have risked their lives several times over for their country as well as for their fellow troops and civilians. Still, until now, their stories have largely gone unnoticed by the public, perhaps lost in the frenzied and often nasty debate surrounding those conflicts. As the author writes, “This generation does not have an Audie Murphy. I set out to change that with this book.” Detailing incredible and evocative feats—including an Army pilot who rescued two fellow pilots from a deadly crash in hostile territory and strapped himself to the helicopter’s exterior for the flight to the hospital—Greenblatt provides glimpses into the minds of these men as they face gut-wrenching decisions and overcome enormous odds. However, this book is much more than tales of riveting action. Each chapter goes beyond linear combat stories to explore each hero’s motivations, dreams, and the genuine emotions that were evoked in the face of extreme danger. Readers will be transported to a variety of settings—from close-quarters urban fighting in Iraq to mountainside ambushes in rural Afghanistan to a midnight rescue in the middle of the Atlantic—as they accompany the men who do not see themselves as heroes but as patriots in the line of duty.

Before Elvis

Author: Larry Birnbaum
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0810886383
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 475

Book Description
An essential work for rock fans and scholars, Before Elvis: The Prehistory of Rock 'n' Roll surveys the origins of rock 'n' roll from the minstrel era to the emergence of Bill Haley and Elvis Presley. Unlike other histories of rock, Before Elvis offers a far broader and deeper analysis of the influences on rock music. Dispelling common misconceptions, it examines rock's origins in hokum songs and big-band boogies as well as Delta blues, detailing the embrace by white artists of African-American styles long before rock 'n' roll appeared. This unique study ranges far and wide, highlighting not only the contributions of obscure but key precursors like Hardrock Gunter and Sam Theard but also the influence of celebrity performers like Gene Autry and Ella Fitzgerald. Too often, rock historians treat the genesis of rock 'n' roll as a bolt from the blue, an overnight revolution provoked by the bland pop music that immediately preceded it and created through the white appropriation of music till then played only by and for black audiences. In Before Elvis, Birnbaum daringly argues a more complicated history of rock's evolution from a heady mix of ragtime, boogie-woogie, swing, country music, mainstream pop, and rhythm-and-blues--a melange that influenced one another along the way, from the absorption of blues and boogies into jazz and pop to the integration of country and Caribbean music into rhythm-and-blues. Written in an easy style, Before Elvis presents a bold argument about rock's origins and required reading for fans and scholars of rock 'n' roll history.

King of the Jews

Author: Nick Tosches
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0066211182
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Book Description
A portrait of notorious gambler and New York businessman Arnold Rothstein examines the myths that surrounded his life, from his alleged links to the fixing of the 1919 World Series to his inspiration of literary and stage characters.

Rock'n'Roll's Strangest Moments

Author: Mike Evans
Publisher: Batsford
ISBN: 1849941815
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Book Description
Rock music, since its pre-history in blues, country music and 40s and early 50s pop, through to the well-publicised excesses of touring bands of today, has left a legacy of thousands of weird and wonderful stories in its wake. We’ve all read about the Who’s Keith Moon driving a Rolls Royce into a hotel swimming pool, but far more bizarre tales of on-the-road mayhem have never been widely told. Likewise, Svengali-like managers have manipulated starstruck musicians since rock began, though hanging your well-known client from a third floor window was a less usual way of ensuring their loyalty. And just where was the stalled hotel lift in which all four Beatles, according to legend, were turned on to marijuana? There are the unsung heroes of rock – pioneering eccentrics who helped make the music what it is and ended up as mere footnotes in the history books. Men such as UK producer Joe Meek who created seminal classics from a bed-sit above a cleaners on the Holloway Road, and the New York DJ who originally coined the phrase ‘rock 'n’roll’ and died in alcoholic poverty. Not to mention the stories behind the stars: when Debbie Harry was a 'Playboy' Bunny, Paul Simon wrote ‘Homeward Bound’ on Widnes railway station in Lancashire, and the Gallagher brothers (so they claim) were petty thieves.

CREEM

Author: Robert Matheu
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061374563
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Book Description
A retrospective of twenty years of rock-and-roll history as recorded by the popular genre magazine features iconoclastic photographs, articles, and graphic artist illustrations.

Dino

Author: Nick Tosches
Publisher: Delta
ISBN: 038533429X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 658

Book Description
From dealing blackjack in the small-time gangster town of Steubenville, Ohio, to carousing with the famous "Rat Pack" in a Hollywood he called home, Dean Martin lived in a grandstand, guttering life of booze, broads, and big money. He rubbed shoulders with the mob, the Kennedys, and Hollywood's biggest stars. He was one of America's favorite entertainers. But no one really knew him. Now Nick Tosches reveals the man behind the image--the dark side of the American dream. It's a wild, illuminating, sometimes shocking tale of sex, ambition, heartaches--and a life lived hard, fast, and without apologies.

Under Tiberius

Author: Nick Tosches
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
ISBN: 0316405655
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Book Description
A work of dangerous and haunting beauty by America's last real literary outlaw. Under Tiberius is a thrilling story of crime and deceit involving the man who came to be called Jesus Christ. Deep in the recesses of the Vatican, Nick Tosches unearths a first-century memoir by Gaius Fulvius Falconius, foremost speechwriter for Emperor Tiberius. The codex is profound, proof of the existence of a Messiah who was anything but the one we've known -- a shabby and licentious thief. After encountering him in the streets of Judea, Gaius becomes spin doctor to Jesus, and the pair schemes to accrue untold riches by convincing the masses that Jesus is the Son of God. As their marriage of truth and lies is consummated, friendship and wary respect develop between these two grifters. Outrageous and disturbing, Under Tiberius is as black as the ravishing night, shot through with fierce and brilliant light.

And on Piano... Nicky Hopkins

Author: Julian Dawson
Publisher: Backstage Press
ISBN: 9780984436224
Category : Pianists
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The Beatles. The Rolling Stones. The Who. The Kinks. Jefferson Airplane. Joe Cocker. Quicksilver Messenger Service. The Yardbirds. Harry Nilsson. At the heart of their music, and of hundreds of others, was one man with a piano: Nicky Hopkins. This is the definitive work on rock music's greatest session player, and one of its unsung heroes.