Do Not Sell at Any Price

Do Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World's Rarest 78 rpm Records by Amanda Petrusich, © 2014, 288 pgs.

This was a fun read for the Rn'B book group. Petrusich is a freelance music writer working on a story about the rise in vinyl sales (at the time in 2014 they were trending up; in 2025 they reached a billion in sales) when she's tipped off to a sub-sub genre of record collector--the 78 collector. For the unvitiated, 78s were the original records, made of shellac, very heavy and very fragile--if you dropped it on the floor it would shatter like a plate. These records spin at 78 revolutions-per-minute (or rpm's) and were typically played on the only players available at the time, the victrola. Millions of 78s were sold in the 20s and 30s before the techonolgy improved and turned to the vinyl records we know today. When that happened, 78s fell by the wayside, collecting dust in basements, attics and landfills. But in the 60s and 70s, a rag-tag group fell in love with them, particularly the 78s that were recorded by some of the earliest blues players. In fact, many of the recordings we have today of these musicians were sourced directly from the collections of 78 enthusiasts. Blues artists like Ma Rainey, Charlie Patton and Skip James would be lost to time. The author takes a deep dive into the materials, catching the 78-collector bug and begins trying to find her own rare blues records. 

Chet: King Picker and Pioneer of the Nashville Sound

 Chet: King Picker and Pioneer of the Nashville Sound by Mark Ribowsky, 352 pgs. © 2026

    

Oh by jingo, this is the second! book about Chet Atkins that was published in the last year. It makes youwonder what's pushing the renewed interest--is there a viral Tik-Tok out there using Mr. Sandman in the background? Nonetheless, if you're a guitar geek or a country music afficionado, there's much to learn from this offering by Ribowsky, who published a spirited, researched bio on the legendary Hank Williams about a decade ago. 

    This book is the origin story of the original guitar hero--born in a holler in rural Tennessee, life was "Steinbeck-ian," living in a one-room country shack with a few siblings. He developed asthma early on (which kept him from entering the army during the draft), but fell in love with the guitar his older brother brought home--a beat-up Silvertone (interestingly, his older brother also had a fine career as a guitar player, performing with the Les Paul Trio for many years). He wanted the guitar so bad that all of his brother's chores in exchange for playing it, which he did until his fingers bled. He would sit at the radio and listen to broadcasts, trying to figure out what guitarists were doing in their playing. 

    His love for the music of Merle Travis influenced his unique thumb-picking style, which incorporated his other fingers to play the higher notes of a melody, something no one else was really doing at the time. He became known for lighting fast guitar licks and attention to detail. Fast-forward to his 20s and he's finally broken through in Nashville with RCA records and has become a highly-sought out producer, working with Elvis, Perry Como, Patsy Cline and countless more. His dedication to developing a "Nashville Sound" helped make Nashville the music capital is widely known as today. He was still working out licks on his guitar well into his 70s, right up until he passed away in 2001. 

BLOOD HARMONY

 Blood Harmony: The Everly Brothers Story, by Barry Mazor, 2025, 416 pgs. 

Finally, a much needed bio about two of the most influential singers in 1950s popular music. The Everly Brothers--Don and Phil-- got an early start thanks to their parents, especially their father Ike, who was in his won right a guitar wiz who showed Merle Travis how to thumb pick. This is well-written and extensively researched; it doesn't get more definitive than this. But I think you've got to be a real fan of the group. As far as music bios go, there's not a lot of action here. Out of the two, Don seems to be the creative force but also the one mostly on edge. I was flabbergasted to learn he was married 4 times. He would get deep into a relationship, get married, have kids and then meet someone else and start all over. Phil (the younger brother) was more easy going and care free. Their parents would work to get them on radio shows as a singing family, eventually realizing that the two brothers could sing well enough for themselves. As they started writing their own songs and working to get them published, their youthful good looks and tight harmonies brought teens and girls from all over the country to see them perform. Don was such a Bo Diddley fan that he borrowed a chunking-rhythm riff for the intro to Wake Up Little Susie. After that the boys were off and running. They reached critical mass in the 70s when they couldn't seem to stay in the charts and the brothers had had enough of each other, separating and not speaking for nearly a decade. They reunited in the 80s with some success and their influence solidified by groups like The Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel. Still, a must read for one of the all time greatest vocal duos. 

YOU NEVER GIVE ME YOUR MONEY

 You Never Give Me Your Money: The Beatles after the Breakup, by Peter Doggett, 2012, 386 pgs

Fab four? More like drab four. If you're a fan, this book is sure to take the group down a notch or two on your "greatest bands ever" list. Very in-depth and well-researched, Doggett's focus here is how The Beatles became less of a band and more of a corporate entity--one that they were not really ready to handle, seeing how they had little experience in business to begin with. After Sgt. Peppers, the group's solidarity is starting to fray, mostly due to creative differences, but also due to the fact that three members (minus McCartney) are doing copious amounts of drugs. Lennon seems to lose a sense of self that his best friend Paul cannot fill the void for. As a result, Lennon finds creativity and meaning in his relationship with avant-garde artist Yoko Ono. Towards the official end, the group gets a new manager that McCartney does not want. Egos get petty, insults get personal (and published in tabloids). Subsidiaries of Apple Corps are created, shell companies to help them ease the tax burden and earn more on royalties than they have before. Eventually, the friendship is in such disarray that everyone essentially goes their own way, trying to create solo music and rebuild a singular identity separate from The Beatles--which proves extremely difficult. Their entire lives, the four men are bombarded with questions about reunions. This book also helps to dispel some of the 'John as saint' myths after he was murdered outside the Dakota building where he and Ono had been living. Harrison sort of grew to despise the group, even denying the possibility for new material to be released (until he needed money from the Taxman, of course). I've often thought that they if the would have compromised in 1969--they could have stayed as The Beatles, but just release 4 solo albums all together in one package--sort of like OutKast did with Speakerboxx/The Love Below. It's fun to imagine, but it was not to be. They were the biggest band in the history of pop music, even to this day, but they still could not escape the machinations of money, lawyers and ultimately, themselves. 

Waiting for Britney Spears

 Waiting for Britney Spears: A True Story, Allegedly by Jeff Weiss, 388 pgs. 

This is a humdinger of a book. Punchy, first-person writing that keeps the reader hooked all the way to the end--even if you're not a Britney Spears fan, which I am not. The book kicks off with the author, before he's even published anything, accidently wandering into his high school gym right after graduation and stumbling upon the video shoot for the song "Hit Me Baby (One More Time)." That scene kicks off the rest of the story, as the author talks his way into a job at a popular tabloid magazine in L.A. where he's assigned the 'Britney' beat, alongside a charismatic but glory-hungry paparazzi photographer. Together, they capture Britney's worst moments for tabloid fodder. Though he knows he's contributing to the self-immolation of America's favorite pop-star, Weiss can't help but feel guilty and wonder if we've lost sight of the person Britney is as opposed to the icon we all expect her to be. I would occasionally catch headlines over the years, but never really knew what was going on with Spears, but I was surprised at how much I remembered from this book. I don't know if I fully believe the author's guilt, given that's he's writing this today, at a time when it's been pretty widely recognized that Spears was mistreated and abused by everyone around her--he has the benefit of hindsight. To wit, none of his stories that he filed about Spears make an appearance here. Nonetheless, if you're gonna read a Britney book, can't go wrong with this one. Reads like a gonzo-tabloid self-confessional. 

Dreams

 Dreams: The Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac by Mark Blake, 432 pgs. © 2024

It took me a bit of time to get used to the structure of this book--it's not written as a narrative history of the band but more as episodes and vignettes of the band members and the songwriting that came about--of course, filled with anecdotes about the absolute dysfunction of the group as a whole. Really, there were two Fleetwood Macs--in the mid 60's they were doing what everyone in Britain was doing at the time, chasing the American blues sound. That was before their guitarists left the band and were ultimately and, pretty much on a whim, replaced with Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, two LA-based songwriters who were strapped for cash and looking to make it musically. Along with Christie McVie, there were now three official songwriters in the group. The band became so well known for their romantic entanglements with each other (and the copious amounts of cocaine they ingested) it's a miracle they were able to maintain the group the way they have over the decades. At a certain point, it's obvious that the band members are really just enamored of the money and lifestyle they've been able to achieve and each subsequent album and tour was really a call-to-arms for making cash, as opposed to creating something of artistic value. Be that as it may, the band were able to consistently recreate pop hits well into the late 80s. It was interesting to learn about Stevie Nicks--such a polarizing figure. I don't know how you write songs for a living when you can't play any instruments. But her voice was and is so unique--it's one of the voices you recognize immediately when you hear it. Her kitschy mysticism routine was inspried by both Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Throw in Buckingham's need to push the musical envelope and you have had something different entirely from anything else on the radio in 1977. 

MOOD MACHINE

Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist by Liz Pelly, 288 pgs. © 2025

This was a great book, lots of in-depth reporting and reminiscent of Naomi Kline's writing style--Mood Machine dives headfirst into the the machinations of Spotify to disrupt the music industry--and to extract wealth from it. We've all heard that Spotify doesn't pay artists enough, and in some cases they don't bother paying them at all. But that's only the start of it--for the last decade Spotify has struggled and connived it's way to the top of the music streaming food chain by encouraging artists to create similar music that is popular or tending on the app--resulting in a "flattening" of the culture. While Pelly doesn't explicitly uncover any actual criminality, she does call for government agencies to shine lights into this organization and asks the reader what kind of streaming service would be better for everyone involved. She paints a damning portrait of yet another tech-bro company run-amok that cares little about how it affects creatives, artists and even paying subscribers. The wealthy have turned streaming music into an asset class to be used to generate even more income, leaving actual songwriters with even less. Other music streaming companies are just as complicit but Spotify stands out because it's essentially an advertising company masquerading as a music streaming company. I really wasn't using Spotify before and I definitely won't now. 

JOHN AND PAUL

 John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs by Ian Leslie, © 2025, 448 pgs.

Love the Beatles but never really read a book about them before. This is less a 'Beatles' book and focuses more on the friendship of the chief songwriters, John and Paul. Each chapter is named after one of their songs and talks about what was going on for the group at the time and what the dynamic was between Lennon and McCartney. Lots of good takeaways here, but as close as the two were, they also had a continuous game of trying to out-song the other--John wrote Strawberry Fields, Paul wrote Penny Lane. Paul wrote Yesterday, John wrote In My Life. They were constantly inspiring and feeding off each other, which resulted in them becoming the greatest American songwriting duo since the Gershwin brothers. When you think about it, the amount of time they wrote together and how many hits they produced were unheard of at the time--they single-handedly changed the face of rock and roll and celebrity within a decade--they still hold the record for most number one hits on the Billboard 100. The author is very empathetic to both artists, dismantling some of the misleading myths that came to dominate the press while also detailing their struggles with drugs and depression. At it's core, this is very much a book about male friendships. Really loved this book, well-written and researched--couldn't put it down. 

Respect Yourself

 Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion by Robert Gordon, 480 pgs. 

This book was a hoot! I’ve been listening to some of these records and artists for so long but had no idea the kind of cultural relevance they had—the twists, the turns—Atlantic records stabbed them in the back and stole their back catalog! Zelma Redding co-wrote Dreams to Remember! (I’ve always been partial to the Toots and the Maytals version). Aretha Franklin was almost a Stax artist?! Unreal.

This was the second book for our 2025 Rhythm n' Books group and it was well-received by everyone who read it. It covers the very beginning of Stax in Memphis and follows their tumultuous and rapid growth during the civil rights movement. As much as it is about the bands and the music, it also reads as a great business book--at one point, Stax artists were so popular that the company had visions of being a major competitor to CBS--but bad business decisions kept that dream at bay. Check out the 4-part mini-series on HBO to watch it all come alive. 

Musicophilia

 Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks, c. 2007, 425 pgs.

This was our first book of 2025 for the Rhythm n' Books music club. I'd read this before a long time ago--I don't usually read a title more than once--but a lot more seemed to stand out to me here. Book discussion was good overall, most were kind of 'eh' on the book as a whole. I thought they might like it more than the Levitin book we read because that book focused more on the science and this was written very down-to-earth. The entire book is a collection of Sacks' encounters with neurologically induced, music-related maladies, some minor, some life-altering. Brain worms that never go away, pianists who suffer from dystonia in the hands (a muscle disorder), musical hallucinations, aphasia (loss of speech by brain damage) and more. All of these case studies are tragic in their own ways, but in his observations, Sacks sees the plasticity of the brain adapt to this challenges. I love the way he kicks it off with a man who survives being struck by lightening--only to awaken with an intense, inescapable newfound passion: to learn how to play piano. Overall, the message is that the science and understanding of music as a working treatment for many ailments in life deserves much more study. There was a recent documentary at Sundance called Alive Inside that talks more about these treatments and even features interviews of Sacks before his death in 2016. 

A Little Devil in America

A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib (2021) 301 pages

I listened to the audiobook through Libby narrated by JD Jackson. I listened to it ahead of Kevin's Rhythm & Books bookclub, so I don't want to give too many details. Each essay on different types of black performance (not necessarily related to music) is deeply felt. The author's prose are sometimes a rap of his reflections and feelings. Abdurraqib intricately examines American culture and the Black experience.
 

DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE

 Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska by Warren Zanes, 298 pgs. 

The story of how this seminal work came to be is one for the ages. Fresh off The River tour in 1981, which garnered his first top ten hit for the song "Hungry Heart," Springsteen had a slew of new material to work out for his next record. He wasn't quite sure what it was going to sound like, but he knew he had something he wanted to say. 

At the time, he was working his way through a deep depression, reviewing the trauma of his childhood and taking interest in stories about the darker side of Reagan's America, who had been newly elected President in 1981. Nebraska would become Springsteen's response to Reagan's optimist "Morning in America" messaging. The rocker took some cultural clues and blended them with his own influences: chiefly, the film Badlands by Terrence Malick and the short stories of Flannery O'Conner. 

To record his demos, Springsteen rented an hold farmhouse in New Jersey and set-up a new TEAC 144 Portastudio--the first portable, multi-track mixer to use a standard cassette tape. Springsteen recorded his songs alone and sent the tape to his manager. The songs were dark, far darker than anything the artist had written at the time. When Springsteen got the band together to record the new material, the sound wasn't working--"nothing seemed to capture the spirit of the cassette recordings." 

The artist tried to re-record them solo, in a nice studio with good equipment, but even then, the characters in the songs were getting lost. It wasn't until his manager suggested that, maybe he should just release the demo tape as is. Then the book pivots to the struggle to get the best possible sound signal from the cassette tape onto the vinyl record, which was another major headache and almost never happened. Ultimately, the critically acclaimed Nebraska would become one of Springsteen's most revered albums and cement his legacy as a true artist--to this day, he still cites it as the best thing he's ever done. 

Open Up and Bleed

 Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed, by Paul Trynka pg. 371

Our first book in the Rhythm n Books book club was a David Bowie book, so it seemed only fitting to end our summer reading list with a bio about Bowie's estranged friend and sometime collaborater, the Godfather of Punk himself, Iggy Pop (aka Jim Osterberg). 

This was a pretty good deep dive into Iggy's entire life, starting out in his childhood in Detroit, Michigan where he was voted most likely to succeed in school--yes, Iggy Pop was a pretty straight-laced young person before he heard the call of rock n' roll music. As his first offical group, The Stooges, started picking-up steam, Iggy realized he could really wow audiences with his high energy, violent and weird performances. They got people talking and that got the word around about how they were a great group to see, eventually garnering the attention of the starman himself, Bowie, who took Iggy under his wing and tried to help him create a long lasting music career, which in some very real ways, he did. But the addition of drugs into his life made him more erratic and brazen, which over time only fueled the very legend he was trying to construct. The book even delves into his 80's period, when he was trying to clean-up his act. Incredible that as strung out and awful as Iggy could be, girlfriends, friends, radio execs, kept giving him chance after chance to succeed. In the 2000's with song royalties finally coming in, his band reformed, a growing back catalog, and a new generation of listeners, punk enthusiasts finally gave Iggy Pop his due as the Godfather of punk. Adults only. 

Dilla Time

 

Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip Hop Producer who reinvented Rhythm, by Dan Charnas, 460 pgs. 

I loved this book, it is so well-researched. I'd heard rumors of J Dilla's greatness and listened to his now iconic Donuts album, but really hadn't understood why he was held in such high esteem until now. This book goes into great detail about Dilla's life and influence on hip hop and rap that has made him a worldwide name for producing beats. I loved the second chapter, which delved into the history of Detroit, his hometown, and the off-kilter design of the street system, giving the reader a good touchstone for the way he made beats. There are also fun beat grid exerices for the reader to stomp and clap to, in order to help readers get a sense of the kind of timing Dilla was working from. So many albums I love from back in the day had his signature style on them, including artists like Common, Erykah Badu, D'angelo, Tribe Called Quest and so many more. His unique approach to timing and micro-rhythms helped usher in a new era of soul and R n' B. His life was tragically cut short by a gruesome blood disease that left him scrambling to produce and create as much music as he could before he passed away. The book goes into his legacy post-death, highlighting the many struggles of non-profits and agencies trying to celebrate J Dilla, while others try to make money off his name. His signature instrument, the AKAI MPC 3000 drum machine, now sits in on display in the National Museum of African American History and Culture in DC. The New York Times even released a short documentary called "The Legacy of J. Dilla" that is a great compendium to the book. Required reading for anyone interested in music, hip-hop or beat production.  

Uncommon Measures

 Uncommon Measures, by Natalie Hodges, 224 pgs, 2022

A great piece of memoir writing that tracks the author's failed dreams of becoming a first-rate, solo violinist alongside some of the most recent scientific breakthroughs as they apply to music and our perception of time. Hodges recounts her struggle with performance anxiety, practicing difficult classical pieces over and over again, only to miss notes during the execution. She also touches on her Asian-American heritage growing up with a "tiger" mom, dancing Tango to unlearn her fear of performance, and ultimately accepting that the grand musician's dream she once held for herself must go unrealized. Along the way, she introduces us to several scientific studies regarding how the musicians brain operates during times of improvisation, how entrainment works to help us move to a beat and how unburdening your mind from the physics of time allows people to enter a "flow state." Of interest to anyone inclined towards classical music, performance, or even sports--a heartfelt and vulnerable work that covers an often unviewed aspect of the artist life. 

Listen to this playlist of all of the music mentioned throughout the book.

Living with Music

 Living with Music: Ralph Ellison's Jazz Writings, Edited by Robert O' Meally, 336 pgs. 

    This was the second book in our Rhythm N' Books music book club. One of my favorite works by Ellison, and probably his most well known, is Invisible Man, which is a classic piece of African-American fiction and highly recommended reading. Ellison's prose is, as always, equal parts erudite and eloquent and no less so here. In Living with Music, the editor compiled a terse collection of 'some' of Ellison's writing related to music. I say 'some' because as a reader you might think this is a collection of jazz criticism or music analyses from Ellison ( as I was led to believe). But there are only a few essays which fit that description. 

    The first half of the book starts out with jazz criticism--his essays about Charlie Christian and Charlie Parker are illuminating and useful in sussing out some of the major changes that were taking place in jazz at the time.  For the remainder of the book, the editor pulls excerpts from interviews with the author and music-related passages from some of his major works. That said, this collection, while useful in providing biographical touchstones for the author, seems like a title in search of a collection. However, there are some great insights into one of America's greatest authors. Ellison was named after Ralph Waldo Emerson and in many of the former's essays, you get a sense of American transcendentalism merging with the African American experience. I was surprised to learn about Ellison's negative perceptions of bebop, which took over the more traditional, danceable blues and jazz forms popular in the day. In fact, he despised it. Bebop at the time shook the music world because it was so different, but would go on to take it's rightful place in the canon. It reminded me of Nina Simone, who had similar opinions towards hip-hop as it was beginning to emerge as a popular genre. Both, geniuses in their right, would be wrong about the direction of the future of music. But this collection serves as an illuminating appendix to the work of a literary master and music lover who believed jazz belonged to everyone. 

We Could Be...Bowie and his Heroes

We Could Be...Bowie and his Heroes, by Tom Hagler, consultant edited by Tony Visconti, 2021, 400 pgs. 

To kick-off our new, music-centered book discussion group, Rhythm and Books, we're starting with this fairly recent book about the thin white duke himself, David Bowie. But this isn't a traditional biography--it's kind of hard to pigeon-hole exactly what kind of book this is. The author worked with legendary producer Tony Visconti to collect stories from celebrities, rock starts, and artists about their interaction with the famous glam star. Chrissie Hyde, Slash, Dave Grohl, and so many more--all describe meeting the star as their "Bowie moment"--the moment they realized they were talking to a living legend. Each encounter is dedicated only a few pages at most, with brief, hilarious and sometimes illuminating vignettes about how Bowie got his start, how he maneuvered drugs and shifting music trends, all the way up to his final days, as he knew he was dying but was able to keep it a secret from virtually everyone. One of my favorites was Bowie inadvertently giving Grace Jones the idea for her Christmas song during the Pee-Wee Herman Christmas Special (we just watched that for the holiday so it was fresh in my mind). Seriously fun, quick ready, recommended for adults and music enthusiasts.