Music from The Replacements and Woodstock through Spirituals and the Blues

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Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements (Da Capo), by Bob Mehr

The Replacements were the most beloved punk rock band to emerge from Minneapolis’ flourishing scene in the 1980s. Veteran rock critic Bob Mehr chronicles their story in lavish detail with Trouble Boys. The title refers not only to the druggy alcoholic blur that enveloped the band but also to the troubled life of guitarist Bob Stinson, who was eventually fired. Despite (or because of?) their troubles, guitarist Paul Westerberg became one of his generation’s finest songwriters. Mehr interviewed band members, family, friends and associates in preparation for his monumental piece of rock journalism. 

Small Town Talk: Bob Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix & Friends in the Wild Years of Woodstock (Da Capo), by Barney Hoskyns

The organizers of the Woodstock festival were unable to hold the event within the borders of the small town of Woodstock and were forced to stage it 60 miles distant. But so great was Woodstock’s countercultural cachet that they kept the name. British music biographer Barney Hoskyns explains why. Woodstock’s image as an artist colony drew folksingers in the 1950s and folk-music manager Albert Grossman by the early ’60s, which triggered the arrival of Bob Dylan and a growing cadre of prominent musicians. Hoskyns doesn’t over glamorize the time or the place and finds fault with many of the figures he describes. Of the notorious Woodstock festival, Hoskyns gives the brutal truth: Watching the movie “is like watching footage from a war zone.” 

Buck ’Em!: The Autobiography of Buck Owens (Backbeat Books), by Buck Owens with Randy Poe

Buck Owens was working on his autobiography, recording hours of memories on tape, when he died. The raw material needed only a professional writer to mold it. Now in paperback, Buck ’Em! traces the rise and partial fall of one of the most esteemed country singers since Hank Williams. By 1960 Owens had chucked the syrupy pop productions of Nashville for the Bakersfield sound, whose Telecaster guitars and drum kits alluded to rock ’n’ roll without succumbing to it. Owens became a household name on the wacky comedy “Hee Haw,” but the TV show’s spoof of rural America turned off his fan base. Owens persevered and survived to become a touchstone for country without compromise.

Woody Guthrie and the Dust Bowl Ballads (Abrams ComicArts), by Nick Hayes

With sepia tones and sharply drawn lines accompanying succinctly descriptive text blocks, Nick Hayes recounts Woody Guthrie’s early life in the form of a graphic novel. The fictional dimension gives Hayes license to mythologize his subject, setting him on an odyssey across a land where boom had turned to bust. In a troubled time, Guthrie took on the role of megaphone for those without a voice. Hayes carries his story through Guthrie’s 1940 arrival in New York, where he finally found a national audience.

Harry T. Burleigh: From the Spiritual to the Harlem Renaissance (University of Illinois Press), by Jean E. Snyder

Few white Americans ever entered a black church in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but many were exposed to spirituals through the arrangements of Harry T. Burleigh. In ethnomusicologist Jean E. Snyder’s account, Burleigh was aware of his duality as an African American educated in the European conservatory tradition who transformed spirituals into art song. Burleigh’s encounter with Antonín Dvořák influenced the Czech composer’s New World Symphony—and he was influenced in turn by Dvořák’s quest for the folk roots of classical music. 

Waiting for Buddy Guy: Chicago Blues at the Crossroads (University of Illinois Press), by Alan Harper

Waiting for Buddy Guy isn’t about Buddy Guy, albeit the blues guitar master is mentioned many times. Author Alan Harper was a young British blues enthusiast when he embarked on a Chicago sojourn in the late ’70s and early ’80s. He has written a memoir of those days’ old timers, who began performing in the 1920s and still turned up on bandstands in corner bars. Harper wrestles with questions concerning the African American audience’s abandonment of the blues and whether white musicians can play (or sing) the music authentically. He had a beer or two with many musicians and promoters, stored a wealth of anecdotes and writes (unlike many music writers) self-effacingly—aware that he is not the main subject of interest.

Radicalism & Music (Wesleyan University Press), by Jonathan Pieslak

One thing Al Qaeda, neo-Nazi skinheads and animal-rights extremists share: a love of music. In Radicalism & Music, City College of New York professor Jonathan Pieslak explores Islamist, skinhead, Christian Identity and militant environmentalist subcultures and finds music was often pivotal in the radicalization of adherents. That the Islamists can’t even call the music that inspires them music (which is banned in their narrow interpretation of Sharia) is only one irony that arises. Pieslak investigates the links between Wade Page, Milwaukee’s Sikh Temple of Wisconsin shooter, and the racist hardcore punk scene (he led his own band, End Apathy). Pieslak’s point is that music’s power to rouse emotion at the expense of reason drives many dangerous ideas.

Stan Levey Jazz Heavyweight (Santa Monica Press), by Frank R. Hayde

Stan Levey played with many great jazz musicians including Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. As Charlie Watts writes in his forward to Jazz Heavyweight, Levey could “hold a tempo on top of a tempo,” a feat of athleticism as well as rhythm made possible by Levey’s years in the boxing ring. “That’s what I think kept him in great shape for that sort of thing,” Watts explains. The book’s author, Frank R. Hayde, alternates his own passages with lengthy quotes from Levey, positioning Jazz Heavyweight halfway between biography and autobiography.