Books by Holly George-Warren
Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: A Musical Journey
by Peter Guralnick, Robert Santelli, Christopher John Farley, Holly George-Warren
A companion to the groundbreaking PBS documentary series, this volume is a unique and timeless celebration of the blues, from writers and artists as esteemed and revered as the music that moved them.
Included in this stunning collection are Essays by David Halberstam, Hilton Als, Suzan-Lori Parks, Elmore Leonard, Luc Sante, John Edgar Wideman, and many others Timeless archival pieces by writers such as Stanley Booth, Paul Oliver, and Mack McCormick Evocative color illustrations and rare vintage photography Illuminating and in-depth conversations and portraits of musicians, ranging from Robert Johnson and Bessie Smith to John Lee Hooker and Eric Clapton Lyrics of legendary blues compositions Personal essays by the series directors Martin Scorsese, Charles Burnett, Richard Pearce, Wim Wenders, Marc Levin, Mike Figgis, and Clint Eastwood Excerpts from literary masters James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and William FaulknerTracing the art form's path from juke joints, house parties, and recording studios to musicians such as Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, and The Beatles, Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues proves, in the words of Willie Dixon, "The blues are the roots; every-thing else is the fruits."
Copies
No copies available.
Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: A Musical Journey
by Peter Guralnick, Robert Santelli, Christopher John Farley, Holly George-Warren
Rock & roll, jazz, R&B, hip-hop: Without question, today's most popular sounds owe an incalculable debt to that uniquely American musical creation -- The Blues. But the powerful influence of the blues, with its dramatic, artful storytelling about the elemental experience of being alive, is found in the works of some of our most important literary voices as well.
This volume -- a companion to the groundbreaking seven-part documentary series Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues -- represents a literary sampler every bit as vibrant and original and diverse as the films and music that inspired it. Included in this stunning collection are newly commissioned essays by David Halberstam, Hilton Als, Suzan-Lori Parks, Elmore Leonard, Luc Sante, John Edgar Wideman, and others; timeless archival pieces by the likes of Stanley Booth, Paul Oliver, and Mack McCormick; evocative color illustrations and rare vintage photography; illuminating and in-depth conversations and portraits of musicians, ranging from Robert Johnson and Bessie Smith to John Lee Hooker and Eric Clapton; lyrics of legendary blues compositions; personal essays by the series directors Martin Scorsese, Charles Burnett, Richard Pearce, Wim Wenders, Marc Levin, Mike Figgis, and Clint Eastwood; and excerpts from such literary masters as James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison, Eudora Welty and Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and William Faulkner.
The result is a unique and timeless celebration of the blues, from writers and artists as esteemed and revered as the music that moved them. In these pages one not only reads about the blues, one hears them, feels them, lives them. Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues is more than a timeless collection of great writing to be savored and shared: it is an unforgettable initiation into the very essence of American music and culture.
Copies
No copies available.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, The: The First 25 Years
One of music journalism’s most celebrated writers takes you behind the scenes of the hallowed temple of rock and roll in this in-depth retrospective of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Holly George-Warren, author of Punk 365, Grateful Dead 365, and co-author of The Road to Woodstock, offers a penetrating look at every musician, writer, producer, and performer inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame during its first twenty-five years. George-Warren recounts in detail their careers, influences, greatest hits, and tons of behind-the-scenes lore, along with hundreds of transcriptions of acceptance and induction speeches from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s vast archives that have never been published anywhere ever before. An unforgettable story accompanied by dozens of dazzling photographs, this unique compendium of rock’s greatest achievers is a crucial treasure for music lovers everywhere.
Copies
No copies available.
Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry
The only performer to earn 5 stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Gene Autry was the singing cowboy king of American entertainment. Now, in Public Cowboy No.1, Holly George-Warren offers the first serious biography of this singular individual, in a fascinating narrative that traces Autry's climb from small-town farm boy to multimillionaire. Here for the first time Autry the legend becomes a flesh-and-blood man--with all the passions, triumphs, and tragedies of a flawed icon. George-Warren recounts stories never before told, including revelations about Autry's impoverished boyhood, his adventures as an up-and-coming singer, and the impact his unbelievable success had on his personal life. The book provides equally colorful details of Autry's lengthy radio and recording career, which included such classics as "Back in the Saddle Again" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"; his movie career, where he breathed new life into the Western genre; and his role in early television. And along the way, we see how he invested shrewdly in radio, real-estate, and television, becoming the only entertainer listed among 1990's Fortune 400. Based on exclusive access to Gene Autry's personal papers, as well as interviews with more than 100 relatives, employees, colleagues, and friends, this engaging biography brings to life a major Hollywood star--a man who, more than anyone else, put Western music and style on the American cultural map.
Copies
No copies available.
A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton, From Box Tops to Big Star to Backdoor Man
The first biography of the artist who “essentially invented indie and alternative rock” (Spin)
A brilliant and influential songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist, the charismatic Alex Chilton was more than a rock star—he was a true cult icon. Awardwinning music writer Holly George-Warren’s A Man Called Destruction is the first biography of this enigmatic artist, who died in 2010. Covering Chilton’s life from his early work with the charttopping Box Tops and the seminal power-pop band Big Star to his experiments with punk and roots music and his sprawling solo career, A Man Called Destruction is the story of a musical icon and a richly detailed chronicle of pop music’s evolution, from the mid-1960s through today’s indie rock.
Copies
-
$24.00
The Cowgirl Way: Hats Off to America's Women of the West
The 1840s ushered in the beginning of the largest migration in US history. People in crowded Eastern cities and Missouri River towns were feeling the pull of the Western frontier. It was the dawn of a new era of expansion, and over the next few decades, the making of a new kind of pioneer. It was the birth of the cowgirl!
Welcome to the world of nimble equestriennes, hawkeyed sharpshooters, sly outlaws, eloquent legislators, expert wranglers and talented performers who made eyes pop and jaws drop with their skills, savvy and bravery. In this fascinating account of an ever-evolving American icon, Holly George-Warren invites readers to saddle up with a host of these trailblazers who helped settle the West and define the cowgirl spirit.
Copies
No copies available.
Shake, Rattle and Roll: The Founders of Rock and Roll
by Holly George-Warren, Laura Levine
An introduction to the pioneers of rock-and-roll music highlights the careers of fourteen artists who, nearly fifty years ago, created a brand-new sound and changed the course of popular music forever.
Copies
No copies available.
Shake, Rattle & Roll: The Founders of Rock & Roll
From Bill Haley and His Comets to James Brown and his Famous Flames, this fun and fact-filled introduction to the pioneers of rock & roll will have you dancing in the aisles. These are fourteen original stars who created a brand-new sound almost fifty years ago—they influenced a generation of teenagers and inspired many of today’s most important musicians.
Copies
No copies available.
Grateful Dead 365
In 1965, the Grateful Dead came to life in the heart of San Francisco’s hippie counterculture. Founding members Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Ron Pigpen” McKernan, Phil Lesh, and Bill Kreutzmann (and soon after, Mickey Hart) created a unique blend of improvisational rock, folk, blues, and psychedelia, and the Dead went on to become one of the greatest jam bands of all time, releasing more than ten studio albums and touring constantly for legions of Deadheads. In Grateful Dead 365, five decades of intimate portraits, candid backstage shots, and colorful performance images take reader
Copies
No copies available.
Punk 365
Thirty-plus years ago a dark rumble of noise gurgled up from the Lower East Side of New York City, made its way across the Atlantic to Great Britain, zigzagged back over the pond to the West Coast, and exploded. Its namePunk. InPunk 365, the most provocative photography documenting the performances, the looks, and the attitude has been gathered together, revealing reverberations that continue to shake up the status quo.
Here we see it all: Pre-punk pioneers, the Stooges, the New York Dolls, the MC5. New Yorks harbingers of change, the Ramones, Patti Smith, Richard Hell & the Voidoids. Londons anarchists, the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Slits. The West Coasts anti-Beach Boys, X, the Germs . . .the list goes on. By the mid-1980s, from the Replacements to Bad Brains, the sound transmogrified into everything from garage punk to hardcore. Punk 365 has them all, including more than 300 different artists by the most talented photographers who captured the scene, including Bob Gruen, Roberta Bayley, Jill Furmanovsky, Stephanie Chernikowski, Godlis, Janette Beckman, and more.
Copies
No copies available.
The Appalachians: America's First and Last Frontier
by Robert Santelli, Holly George-Warren, Mari-Lynn Evans
In a time when the world has become a global village and America a global nation, there is one place where things are largely as they used to be. Protected by mountains, largely ignored by modern industry and developers, Appalachia is America’s first and last frontier. Encom-passing more than 195,000 square miles in thirteen states, it possesses the least understood and most underappreciated culture in the United States.
A beautifully produced companion volume to the PBS documentary narrated by Naomi Judd, The Appalachians fills the void in information about the region, offering a rich portrait of its history and its legacy in music, literature, and film.
The text includes essays by some of Appalachia’s most respected scholars and journalists; excerpts from never-before-published diaries and journals; firsthand recollections from native Appalachians including Loretta Lynn, Ricky Skaggs, and Ralph Stanley; indigenous song lyrics and poetry; and oral histories from common folk whose roots run strong and deep. The book also includes more than one hundred illustrations, both archival and newly created. Here is a wondrous book celebrating a unique and invaluable cultural heritage.
Copies
No copies available.
Janis: Her Life and Music
Longlisted for the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence
This blazingly intimate biography of Janis Joplin establishes the Queen of Rock & Roll as the rule-breaking musical trailblazer and complicated, gender-bending rebel she was.
Janis Joplin’s first transgressive act was to be a white girl who gained an early sense of the power of the blues, music you could only find on obscure records and in roadhouses along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast. But even before that, she stood out in her conservative oil town. She was a tomboy who was also intellectually curious and artistic. By the time she reached high school, she had drawn the scorn of her peers for her embrace of the Beats and her racially progressive views. Her parents doted on her in many ways, but were ultimately put off by her repeated acts of defiance.
Janis Joplin has passed into legend as a brash, impassioned soul doomed by the pain that produced one of the most extraordinary voices in rock history. But in these pages, Holly George-Warren provides a revelatory and deeply satisfying portrait of a woman who wasn’t all about suffering. Janis was a perfectionist: a passionate, erudite musician who was born with talent but also worked exceptionally hard to develop it. She was a woman who pushed the boundaries of gender and sexuality long before it was socially acceptable. She was a sensitive seeker who wanted to marry and settle down—but couldn’t, or wouldn’t. She was a Texan who yearned to flee Texas but could never quite get away—even after becoming a countercultural icon in San Francisco.
Written by one of the most highly regarded chroniclers of American music history, and based on unprecedented access to Janis Joplin’s family, friends, band mates, archives, and long-lost interviews, Janis is a complex, rewarding portrait of a remarkable artist finally getting her due.
Copies
No copies available.
Janis: Her Life and Music
This extraordinarily intimate and “gripping” (Vanity Fair) biography of Janis Joplin establishes the Queen of Rock & Roll as the rule-breaking musical trailblazer and complicated, gender-bending rebel she was.
Janis Joplin’s first transgressive act was to be a white girl who gained an early sense of the power of the blues, music you could only find on obscure records and in roadhouses along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast. But even before that, she stood out in her conservative oil town. She was a tomboy who was also intellectually curious and artistic. By the time she reached high school, she had drawn the scorn of her peers for her embrace of the Beats and her racially progressive views. Her parents doted on her in many ways, but were ultimately put off by her repeated acts of defiance.
Janis Joplin has become a legend known as a brash, impassioned soul doomed by the pain that produced one of the most extraordinary voices in rock history. But in these pages, Holly George-Warren provides a revelatory and deeply satisfying portrait of a woman who wasn’t all about suffering. Janis was a perfectionist: a passionate, erudite musician who was born with talent but also worked exceptionally hard to develop it. She was a woman who pushed the boundaries of gender and sexuality long before it was socially acceptable. She was a sensitive seeker who wanted to marry and settle down—but couldn’t, or wouldn’t. She was a Texan who yearned to flee Texas but could never quite get away—even after becoming a countercultural icon in San Francisco.
Written by one of the most highly regarded chroniclers of American music history, and based on unprecedented access to Janis Joplin’s family, friends, band mates, archives, and long-lost interviews, Janis is the “significance-establishing project Joplin appreciators have been waiting for” (The New York Times Book Review).
Copies
No copies available.
It's Not Only Rock 'n' Roll: Iconic Musicians Reveal the Source of Their Creativity
by Holly George-Warren, Dr. Jenny Boyd
B. B. King, Joni Mitchell, Keith Richards, Queen Latifah, and more than 70 other iconic musicians discuss the creative process in exclusive interviews
"I was amazed at how many people have shared an experience I thought was so rare." —Eric Clapton
In this exciting, original, and inspiring book, 75 of the world's most iconic musicians reveal, many for the first time, their thoughts on creating music. Psychologist Jenny Boyd has probed the minds and souls of these artists and has delved into the drive to create, the importance of nurturing creativity, the role of unconscious influences, and the effects of chemicals and drugs on the creative process. Music legends who contributed exclusive interviews include Rosanne Cash, Eric Clapton, David Crosby, Mick Fleetwood, George Harrison, John Lee Hooker, Branford Marsalis, Stevie Nicks, Bonnie Raitt, Ravi Shankar, Ringo Starr, Ice-T, and Warren Zevon. With candid photographs and in-depth analysis of what makes great musicians tick, this will be of interest to any musician or music fan.
Copies
No copies available.