Description
Book SynopsisFor many diehard music fans and critics, Oklahoma-born James Talley ranks among the finest of American singer-songwriters. In this engaging, down-to-earth memoir, Talley recalls the highs and lows of his nearly fifty-year career in country music.
Trade Review“James Talley is an American artist. Putting on a Talley vinyl, I always feel as if I am getting a tour of John Steinbeck’s basement and Woody Guthrie’s garage and Dorothea Lange’s darkroom. There are nights when my wife and I go two-stepping around the dining room to a Talley tune. Now the world has this wonderful memoir, as honest and plainspoken and direct and American in its sentence rhythms as the beautiful songs themselves. I read it in a sitting and wanted even more.”—Paul Hendrickson, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and author of
Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost“An inspiring, yet harrowing memoir by an outstanding singer-songwriter who made a landmark album in 1975 in the populist, folk-country tradition of Woody Guthrie and Merle Haggard, only to spend decades in the nightmarish record business in hopes of getting his music the wide audience that it deserved. Like his songs, Talley’s text has a warm and resilient spirit.”—Robert Hilburn, author of
Johnny Cash: The Life and Paul Simon: The Life“A well-penned journey through the Nashville music business, told by someone who was positioned to become a keen observer of the Music Row scene ‘back in the day.’”—Robert K. Oermann, coauthor of
Songteller (with Dolly Parton) and
Little Miss Dynamite (with Brenda Lee)
