100 books like Good Rockin' Tonight

A century ago, the record industry sent representatives all over the country to do field recordings of vernacular artists playing folk, blues, and early country for “hillbilly” and “race” records (the sort that Rounder would start putting out in the 1970s).

One of these scouts was Ralph Peer from the Victor Talking Machine Company, for which he oversaw 1927’s legendary “Bristol Sessions.” It was the first time that Hall of Fame titans the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers recorded, generally cited as the beginning of the country music industry.

As explained in Barry Mazor’s excellent biography, Peer went on to become one of the giants of the recording and publishing industry, laying the groundwork that pretty much every record label including Rounder has followed since.

When my wife and I moved to Nashville, I was stunned to realize that most forms of American popular music had been born within 500 miles of our new home, in an arc from New Orleans (jazz) to the Mississippi Delta (blues) to Memphis (rock ’n’ roll) to Nashville (bluegrass) to Bristol (country). 

I began reading eagerly about American popular music, and my reading led to writing—most recently my novel about the birth of country music, Lord of the Mountain. This list gives you some of my favorite books.

The best of these is also one of my favorite biographies of any kind, Peter Guralnick’s magnificent Last Train to Memphis, the first volume of his essential two-volume story of Elvis Presley and the birth of rock ’n’ roll.

Who knew the story of the first popular country music group would be wrapped around a heart-breaking romance? The poor, backwoods musicians from southern Virginia had sold more than a million records at the height of the Depression, but things were not well with the group. Sara Carter, the wife of stern, difficult A.P. Carter, leader of the group, had fallen in love with his young cousin. He was sent away to live in California and never mentioned again until one night many years later, when Sara dedicated a song to him on one of their late-night Mexican radio broadcasts. He heard it all the way out in California and contacted her. She completed her duties with the group and joined her love out west, where they spent the rest of their lives together, leaving her cousin Maybelle to carry on the family tradition with her daughters June, Helen, and… show more.

In Memphis during the 1950s, there was Black and there was White, but the two rarely met. One of the few places where they did was in clubs and recording studios, and the sparks they struck started a fire that came to be called rock ’n’ roll. 

In this wonderfully rich stew of a book, author and filmmaker Robert Gordon walks the streets of Memphis, exploring the sights and sounds and smells of a unique, endlessly fascinating world. 

As Gordon’s publisher says, “This is a book about the weirdos, winos, and midget wrestlers who forged the rock ’n’ roll spirit.” As Rolling Stone says, “If you haven’t read this book, do it now.”

Levon Helm’s unflappable integrity makes him such a likable protagonist you’ll root for him as he rises up from small-town Arkansas boy to A list musician. You’ll see the salt  of the Earth underdog that he was as he recounts what happened behind the scenes at  “The Last Waltz.” This Wheel’s on Fire reads like a director’s cut commentary you can’t believe you’re privy to hearing.  

Speaking of Elvis, this biography, the second of two parts, is among the greatest of the late 20th century. We begin with Elvis entering the U.S. Army in 1958 and follow this increasingly lost soul through the years, his fame metastasizing into something unrivaled, incredible, enviable and wholly malignant. Guralnick captures the singular loneliness Elvis came to suffer, the slow suicide that was his Las Vegas residency, the exploitations of his manager, Col. Tom Parker, and a death so humiliating it finally made Elvis what he had longed to be for decades: Profoundly, squalidly human. None other than Bob Dylan called this Presley biography the one that “cancels out all others.”

Flowers in the Dustbin uses an approach I dearly love: the vignette. Miller deftly selects stories that tie together a larger narrative of “where rock & roll came from—and what it came to do.” 

The book begins with the birth of rhythm & blues through one of its earliest stars, Wynonie Harris. Subsequent stories in chapter one weave together the impacts of technology, the Great Migration, racial dynamics, a booming economy, and an emerging youth culture. It culminates in Elvis’s earliest recordings, the so-called birth of rock & roll. All in the first chapter!

In the story that follows, Miller demonstrates why rock & roll emerged and how it reflected and shaped the social, cultural, and political landscape.

Crossroads: Race, Postwar America, Youth culture

A greatly entertaining book about the myriad scandals of Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, crimes and murder among Norway’s black metal bands, how Sam Cooke wound up shot to death in a low-budget motel, and Gram Parsons’ death at 26, among others, written by the guy with a podcast of the same name. I’ve played and listened to music my entire life but have never really studied the topic or its practitioners, so much of this came as a fascinating surprise. Brennan does veer into fiction—at one point he relates a conversation between two dead people after they’re dead—but still a very interesting compilation. 

I always knew there was something special, even mystical, about Led Zeppelin’s lead guitarist Jimmy Page. As a high school student, there was something about the band that drew me in, as if I didn’t have a choice.

I now know that I love their music, and Page’s playing in particular, because of the vision Page had for the band’s music, lyrics, and iconography on their album covers and artwork. Light and shade, light and heavy, clear and murky, simple and epic—how better to sum up Led Zeppelin?

The book begins with short chapters on a couple of blues players—Harmonica Frank and the mysterious Robert Johnson, who allegedly sold his soul to the devil so he could play guitar—before moving to extended chapters on Elvis, and others.

Marcus’s project is to cross-reference American history with American music and to try and make sense of them both. It sounds like something an academic would get up to, and plenty of research went into the making of Mystery Train (at 224 pages, the Notes and Discographies section of the 2015 edition is considerably longer than the original book).

However, Marcus is one of the great rock writers, and he’s as keen on crafting unforgettable sentences as he is in explaining the meaning of rock and roll.