"A fascinating, unsentimental account of a be-careful-what-you-wish-for romance."
The long-suffering wife of Marvin Gaye (1939-1984) tells the story of her turbulent relationship with the legendary soul singer.
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"Tasty as a Buddy Guy guitar lick, but seldom revelatory."
One of the last survivors of Chicago blues' golden age of the 1950s and '60s, Guy retravels a familiar route in this ingratiating but disappointingly slim as-told-to autobiography.
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"Like a ballpark frank, it might be a little overdone, and some bits might be tough to swallow, but you can't help but enjoy it."
The pitcher who served up Bobby Thomson's 1951 pennant-winning homerun, the legendary "Shot Heard ‘Round the World," spins yarns from a bygone era when baseball was still king.
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With the assistance of Ritz (co-author: Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, A Memoir, 2009, etc.), Bean chronicles the story of his life as a minister and as the singer of the 1977 gay-liberation-themed disco hit, "I Was Born This Way."
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"Shaffer's ingratiating hepcat charm saves what could have been just another celebrity's autobiographical ego trip."
Late Night with David Letterman veteran recalls his storybook rise from strip-club pianist to musical director of the "World's Most Dangerous Band."
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"Over the top, but many readers will go wild for this gospel-spouting, life-affirming story."
From beginning to end, the Lord is the most significant character in this determined, lively novel, a spiritually confident first collaboration between music author Ritz (Howling at the Moon, 2003, etc.) and R&B-singer-turned-minister John.
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"As drug-crazed, booze-swilling megalomaniacs go, Yetnikoff makes excellent company."
Yetnikoff, head of CBS Records Group from the mid-'70s through the '80s, looks back on his addled joyride at the top of the American music business.
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"Ritz (Family Blood, 1992, etc.) stuffs this poorly paced saga with so many overripe period markers that it reads like a commercial for 1945."
Nobody's interested when apprentice stripper Teresa Johnson gets stabbed and mutilated in her West Side apartment a month after V-E Day.
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Wexler's account of how he talked his way into co-ownership of Atlantic Records and went on to produce some of the century's great pop music—all of which makes for some of the juiciest music history one could hope to find.
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Ritz (a biography of Marvin Gaye, Divided Soul, 1985) follows one spicy show-biz melodrama (Family Blood, 1991) with another: this time in the tale of three generations of black female performers pounding on closed doors in Hollywood and New York.
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Once again, as in his The Man Who Moved The Dodgers Back to Brooklyn (1981), Ritz takes on a heavily sentimentalized, nostalgic trip—this one back to the bustling 1940's.
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