Search results for ""author david ritz""

According to Eric Clapton, John Mayer, and the late Stevie Ray Vaughn, Buddy Guy is the greatest blues guitarist of all time. An enormous influence on these musicians as well as Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck, he is the living embodiment of Chicago blues. Guy's epic story stands at the absolute nexus of modern blues. He came to Chicago from rural Louisiana in the fifties,the very moment when urban blues were electrifying our culture. He was a regular session player at Chess Records. Willie Dixon was his mentor. He was a sideman in the bands of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. He and Junior Wells formed a band of their own. In the sixties, he became a recording star in his own right. When I Left Home tells Guy's picaresque story in his own unique voice, that of a storyteller who remembers everything, including blues masters in their prime and the exploding, evolving culture of music that happened all around him.

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Aretha Franklin begain life as the golden daughter of a progressive and promiscuous Baptist preacher. Raised without her mother, she was a gospel prodigy who have birth to two sons in her teens and left them and her native Detriot for New York, where she struggled to find her true voice. It was not until 1967, when a white Jewish producer insisted she return to her gospel-soul roots, that fame and fortune finally came via 'Respect' and a rapidfire string of hits. She has evolved ever since, amidst personal tragedy, surprise Grammy performances and career reinventions. Again and again, Aretha stubbornly finds a way to triumph over troubles, even as they continue to build. Her hold on the crown is tenacious, and in RESPECT, David Ritz gives us the definitive life of one of the greatest talents in all American culture.

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Nik Wallenda, 'King of the High Wire' ,doesn't know fear. As a seventh generation of the legendary Great Wallendas, he grew up performing, entertaining, and pushing the boundaries of gravity and balance.When Nik was four years old, he watched a video from 1978 of his great grandfather, Karl Wallenda, walking between the towers of the Condado Plaza Hotel in Puerto Rico, stumbling and falling to his death because of a faulty balance pole. When Nik heard his father quote his great-grandfather - 'Life is on the wire, everything else is just waiting' - the words resonated deep within his soul and he vowed to be a hero like Karl Wallenda.Balance is the theme of Nik's life: between his work and family, his faith in God and artistry, his body and soul. It resonates from him when performing and when no one is looking. When walking across Niagara Falls, he prayed aloud the entire time, and to keep his lust for glory and fame in check, Nik returned to the site of his performance and spent three hours cleaning up trash left by the crowd.Nik Wallenda is an entertainer who wants to not only thrill hearts, but to change hearts for Christ. Christ is the balance pole that keeps him from falling.

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Discover the untold stories and unbreakable bond between country music icon Willie Nelson and his longtime drummer, Paul English.Immortalized in Willie Nelson’s road song "Me and Paul," Paul English was the towering figure who for 70 years acted as Willie’s drummer, bodyguard, accountant, partner in crime, and right-hand man.Together, the two men roamed the country by: putting on shows, getting into a few scrapes, raising money for good causes, and bringing the joy of their music to fans worldwide. Stories of Willie and Paul’s misadventures became legendary, but many have gone untold--until now.Set against the backdrop of the exploding Americana music scene and told in Willie’s inimitable, colorful style, Me and Paul follows the two performers through their decades-long careers.

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One of the great women of American music, equally at home singing blues and jazz, Etta regales us with tales of her chaotic childhood, the stars she has known, and her troubled trip to stardom in this mesmerizing autobiography.

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER​ A unique, unfiltered memoir from the NBA champion and fifteen-time all-star ahead of his induction into the Hall of Fame.Kevin Garnett was one of the most dominant players the game of basketball has ever seen. He was also one of its most outspoken. Over the course of his illustrious twenty-one-year NBA career, he elevated trash talk to an art form and never shied away from sharing his thoughts on controversial subjects. In KG A to Z, published ahead of Garnett’s induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame, he looks back on his life and career with the same raw candor. Garnett describes the adversity he faced growing up in South Carolina before ultimately relocating to Chicago, where he became one of the top prospects in the nation. He details his headline-making decision to skip college and become the first player in two decades to enter the draft directly from high school, starting a trend that would be followed by future superstars like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. He shares stories of playing with and against Bryant, James, Michael Jordan, and other NBA greats, and he chronicles his professional ups and downs, including winning a championship with the Boston Celtics. He also speaks his mind on a range of topics beyond basketball, such as fame, family, racism, spirituality, and music. Garnett’s draft decision wasn’t the only way he’d forever change the game. His ability to play on the perimeter as a big man foreshadowed the winning strategy now universally adopted by the league. He applies this same innovative spirit here, organizing the contents alphabetically as an encyclopedia. If you thought Kevin Garnett was exciting, inspiring, and unfiltered on the court, just wait until you read what he has to say in these pages.

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Grammy Award–nominated artist Kem shares his life in this revealing and remarkable memoir tracing his transformative journey from homelessness to gold-selling artist. Known for his smooth affecting crooning and dapper style, Kem’s journey to the stage is nothing short of inspiring. In Share My Life, Kem goes back to the very beginning before his time to introduce his grandmother who worked as a sharecropper in the South and had thirteen children. As Kem’s family rises from the sharecropping and ultimately lands in Detroit, there is an unspoken mantra of “hard things are better left unsaid,” which has devastating consequences down the line. And so, Kem grows up in the midst of an impenetrable silence. His mother is never without a beer in her hand, and his relationship with his father is oddly tense. Emotionally starved, Kem internalizes harmful feelings, eventually spiraling to drug use in his search for relief. At nineteen, Kem is homeless, roaming the cold Detroit streets. In the overly bright AA halls, Kem comes across men like himself verbalizing their feelings. The meetings helped him discover his own voice, using music as an outlet that has since touched millions. In Share My Life, Kem chronicles his incredible journey of self-discovery. The young boy who struggled with feelings of worthlessness becomes a man willing to put everything on the line for his dream.

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The ultimate showbiz insider's expose, Howling at the Moon is the wildly entertaining and brilliantly narrated autobiography of Walter Yetnikoff, head of CBS Records during its heyday in the 1980s, and then the most powerful man in the music industry. Yetnikoff knew most of the stars and embraced all the excesses of this era: he was mentor to Streisand, father confessor to Michael Jackson, shared a mistress with Marvin Gaye and came to blows with Mick Jagger. He feuded with David Geffen and outmanoeuvred Rupert Murdoch. He was also addicted to cocaine and alcohol - until his doctor gave him just 3 months to live. Yetnikoff came from a working-class Jewish family from Brooklyn; he graduated from law school in the 1950s and proceeded to climb the corporate ladder to the very top. His high-flying ended in breakdown, but throughout his rise and fall, Yetnikoff remained a man of huge charisma and disarming charm. Howling at the Moon is written with David Ritz, the only 4-time winner of the Ralph J Gleason Music Book award, who has collaborated on the autobiographies of such stars as Ray Charles, BB King, Aretha Franklin and Etta James.

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Rickles' Book will make you love one of the great Americans of our time, Don Rickles.Why you need to buy Rickles' Book immediately: Rickles' Book will help you win friends and influence people. Rickles' Book will introduce you to all of his famous friends, from Frank Sinatra to Johnny Carson. Rickles' Book will help you lose weight. Rickles' Book will help you gain weight. Rickles' Book will improve your love life. Rickles' Book will make you cry (If your love life doesn't improve). Rickles' Book will make you laugh (If your love life does improve). Rickles' Book will make you love one of the great Americans of our time, Don Rickles. Rickles' Book will give you something to talk about at parties (If you're ever invited to parties). Rickles' Book, along with the Bible and War and Peace, will grace your bookshelf and upgrade your literary status. Rickles' Book will keep you up at night. Rickles' Book will put you to sleep at night. Rickles' Book will make you rich (If you treasure great humor).

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To tell the story of Morris Day is to tell the story of Prince. Not because they were inseparable or because their paths never diverged, but because, even when their paths did diverge, they always intersected again. Each artist lifted the other up, pushing one another to be something bigger and better than they thought themselves capable of. There was plenty of one-upmanship and some (un)healthy competition, but the respect Day and Prince had for one another never wavered, from the time they met in junior high until His Royal Badness's untimely death in 2016.In telling his own story and writing about Prince, Day turns Prince into the narrative's Greek chorus. Prince is there to protect his legacy, argue with Morris's interpretation of events, and continue the dialogue that started when both musicians were in their early teens. Because of their lifelong friendship emotional intimacy, the founder and still current leader of The Time is the one man who can pull this off, and in so doing shed a new light on Prince and the culture from which the Minneapolis funk scene was born.On Time recounts Day's fight to overcome cocaine addiction, his search for meaning in both music and romance, and his subsequent second-act success by once again leading The Time, whose music is his lifeblood and soul. Day's book is a comprehensive, free-wheeling extension of his music--the ride is wild and the funk unfiltered.

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Aerosmith's lead guitarist Joe Perry opens up for the first time to tell the riveting inside story of his lifeinside the band, featuring everyone from Jimmy Page to Alice Cooper, Bette Midler to Chuck Berry, John Belushi to Al Hirschfeld. Before the platinum records or the Super Bowl half-time show or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Joe Perry was a boy growing up in small town Massachusetts. But the guitar became his passion, an object of lust, an outlet for his restlessness and his rebellious soul. That passion quickly blossomed into an obsession, and he got a band together. One night after a performance he met a brash young musician named Steven Tyler; before long, Aerosmith was born. What happened over the next forty-five years has become the stuff of legend: the knock-down, drag-out, band splintering fights; the drugs, the booze, the rehab; the packed arenas and timeless hits; the reconciliations and the comebacks. Full of humour, insight and brutal honesty about life in and out of one of the biggest bands in modern history, Rocks is also the story of a dedicated family man in a thirty-year marriage who has navigated the pressures of an extreme lifestyle. In Perry's own words, it tells the whole story.

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Revealing, funny, whimsical, and wise, outlaw country legend Willie Nelson shares the untold stories behind the his favorite songs, with all the lyrics and a dynamic assortment of never-before-seen photos and ephemera.From his earliest work in the 1950s to today, Willie looks back at the songs that have defined his career, from his days of earning $50 each to his biggest hits, from his less well-known songs (but incredibly meaningful to him) to his concept albums. Along the way, he also shares the stories of his guitar Trigger, his family and “family,” as well as the artists he collaborated with, including Patsy Cline, Waylon Jennings, Ray Charles, Merle Haggard, Ray Price, Dolly Parton, and many others.Willie is disarmingly honest—what do you have to lose when you’re about to turn 90? —meditating on the nature of songwriting and finding his voice, and the themes he’s explored his whole life—relationships, infidelity, love, loss, friendship, and, of course, life on the road.

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