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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorDream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke
Peter Guralnick · 759 pages
Acclaimed Elvis biographer Peter Guralnick returns with a revealing portrait of Sam Cooke--a black performer who appealed to white audiences, wrote his own songs, and controlled his own business destiny. Fully capturing Cooke's accomplishments, "Dream Boogie" also conveys the astonishing richness of the black America of this era. 55 b/w photos.
The One: The Life and Music of James Brown
R.J. Smith · 455 pages
A tribute to the life and achievements of the "Godfather of Soul" covers his unconventional youth in a segregated South, his complicated family life, and his work as a civil rights advocate and entrepreneur.
Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original
Robin D.G. Kelley · 588 pages
His angular melodies and dissonant harmonies shook the jazz world to its foundations, ushering in the birth of "bebop" and establishing Monk as one of America's greatest composers. Yet throughout much of his life, his musical contribution took a backseat to tales of his reputed behavior. Writers tended to obsess over Monk's hats or his proclivity to dance on stage. To his fans, he was the ultimate
Kill 'Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul
James McBride · 244 pages
"A product of the complicated history of the American South, James Brown was a cultural shape-shifter who arguably had the greatest influence of any artist on American popular music. Brown was long a figure of fascination for James McBride, a noted professional musician as well as a writer. When he received a tip that promised to uncover the man behind the myth, McBride set off to follow a trail t
Garcia: An American Life
Blair Jackson · 580 pages
"Garcia: An American Life is the first comprehensive biography of the late leader and guitarist of the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia (1942-1995). Garcia's saga courses through some of the most fascinating epochs of postwar American history: From the flowering of Haight-Ashbury through Woodstock and Altamont, the Dead became synonymous with the libertine values of the late'60s counterculture, and Gar
Petty: The Biography
Warren Zanes · 323 pages
Zanes provides an honest and evocative examination of Petty's music, and the remarkable rock and roll history he and his band helped to write. Petty was a kid without a whole lot of promise; rock and roll made it otherwise. His story has all the drama of a rock and roll epic. Dark and mysterious, Petty manages to come back, again and again, showing us what the music can do and where it can take us
Bird Lives!: The High Life & Hard Times of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker
Ross Russell · 404 pages
Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson
Peter Ames Carlin · 352 pages
Crazy Diamond: Syd Barrett and the Dawn of Pink Floyd
Mike Watkinson, Pete Anderson · 192 pages
This Is a Call: The Life and Times of Dave Grohl
Paul Brannigan · 400 pages
The epic story of a singular career that includes Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age, and Them Crooked Vultures. Based on ten years of original, exclusive interviews with the man himself and conversations with a legion of musical associates like Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, DC punk legend Ian MacKaye, and Nevermind producer Butch Vig, this is Grohl₂s story. He speaks ca
Kansas City Lightning
Stanley Crouch · 382 pages
The first installment in the long-awaited portrait of one of the most talented and influential musicians of the twentieth century. Charlie Parker personified the tortured American artist: a revolutionary performer who used his alto saxophone to create a new music known as bebop even as he wrestled with a drug addiction that would lead to his death at 34. With the wisdom of a jazz scholar, the cult
Jimi Hendrix: Electric Gypsy
Harry Shapiro, Caesar Glebbeek · 723 pages
Biography of the rock musician's life from his boyhood to his tragic death.
Starman: David Bowie - The Definitive Biography
Paul Trynka
No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan
Robert Shelton · 573 pages
Explores the artistic and spiritual births, deaths, and rebirths, the guises and incarnations, that are Bob Dylan.
Beethoven
Maynard Solomon · 400 pages
Maynard Solomon's Beethoven, first published in 1977, was instantly hailed as a major reinterpretation of the life, personality, and works of the enigmatic genius. Now, a generation later, the book has been thoroughly revised, updated, and expanded by the author to incorporate new materials and the findings of later research. Solomon divides Beethoven's life and works into four periods. In part o
Johannes Brahms: A Biography
Jan Swafford · 736 pages
Jan Swafford takes a fresh look at Brahms, giving us for the first time a fully realized portrait of the man who created the magnificent music. Brahms was a man with many friends and no intimates, who experienced triumphs few artists achieve in their lifetime. Yet he lived with a relentless loneliness and a growing fatalism about the future of music and the world. The Brahms that emerges from the
Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin
Myra Friedman · 333 pages
Pearl: The Obsessions and Passions of Janis Joplin
Ellis Amburn · 378 pages
Jimi Hendrix: The Man, the Magic, the Truth
Sharon Lawrence · 360 pages
The Jimi Hendrix legend has lived on longer than the man, who died in 1970 at the age of twenty-seven. More than thirty years later, what the world knows about him has become deeply distorted. Now Sharon Lawrence, a trusted friend of Jimi's in the final years of his astonishing life, has written a serious exploration of his life, death, and enduring legacy, based partly on the author's never-befor
Strange Fascination: David Bowie: The Definitive Story
David Buckley · 688 pages
Never Fade Away: The Kurt Cobain Story
Dave Thompson · 172 pages