Rock & Roll Books

• Rock & Roll Books

  All the Townes Van Zandt, Texas Troubadours, Southern hip-hop, Zen punk, and Phil Spector, Warren Zevon, and Joe Strummer you can shake a bottle of sunblock at

• To Live's to Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt

  BY DOUG FREEMAN

• He's a Rebel: Phil Spector: Rock and Roll's Legendary Producer;
  Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector

  BY AUDRA SCHROEDER

• Texas Troubadours

  BY RAOUL HERNANDEZ

• Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life & Times of Doc Pomus

  BY SHAWN BADGLEY

• Shout, Sister, Shout! The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe

  BY MARGARET MOSER

• Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer, The Definitive Biography

  BY DAN OKO

• Babylon's Burning: From Punk to Grunge

  BY MARGARET MOSER

• I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon

  BY JIM CALIGIURI

• Nirvana: The Biography

  BY CHRISTOPHER GRAY

• Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music

  BY DAVID LYNCH

• Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries;
  My So-Called Punk: How Neo-Punk Stage-Dived Into the Mainstream;
  Punk Love

  BY DARCIE STEVENS

• Third Coast: Outkast, Timbaland, & How Hip Hop Became a Southern Thing;
  Pimps Up, Ho's Down: Hip Hop's Hold on Young Black Women;
  To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic

  BY GRAHAM REYNOLDS

• Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life

  BY CHRISTOPHER GRAY

• Modest Mouse: A Pretty Good Read

  BY MELANIE HAUPT

• You Don't Love Me Yet: a novel

  BY JAY TRACHTENBERG

• Inside the Music of Brian Wilson: The Songs, Sounds, and Influences of the Beach Boys' Founding Genius

  BY GREG BEETS

• Jimmy Page: Magus, Musician, Man, an unauthorized biography

  BY AUSTIN POWELL

• Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry

  BY JIM CALIGIURI

• The Rockabilly Legends: They Called It Rockabilly Long Before They Called It Rock and Roll

  BY GRAHAM REYNOLDS

Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry

by Holly George-Warren

Oxford University Press, 406 pp., $28

During the first half of the 20th century, there was no bigger entertainer in America than Gene Autry. 2007 marks the 100th anniversary of his birth, and among its commemorations is Public Cowboy No. 1. Crafting the first comprehensive biography of the singing cowboy's life, Americana expert Holly George-Warren spent years digging into the facts of his daily life. The basic details remain. Autry was a pioneer in radio, recording, film, television, and live performance, and the nice-guy image he projected, beloved by children of the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties, was genuine. He was ambitious, hardworking, kind, and generous. He was also an alcoholic and frequently cheated on his wife of 48 years. Unfortunately, some of Autry's life is untraceable, leading George-Warren to conjecture, which, especially in his early days, is strikingly overdone. This is especially true concerning his relationship with country music pioneer Jimmie Rodgers. The book's beginning, until Autry arrives in, and lights up, Hollywood, is a tough, unconvincing grind. Then, George-Warren stops in the Sixties when Autry quit entertaining, devoting three pages to the last three decades of his life. The subject has potential, and anyone with an interest in the development of the entertainment industry might find something of interest here, but Public Cowboy No. 1 is too deeply flawed to recommend.