An illuminating portrait of an artist lost in the mists of history and mystery.
Robert Johnson's nonagenarian stepsister shows sides of him that few have seen.
Part of the aura of Johnson’s eminence atop the blues world has been the mystery surrounding him. Much of his public presence has been established through a single photograph and some 29 recorded songs, which were cheaply recorded and weren’t widely distributed until decades after his death (also shrouded in mystery). Adding to that aura was the legend that he had come to his blues mastery by selling his soul to the devil down at the “Crossroads”—the title of the song that would become much better known as performed by Eric Clapton. If the Johnson of myth and legend is somewhat bare-boned, this memoir, co-authored by Lauterbach, adds flesh and blood. Anderson was only 12 when the older stepbrother she knew as “Brother Robert” died, but her memory remains vivid and detailed. The bluesman she knew was no unschooled primitive but rather a crowd-pleasing showman who could mimic country favorites such as Gene Autry and Jimmie Rodgers. As Anderson recalls, "In addition to yodeling, [he] had other talents. He could play with both hands" and "could play spoons, too." The first part of the memoir recalls the brother she knew that others didn’t while the second part details “how my family lost Brother Robert again,” as exploiters took advantage of the family’s photos and memories and turned Johnson into a popular commodity without sharing more than scraps with the family. The genealogy is occasionally confusing, and the late appearance of an unacknowledged son complicates the legal claim, but this memoir represents a valiant attempt to set the record straight and give Johnson's family their due. One of Kirkus and Rolling Stone’s Best Music Books of 2020.
An illuminating portrait of an artist lost in the mists of history and mystery. (photos)Pub Date: June 9, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-306-84526-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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