Further entertaining testimony from a music journalist whose writing pulsates with the same blues rhythms as the soil and...
Five decades of writing from one of the foremost chroniclers of the blues and other Southern music.
Memphis-based music journalist Booth (Keith: Standing in the Shadows, 1996, etc.) has been immersed in jazz, blues, rock, and other genres since he was a child. The blues, in particular, reverberate throughout Booth’s writing, underscoring the inseparability of his life and body of work. “I never intended to have anything to do with the blues,” he writes. “They came into my life through my bedroom window when I was a child. It wasn’t a matter of choice. What I learned I paid for in experience at the school where they arrest you first and tell you why later.” In this new anthology, the author offers a slew of highly personal dispatches that reflect much of the best of his writing. Plunging in with a humorous—somewhat salty—indictment of contemporary music journalism, so-called authorities on American musical traditions, and the slick treatment of the blues by modern media, Booth stakes his ground, imparting the value of essence over image in music writing. Including recent essays on Ma Rainey and Blind Willie McTell and winding through reprints of his now-iconic pieces “Furry’s Blues” and “Situation Report: Elvis in Memphis, 1967,” the volume features 29 articles of varying lengths in no stated order, spanning his career. Rather than the customary date and associated publication notes, Booth offers a brief contextual paragraph with personal asides for each piece. For instance, in a screenplay excerpt titled “Mr. Crump Don’t Like It: If Beale Street Could Talk,” he notes that he “stole” the idea for writing a three-arc plot from William S. Burroughs’ The Last Words of Dutch Schultz. Other topics include Graceland, Memphis soul, Mose Allison, and James Brown.
Further entertaining testimony from a music journalist whose writing pulsates with the same blues rhythms as the soil and streets in which they were born.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64160-106-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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