Peter Guralnick Livres

This masterful exploration of American roots music--country, rockabilly, and the blues--spotlights the artists who created a distinctly American sound, including Ernest Tubb, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Elvis Presley, Merle Haggard, and Sleepy LaBeef. In incisive portraits based on searching interviews with these legendary performers, Peter Guralnick captures the boundless passion that drove these men to music-making and that kept them determinedly, and sometimes almost desperately, on the road.

Last Train to Memphis, the first part of Guralnick's two-volume life of Elvis Presley, received unprecedented accolades. This concluding volume recounts the second half of Elvis's life in rich and previously unimagined detail, and confirms Guralnick's status as one of the great biographers of our time. Beginning with Presley's army service in Germany in 1958 and ending with his death in Memphis in 1977, Careless Love chronicles the unraveling of the dream that once shone so brightly, homing in on the complex playing-out of Elvis's relationship with his Machiavellian manager, Colonel Tom Parker. It's a breathtaking drama that places the events of a too often mistold tale in a fresh, believable, and understandable context. This is the quintessential American story, encompassing race, class, wealth, sex, music, religion, and personal transformation. Written with grace, sensitivity, and passion, Careless Love is a unique contribution to our understanding of American popular culture and the nature of success, giving us true insight at last into one of the most misunderstood public figures of our times.

Snare drum backbeat plus electric guitar: the simple formula that launched the rock star, and contemporary teen culture along with it. Today, rock 'n' roll seems to define postwar American culture, especially in its impact abroad. Though its inception is often imagined as sudden and seismic, it was, of course, a gradual and complex transition from boogie-woogie to the stardom of Elvis Presley and Bill Haley. A thorough survey of rock 'n' roll's bloodline would even reach back as far as 1939, a time when the electric guitar's role was mostly played by piano or saxophone. "Rock 'n' Roll 39-59" does this, with the assistance of some of the genre's finest photographers. Bruce Davidson, Wayne Miller, Robert W. Kelley, Esther Bubley, Eve Arnold and Ernest C. Withers are all here, amid a wealth of visual props, including priceless period posters, records, rare souvenirs, photographs and film stills, and indices of the movement's key venues, events, artists, producers and people. This book describes a lively mess of genres, from boogie-woogie to blues, gospel, big band jazz, country and, most of all, rhythm and blues--interbreeding against a backdrop of colossal social change, and culminating in the rock 'n' roll explosion of the mid-1950s.

A gripping narrative that captures the tumult and liberating energy of a nation in transition, Sweet Soul Music is an intimate portrait of the legendary performers--Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, James Brown, Solomon Burke, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and Al Green among them--who merged gospel and rhythm and blues to create Southern soul music. Through rare interviews and with unique insight, Peter Guralnick tells the definitive story of the songs that inspired a generation and forever changed the sound of American music.

The definitive biography of Elvis and an excellent slice of social history.

An electrifying collection of the most entertaining and illuminating writing on and from the rock-and-roll scene. "Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay" assembles the writing of those who played the music and pushed it to new limits, as well as those who were there to witness and celebrate its power. 20 photos.

One of the most influential singers and songwriters of all time, Sam Cooke was among the first to blend gospel music and secular themes--the early foundation of soul music. He was the opposite of Elvis: a black performer who appealed to white audiences, who wrote his own songs, who controlled his own business destiny. No biography has previously been written that fully captures Sam Cooke's accomplishments, the importance of his contribution to American music, the drama that accompanied his rise in the early days of the civil rights movement, and the mystery that surrounds his death. Bestselling author Peter Guralnick tells this moving and significant story, from Cooke's childhood as a choirboy to an adulthood when he was anything but. With appearances by Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, James Brown, Harry Belafonte, Aretha Franklin, Fidel Castro, The Beatles, Sonny and Cher, Bob Dylan, and other central figures of this explosive era, DREAM BOOGIE is a compelling depiction of one man striving to achieve his vision despite all obstacles--and an epic portrait of America during the turbulent and hopeful 1950s and 1960s. The triumph of the book is the vividness with which Peter Guralnick conveys the astonishing richness of the black America of this era--the drama, force, and feeling of the story.

Paperback back cover copy: "One of the finest books ever to appear on the subject of American musicians" (Jon Landau, The Boston Phoenix ), this profiles the men who played--indeed created--the blues and early rock 'n' roll: Muddy Waters, Johnny Shines, Skip James, Robert Pete Williams, Howlin' Wolf, ,Jerry Lee Lewis, Charlie Rich, and such colleagues as Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Elvis Presley, and LIttle Richard. In writing about these lives, Peter Guralnick vividly re-creates the Mississippi Delta, the birthplace of the blues; the northern cities where, later, they were rediscovered; and the studios in Memphis where the blues tradition was carried forward into rockabilly and rock 'n' roll. ""The most emotionally and intellectually satisfying rock book yet to appear." --Robert Christgau, The Village Voice "A remarkable book." -- Dave March, Creem "First-class reading." -- Blues World "Peter Guralnick is a national resource. No one writes so penetratingly as he about so wide a range of our indigenous music." -- Nat Hentoff __________________________ FEEL LIKE GOING HOME celebrates the building blocks of blues and early rock 'n' roll, including Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, and the Chess record label. "Brings it back alive better than any book of its kind ever published".--Charles Shaar Murray, NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS. 80 photos.

Kniha se zaobíra padesátými léty, kdy začína Elvisova hudební kariéra.