Country Books

Born Country: How Faith, Family, and Music Brought Me Home

Randy Owen, Allen Rucker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Terrific Book....Even better than I expected !!! 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I want to say first off I have been a big fan of Alabama ever since 1979 when I first heard 'My Home's In Alabama' so I had extremely high hopes for this book and I wasn't disappointed at all...as a matter a fact it's even better than I could have imagined.

The book starts out with Randy going for his morning drive around Lookout Mountain to start his day.....His and his daughter's dogs all go on this drive through the country with Randy describing the area and how beauiful it is and how much he loves it....From that first chapter you feel like you are going along for a ride with Randy and he is talking to you telling you his story...The book is written in such an easy fun style to read...It makes it very enjoyable...I read it in less than 2 days (for me that is pretty remarkable---never read a book of almost 300 pages that fast before )...I just couldn't put it down !

You will read so many things you never knew..... Like when you hear them sing about a place in one of their songs...you find it's a REAL place that they went to and wrote it into their songs....There is a line in one of their songs called 'Vacation'...Where he talks about going swimming in the Blue Hole...Come to find out in this book....there really is such a place...but you probably wouldn't know that if you didn't live up there....Another cool one is the song 'Ole Baugh Road' on the Southern Star album.....He really did grow up on Baugh Rd !

Liking Alabama as long as I have I feel like I was right there with them all these years and knew the guys (Randy, Teddy, Jeff and Mark) pretty well....but there are so many things that you don't know since they are all private people and don't want to be all over the news (that's a good thing !)....Anyway...some of the things you will remember right along with Randy and some will be brand new ! (For example---In the video 'Tar Top'....That is his son Heath riding the bicycle)...Growing up reading everything I could back then about Alabama...I didn't know that.

He also mentions Dale Earnhardt in here a couple of times (Dale is a big hero of mine) and I didn't know they had known each other since 1981...I knew they were good friends..but had no idea it was for such a long time.


Randy talks alot about his wife (Kelly) and his 3 kids (Alison, Heath and Randa)....His parents also play a huge role in the book.....St Jude's Childrens Hospital is also metioned obviously since it's such an important part of his life....I just can't see how the book could be any better...He intertwined his personal life with his life with the group Alabama so perfectly.....you really get to learn about the whole person...not just the singer.

Honestly I would recommend this book for anyone to read it's just a terrific book, period....but for fans of Alabama this is a must read !....All my friends are wanting copies after seeing mine and hearing me talk about it....Oh yeah I almost forgot...there are some wonderful pictures in it I had never seen before too !

Editorial Review:

Randy Owen, the front man and lead vocalist for one of the biggest music groups of all time, was raised in rural Alabama, grew up working on a small sharecropper farm, and today lives on this same land that his family worked for generations. Born Country weaves together never-before-shared stories about life on the road with the legendary band Alabama, Randy's family, his experiences with temptation in the face of superstardom, and how he held on to his traditional Christian values through it all. Born Country is an inspiring story about how a poor country boy came to touch the lives of millions of fans.

Country Music with CD: The Masters

Marty Stuart

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A photographic love letter to the founders and legends of country music by musician and storyteller Marty Stuart.

When Marty Stuart first entered the Hard Rock Cafe, he was impressed to see the work of rock preservationists, yet realized that the artifacts of country music were being lost or destroyed. He set out to change that, becoming a leading curator of roots music memorabilia and photographer of roots founders.

After years of careful preservation, Stuart brings the early days of country to vibrant life again with Country Music: The Masters. In a unique pairing, completely original for a photography book of this scope, an integrated audio CD is included featuring 60 minutes of the fascinating stories behind selected photos. Stuart, a born storyteller, gives readers a glimpse into the subjects and the photograph at the moment the shutter snapped. The CD includes "Dark Bird," an unreleased song dedicated to Johnny Cash, written by Stuart after Cash's death. This new recording marks the first-ever commercial release of the song.

"A photograph can just be a piece of paper with an image on it... But when the observer with his finger on the button has the life experience it takes to understand the life he's shooting, the photograph is a story. Marty"s photographs live and breathe. If it's a person, you can hear their thoughts, feel their pain or joy, and read at least a part of their story. If it's a building or a landscape, you can feel the presence of those who have walked there or lived there through the years."
- Billy Bob Thornton

(20081103)

Hot Burritos: The True Story of The Flying Burrito Brothers

John Einarson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Widely regarded as the original country-rock band, The Flying Burrito Brothers were determined to pull rock music back from the psychedelic abyss and return it to its pure and simple roots. To say that they succeeded would be an understatement. In a brief four-year span, the original troupe became one of the most influential rock groups of all time, reaching everyone from the Eagles and Jackson Browne to Uncle Tupelo and Alan Jackson. Hot Burritos is the colorful, hard-hitting, insightful, and deeply personal account of this maverick band, as told by founder Chris Hillman and other group members and associates. It shatters common myths about the group, taking readers for the first time inside the Parsons-Hillman partnership, their notoriously extravagant 1969 train trip tour, the doomed Altamont Festival, the Rolling Stones' inner circle, the discovery of Emmylou Harris, Parsons’ overindulgence and ultimate dismissal, and the legacy the group, and the enigmatic Parsons, left behind.

I'm with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie

Pamela Des Barres

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 58 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The stylish, exuberant, and remarkably sweet confession of one of the most famous groupies of the 1960s and 70s is back in print in this new edition that includes an afterword on the author's last 15 years of adventures. As soon as she graduated from high school, Pamela Des Barres headed for the Sunset Strip, where she knocked on rock stars' backstage doors and immersed herself in the drugs, danger, and ecstasy of the freewheeling 1960s. Over the next 10 years she had affairs with Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page, Keith Moon, Waylon Jennings, Chris Hillman, Noel Redding, and Jim Morrison, among others. She traveled with Led Zeppelin; lived in sin with Don Johnson; turned down a date with Elvis Presley; and was close friends with Robert Plant, Gram Parsons, Ray Davies, and Frank Zappa. As a member of the GTO's, a girl group masterminded by Frank Zappa, she was in the thick of the most revolutionary renaissance in the history of modern popular music. Warm, witty, and sexy, this kiss-and-tell–all stands out as the perfect chronicle of one of rock 'n' roll's most thrilling eras.

Willie Nelson: An Epic Life

Joe Nick Patoski

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Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

From his first performance at age four, Willie Nelson was driven to make music and live life on his own terms. But though he is a songwriter of exceptional depth - "Crazy" was one of his early classics - Willie only found success after abandoning Nashville and moving to Austin, Texas.

Red Headed Stranger made country cool to a new generation of fans. Wanted: The Outlaws became the first country album to sell a million copies. And "On the Road Again" became the anthem for Americans on the move. A craggy-faced, pot-smoking philosopher, Willie Nelson is one of America's great iconoclasts and idols.

Now Joe Nick Patoski draws on over 100 interviews with Willie and his family, band, and friends to tell Nelson's story, from humble Depression-era roots, to his musical education in Texas honky-tonks and his flirtations with whiskey, women, and weed; from his triumph with #1 hit "Always On My Mind" to his nearly career-ending battles with debt and the IRS; and his ultimate redemption and ascension to American hero (2008)

Behind the Grand Ole Opry Curtain: Tales of Romance and Tragedy

Grand Ole Opry, Robert K. Oermann

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Grand Ole Opry has been home to the greatest legends of country music for over eighty years, and in that time it has seen some of conutry music's most dramatic stories unfold.
We'll hear of the great love stories ranging from Johnny Cash and June Carter in the 1960s to Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, who married in 2005. We'll get the truth of the tragedies that led to the loss of three stars all in the same month, starting the rumor of the "Opry Curse." We'll learn how after being stabbed, shot, and maimed, Trace Adkins calls his early honky-tonk years "combat country," and we'll find inspiration from DeFord Bailey, an African American harmonica player in 1927 crippled by childhood polio who rose to fame as one of the first Opry stars. Our hearts will break for Willie Nelson, who lost his only son on Christmas Day, and soar for Amy Grant and Vince Gill, who found true love.
Based on over 150 firsthand interviews with the stars of The Grand Ole Opry, these are stories that tell the heart of country--the lives that are lived and inspire the songs we love.

Cash: The Autobiography

Johnny Cash

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 81 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

He was the "Man in Black," a country music legend, and the quintessential American troubadour. He was an icon of rugged individualism who had been to hell and back, telling the tale as never before. In his unforgettable autobiography, Johnny Cash tells the truth about the highs and lows, the struggles and hard-won triumphs, and the people who shaped him.

In his own words, Cash set the record straight -- and dispelled a few myths -- as he looked unsparingly at his remarkable life: from the joys of his boyhood in Dyess, Arkansas to superstardom in Nashville, Tennessee, the road of Cash's life has been anything but smooth. Cash writes of the thrill of playing with Elvis, the comfort of praying with Billy Graham; of his battles with addiction and of the devotion of his wife, June; of his gratitude for life, and of his thoughts on what the afterlife may bring. Here, too, are the friends of a lifetime, including Willie Nelson, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, and Kris Kristofferson. As powerful and memorable as one of his classic songs, Cash is filled with the candor, wit, and wisdom of a man who truly "walked the line."

Rise Up Singing: The Group Singing Songbook (15th Anniversary Edition)

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 67 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Best songbook ever! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I've had this book since I was a kid in the early 90s who wished she'd been around for the sixties. I found it in the library and checked it out over and over til I finally had to special order a copy from the Waldenbooks in the mall. ('Member back in the day when we ordered stuff from Waldenbooks?)

I am far from an accomplished musician! But I got the hang of their system pretty quickly. You have to really know the song to make any sense of the chords, since it's just lyrics and chord names, but it tells you the chords for each line and if you do know the song you'll have a sense of exactly when to switch chords. It also tells you what albums have the song on them so you can find it if you don't know it but like the looks of it. ('Member back in the day when we bought albums?)

Anyway, this book is fantastic, I love it to death, and you should buy the spiral bound version so it stays open while you play and sing. ('Member back in the day when we played and sang? Oh yeah, we still do that. That will never go out of style!)

Editorial Review:

Lyrics and guitar chords for nearly 1,200 songs are arranged in a compact, easy-to-use format in this comprehensive collection. Folk revival favorites; Broadway show tunes; Beatles songs; hymns, spirituals, and gospel standards; songs about peace, freedom, labor, and the environment; and chanteys are among the types of songs included. This revised and retypeset version of the enormously popular group singing songbook makes this essential resource easier to read and use than ever before.

Lyrics: 1962-2001

Bob Dylan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

He told me one time: "I'm a poet, not a singer." 5 out of 5 stars.
24 of 24 people found this review helpful.

I became a Dylan fan in the early 60's. While In Junior College and working for the student newspaper, I was assigned the task of interviewing him - without an appointment - when he came to perform in the town where that JC was. I grabbed a tape recorder, sat with some friends to create a short list of questions we thought would be fun for him to respond to - and on the assigned evening, I set out to interview him.

I made it to the security gate where I was summarily turned away. Thinking myself clever, I argued, joked and tried to talk my way in - and failed. So, I sat outside (I had no ticket to the show itself) until it was over - then, some three hours after I first arrived, I recognized Dylan, surrounded by a small army of devotees and sycophants, coming out of the stage door. Bravely, I approached him - tape recorder turned on and microphone in hand - trying to remember just one of the many clever questions my friends and I had concocted. All I could get to come out was, "Hi! I'm from the local J.C. Would you please say something about yourself?" He actually stopped, looked at me (I think) through VERY dark glasses and said, clear as a bell, "I'm a poet - not a singer." I believe this volume demonstrates that rather nicely.

On first hearing me play a Dylan album, my dad, who had never - so far as I know - spent one day on a farm, said "That sounds like a lamb with his gonads caught in a barbed wire fence." Maybe he was right. The beauty of this volume is that it is unfettered with music - either written or sung. Just as the title says, it is "Lyrics".... words .... poems..... stories told in certain rhythm and meter. As such, they read purely - without the attempt to convey them as 'song' or himself as a 'singer.' I read the book from cover to cover and actually use it as a lyric book to create my own versions of the lyrical tales he told that are recorded here.

Some are simple: some complex: some perhaps deliberately confusing, inconsistent and mind-twisting. Others are basic - a few even 'sweet' and naively young. Some angry, some narrative, more than a few visionary. But whatever else they are or are not, they are poems - each and every one of them - and, as such, I believe they stand on their own ... without the music he gave them - mostly, as I understand it, after the fact.

Read this way, as a poetic autobiography, I think those interested - or even enamored- with Bob Dylan and his work, will find this volume to be a real treasure trove of pure expressiveness. It has already achieved a special place - in my library, in front of me while I have a guitar in hand - or simply in my lap, as I read and try to appreciate the purist Dylan we have to remember the times, and perhaps ourselves, with.

Editorial Review:

This collection contains Bob Dylan's lyrics, from his first album, Bob Dylan, to 2001's "Love and Theft."

A Personal Stand: Observations and Opinions from a Freethinking Roughneck

Trace Adkins

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Country music superstar Trace Adkins isn’t exactly known for holding back what’s on his mind. And if the millions of albums he’s sold are any indication, when Trace talks, people listen. Now, in A Personal Stand, Trace Adkins delivers his maverick manifesto on politics, personal responsibility, fame, parenting, being true to yourself, hard work, and the way things oughta be.

In his inimitable pull-no-punches style, Trace gives us the state of the union as he sees it, from the lessons of his boyhood in small-town Louisiana to what he’s learned headlining concerts around the world. Trace has worked oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, been shot in the heart, been inducted into the Grand Ole Opry, and braved perhaps the greatest challenge of all: being the father of five daughters. And shaped by these experiences, he’s sounding off.

• I’m incredibly frustrated with the state of American politics. If there were a viable third party, I’d seriously consider joining it.
• If anybody wonders who the good guys are and who the bad guys are in this world, just look at the way we teach our children as opposed to the way the fundamentalist Muslims teach their children.
• Organized labor now exists for the sake of organized labor, and not for the workers it once protected.
• I believe the easiest way to solve the illegal immigration enforcement problem is to go after the employers who hire illegal aliens.
• As a society, we’re unwilling to sacrifice our luxuries and our conveniences in order to conserve. We won’t change until we’re forced to.
• The war on terror is like herpes. People can live with it, but it’ll flare up from time to time.

Brash, ballsy, persuasive, and controversial, A Personal Stand isn’t just the story of Trace Adkins’s life; it’s the story of what life can teach all of us.