Bill Monroe: The Life and Music of the Blue Grass Man by Tom Ewing - Book Review

Tom Ewing’s Bill Monroe:The Life and Music of The Blue Grass Man (University Illinois Press, 2018, 656 pages, $34.95, 19.95) is a huge piece of Monroe scholarship bringing together a range of sources testifying to the hard work and thoroughness of the author. At this point, and until further work is done, it must stand as the definitive biography of the Father of Bluegrass, whose long, complicated life, background, musical genius, along some of his flaws, are carefully, thoughtfully, and exhaustively documented.

Perhaps the strongest portions of the book are the painstakingly assembled history of Monroe’s genealogy, the account of his difficult childhood during which his development was affected by his poor eyesight, and the transformative power of music in his life. Along with this, Ewing establishes a picture of the hardship and hard physical labor which helped to establish Monroe’s legendary stamina and work ethic. The author is always careful to place the arc of Monroe’s life within the context of important national news events of the times as well as milestones in music’s development and change through the decades. This practice helps provide context and texture to the story as well as, sometimes, explaining choices that Monroe made or was forced to accept.

Organized into ten chapters with each but the first covering a decade of Monroe’s life, Ewing has gone to great lengths to detail appearances, recording sessions, members of the band and the hazards of travel. For many readers these almost day-by-day accounts of where Monroe was, the difficulty of getting there, the fluidity of members moving through the band, and other massing of detail will provide the literary fodder they crave. Many important mileposts are signaled by boldface headings within chapters, but turn out to take a paragraph or less to cover before Ewing moves on to greater masses of detail. Some readers might prefer further analysis of how events may have influenced decisions and actions Monroe took.

The book contains extensive evidence of Bill Monroe’s efforts to both protect “his” music and to encourage musicians influenced by his music to find their own mode of expression. For instance, in 1941 the first case is described of a mandolin player being told to not play like Monroe, but rather develop his own style. Stories from every era afterwards repeat this story in one way or another as Monroe taught, changed, and protected his music. Many fine and, later, well-known musicians, got their start with him, while others were initially drawn to his style of music from seeing him or hearing him on the radio and in recordings. He came, however, to view many of these emerging bands, which would become iconic in their own right, as competitors of “his” music.

Monroe was always careful to seek to protect his own music while, simultaneously being aware of changes in popular music. The longevity of his career speaks to both his stubborn insistence on his own vision along with a willingness to bend to changes in popular music when times demanded it, at least until he began to institutionalize his own music as he grew old and became recognized as the Father of Bluegrass Music. At one recording session in 1958, Red Cravens remarked to Bill that he ought to play more old songs. He reported Bill as saying, “That’s in the past...You got to keep looking forward….Don’t look back.” (200) Monroe appears always to have been watching what was happening in music, adapting to current styles and trends, and reflecting them in his music. His adopting Elvis Presley’s interpretation of his Blue Moon of Kentucky is perhaps the best example of this.

Monroe’s complex and varied relationships with women are dealt with extensively, but not with any particular depth of understanding or analysis, which they deserve. Similarly his feuds with Flatt & Scruggs as well as others he seems to have thought were riding on his reputation deserve further analysis. Monroe’s successful efforts to keep Jimmy Martin from being made a member of the Grand Old Opry, perhaps because of his pursuit of Bill’s daughter Melissa, deserve further explication. Similarly, Bill’s relationship with his son James is complex and costly to him.

One of the great virtues of Ewing’s book is the connection he continually makes between Monroe and other seminal figures in the history of bluegrass who all seem to come into contact with Monroe at some point, influencing him and being influenced by him. This includes not only musicians, but entrepreneurs (Ralph Rinzler & Carlton Haney), scholars (Neil Rosenberg and Fred Bartenstein), venues (New River Ranch, Sunset Park, Brown County Jamboree, The Grand Old Opry), and so-on. By pulling this all together, Ewing firmly cements Monroe’s place in music history in huge, sometimes tiresome, but always useful, detail. Perhaps the sheer length of Monroe’s life and his vast importance keep a single volume account from ever being entirely satisfactory or a single review from covering it adequately. My own notes contain over 6,000 words.

Tom Ewing

Tom Ewing served as the last lead singer and guitarist in the Blue Grass Boys during the period 1986 – 1996, also appearing on three albums. He attended Ohio State University, earning degrees in journalism and education. He has written extensively about Bill Monroe as well as writing a column for Bluegrass Unlimited magazine. He has been a founder or a member of several bands devoted to either playing Monroe’s music or emulating his style.

Tom Ewing has written a comprehensive and detailed, almost encyclopedic, account of Bill Monroe’s life and times, including extensive notes and index. It offers insights into Monroe’s behavior while generally leaving it to the reader to draw conclusions about their meaning. This quality is both an asset and a liability to this book, but perhaps Ewing’s decisions are sound, while much more remains to be written to fully encompass this brilliant, crusty, strong, and needy man whose musical influence continues to be felt, even after nearly one hundred years of its first emergence. The University of Illinois Press provided me a hard back copy of Tom Ewing’s Bill Monroe:The Life and Music of The Blue Grass Man (University Illinois Press, 2018, 656 pages, $34.95, 19.95).

The Man in Song: A Discographic Biography of Johnny Cash by John M. Alexander – Book Review

The Man in Song: A Discographic Biography of Johnny Cash (University of Arkansas Press, 2018, 296 pages, $35.95/31.81) by John M. Alexander, with a forward by Larry Gatlin, presents the life of country mega-star Johnny Cash in terms of his recorded music, seeking to find and explicate the singer’s life story through the songs he wrote, selected, and sang. This book offers both an interesting take on the man and his life as well as presenting problems for analysts seeking to separate the man from the artist. While this can be seen as a flaw, it can also become a significant asset. Alexander is at his strongest in recounting the story of each song he selects from Cash’s massive catalog and lengthy career, stretching over fifty years. The book is at its weakest in evaluating individual songs, as Alexander is either reluctant to find fault or unable to separate the truly excellent work from songs that are either mediocre of worse. Serious criticism requires serious analysis. 

Structurally, The Man in Song moves through the Cash catalog, first as it reflects incidents in his life and mileposts in his recording history, with emphasis on the relationship between the singer and his record labels. Having cataloged Cash’s music in terms of labels, Alexander then returns to pick up missed or lost and forgotten recordings by theme and then by periods in his personal and recording lives. This gives Alexander a chance to provide more detail on the Highwaymen, the effects of Cash’s frequent subtance abuse and its effect on his singing and writing, as well as his personal life, although the personal is sublimated to the work in this volume. It concludes with Cash’s collaboration with Rick Rubin, who encouraged Cash to create new songs and revisit old ones in arrangements that he wanted to record, rather than in the commercial versions preferred by mass market labels like Columbia and Mercury, This approach serves the work and those wishing to study it, while beginning to seem repetitious to readers seeking entertainment.

As Alexander points out, many see Cash’s singing and subject matter as precursors of today’s increasingly conservative bent in country music, heralded in more by Merle Haggard, a friend deeply influenced by Cash’s Folsom prison performance, which he witnessed as convict. While current country music basks in flag waving patriotism and uncritical self-indulgence, many of Cash’s best songs celebrate a more nuanced and mature view of America and its role. In many songs celebrating the lives of the downtrodden and misunderstood of all races, backgrounds, and creeds, Cash celebrated the diversity of America as well as gua own deep roots in Christian faith. In songs like The Ballad of Ira Hayes, and collaborations with Mahalia Jackson, Trini Lopez. Bob Dylan and more, Cash demonstrated his openness to using music from a wide variety of traditions and with performers not usually associated with the largely white world of country music. His writing and song selection ranged from a deep love of gospel music through folk, rock, rockabilly, and pop to which he always was able to attach his own unique stamp. As long as there’s a comprehensive catalog of songs, it might have been useful to create additional ways of sorting Cash’s catalog. This might be a very good online project for the publisher or a graduate student. In addition, a comprehensive playlist on one of the streaming services would support the text extremely well.

John M. Alexander (R) with Larry Gatlin

John M. Alexander, a graduate of St. John’s University and the City University of New York, where he earned his Ph.D. in English Literature, is currently a senior editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which apparently is primarily an online publication with a weekly print edtion bearing no relationship to the historic newspaper from which it draws its name. He describes himself in Linkedin as a “...Senior Music Editor and Producer who takes pride in leading visionary print, music, and digital products to profitable releases in national markets.” He says, “I’m an expert at collaborating with producers, artists, designers, photographers and production crews to develop and execute award-winning soundtracks, compilations, and digital audio content.” He served as a Senior Music Editor and Producer at Reader’s Digest for eighteen years, where he produced nearly 400 box set compilations. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

The Man in Song: A Discographic Biography of Johnny Cash (University of Arkansas Press, 2018, 296 pages, $35.95/31.81) by John M. Alexander is elegantly laid out and very attractive looking with lavish pictures of album covers, family, and studio photographs. Its print layout is two column, which detracts from its readability for what I imagine is its major audience – scholars wishing to do further research on Cash. In print, I would suppose it would make a highly attractive coffee table book, but would be less useful as a resource read online, which is how I read it. I found reading down one column then shifting my gaze to read down another to be distracting. The photographs and album covers, however, added greatly to the book’s attractiveness, as they surveyed the man’s character and increasing depth of feeling as he aged. This is a very useful work to add to the resources of Johnny Cash scholars and avid fans whi collect Cash memorabilia or reference works. I read the book on my Amazon Fire as a digital download supplied by the publisher.

Coolidge by Amity Shlaes - Book Review

Amity Shlaes has written a nuanced and compassionate account of the life of our 30^th President called, simply, Coolidge (HarperCollins, 2013, 595 pages, available new and used, Kindle edition $8.99), touting what are often seen as his liabilities as strengths which brought dignity and acclaim to Coolidge in a difficult time of major changes in America and the world, as we recovered from World War I and adjusted to a country fraught with social, economic, political re-adjustment. Coolidge, while far from perfect, emerges as a model of probity, humility, and service which, given serious attention in today’s overheated political, technological, and media environment, provide a model for behavior and restraint. Often seen today as a “do-nothing” minor holder of our top office, belittled by the nickname Silent Cal, he is shown as intelligent, thoughtful, reserved, and, during his administration, both admired and liked.

Born into an influential but far from wealthy, family of Vermont farmers, small business proprietors, and political functionaries, his family history showed a strain of community mindedness, as his father, grandfather, and uncles had served as school board members, and in the local and state legislatures. Political action was viewed as a responsibility, not an ambition. Calvin Coolidge (born July 4, 1872, the only president born on Juy 4th) was physically slight, reserved, and, as he grew through school and began college at Amherst, unpromising. His lack of what today would be called charisma seems to have been a part of his effectiveness, though, and related to his always upward life path. He became noted as a listener and a quiet doer. People who befriended him found themselves drawn to him, despite (or maybe because of) his quiet, gentle demeanor.

Coolidge, having read the law in a local law office rather than attending a law school, was drawn to politics, but, in his quiet and unprepossessing fashion, sought lower level offices on boards and committees, which helped him to learn local issues as well as grow in his skills of negotiation and finding compromises which would leave multiple parties happy. Shlaes consistently makes reference to large economic, political, and social changes occurring nationally as the turn of the century rolls around. She points to the Spanish American war, the emergence of industrialism, immigration, and technology as Coolidge warns his father that he will be a man of the 20^th century, not the 19^th which will require new skills and perspectives. With each physical and intellectual move Coolidge makes, Shlaes always places it in a larger context, laying groundwork for the president he will become. Coolidge’s posture towards the battles that were continuing to rage between progressives and conservatives became that legislators should not be ideologues, but choose the path that serves the greater good in each setting. He sought a balance between labor and capital that would help corporations thrive while working people received ever higher living wages, leading to the advancement of both.

On the other hand, by refusing to compromise during the 1919 Boston police strike, to find middle ground between the police strikers and their duty as police officers, Coolidge established a line that broke the already crumbling strike. Unlike his usual strategy of bringing factions together to find acceptable middle ground, his position of firing the police and making no compromises with behavior that led to the riots, Coolidge established himself as a man who could be counted on to make a hard decision in a time great difficulty. His choice was met with local and national acclaim. Where President Wilson had hesitated, more interested in his national tour pushing the doomed League of Nations, to speak out, Coolidge, as governor of Massachusetts, had taken an uncompromising stand toward the strike which garnered national attention and the first inklings among political watchers that he might be presidential timber.

Selected by the Republicans to become Warren G. Harding’s running mate in the 1920 election, he was able to keep enough independence not to get caught up in the scandals (Teapot Dome and others) associated with Harding, thus succeeding to the presidency when Harding died in the second year of his term without being associated with Harding’s problems, while able to continue to pursue (at least in name) the policies of his predecessor. For the next six years, Coolidge managed to cut spending, reduce taxes, create a balanced budget, and reduce the national debt. By the time he reached the decision not to run again (“I do not choose to run!”) he was widely admired and even liked as a conservative and public spirited man working for the benefit of all. He maintained his posture that the government had no business in local issues in the face of national disasters growing out of disastrous flooding in the South and New England, always the consistent and even-handed administrator and leader.

Amity Shlaes

Amity Ruth Shlaes is an American author and newspaper and magazine columnist. Shlaes writes about politics and economics from a US libertarian perspective. Shlaes has authored a number of books, including three New York Times Bestsellers (Wikipedia profile)

As Coolidge ages too quickly in retirement, the value of his care with words, his holding back to allow the processes to work themselves through, emerges in public consciousness. In his columns, as in his speeches and interviews as President, Coolidge makes each precious word count for more by husbanding the total. The contrast between his approach to his role and celebrity presidents goes almost without saying. Playing his cardsc honestly, close to the vest, even with changes in communications and technology, clearly gives the president’s words more impact and influence. Amity Shlaes has presented a powerful picture of a man who in public and private life lived within the restraints of humility and service while accomplishing much. Coolidge offers a portrait more students of our history should seek to learn from and emulate. I bought the book and read it on my Kindle. 

Eisenhower: Becoming the Leader of the Free World - Book Review

Louis Golambos’ new biography Eisenhower: Becoming the Leader of the Free World (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018, 296 pages, $23.65, 25.58) presents a picture of Dwight David Eisenhower, the thirty-fourth President of the United States, from the perspective his career as it prepared him for becoming Supreme Allied Commander of American forces in Europe during World War II, which propelled him into the presidency, succeeding Harry Truman in 1952 and serving as President until 1960. As a general, during World War II, he was widely, and justly, credited with having used superior organizational and political skills to coordinate allied efforts towards ultimate and complete victory, while garnering the recognition and popularity to achieve a huge electoral victory in 1952. As president, he again balanced a variety of national and international interests to lead America back towards peace while establishing the military might that staved off war with Soviet Russia. Furthermore, he coordinated efforts to bring the Korean conflict to its lingering conclusion, despite never being able to broker more than an armistice there. Most prominent in the biography is Golambos’ emphasis on Eisenhower’s preparation for and assumption of leadership, while his domestic and personal life is downplayed.

Golambos emphasizes the development of Eisenhower’s character growing up in relative poverty in Abilene, Kansas where his father was an angry, disappointed smart person who never achieved the social or economic position he thought he deserved, leading to an often violent approach to discipline with his six sons. Meanwhile his mother, Ida, was a deeply religious, warm, effective mother who dealt lovingly and thoughtfully with her developing sons. According to Golumbus, Ike’s early career at West Point and in the Army was dominated by the conflict between his two contrasting parents, leading to a strong and effective leadership style with his subordinates but to his having a difficult time dealing with authority at West Point and later which, in his early Army career, retarded his advancement.

His slow rise in the post war Army was worsened by his resistance to authority, often showing a temper he sought throughout his career to control. Early, he showed himself to be a prescient analyst of the future needs and directions of the Army, often rejected by superior officers trained in the pre-war environment of horses and then trench warfare. Eisenhower understood and promoted the importance of the tank as the coming major offensive weapon against the resistance of his superior officers, leading the retarding of his advancement. His assignments often emphasized training positions which also allowed him to coach football, but kept him as a staff officer. Meanwhile Douglas MacArthur and others who had earned combat stars, moved up the Army hierarchy.

He was lucky to be noticed by General Fox Connor who became his and Patton’s mentor. Conner mentored Ike as his Chief of Staff in Panama. He had the qualities to teach Ike how to manage the bureaucracy above him by attention to detail while developing confidence in his own ability to lead. He gained greater responsibility and was assigned to training tank troops under George S, Patton who was in Pershing’s command. Sent to train tank officers in Gettysburg, he continued to rise, but without distinction. He was deemed by his superiors to treat “others with respect and gave careful attention to their needs. He demanded discipline without being petty.” A pretty good description of the parenting he had received from his mother. Ike’s rise in the Army depended upon insights from two mentor/sponsors who recognized in him qualities not readily apparent to others. Fox Conner during the period between WWI and WWII and General George C. Marshall’s appointing him to be the top general in the planning for the invasion of Europe, which, at the time seemed to be a “stunning” move on Marshall’s part.

This book contains important lessons about leadership within a bureaucracy that rising or potential leaders should learn if they are to succeed. The book has significant relevance to those who would seek advanced leadership in any setting – business, schools, politics, or the military. The progress of Ike’s career and the Golumbus’ account of his weaknesses and strengths point to skills which should be emphasized in leadership programs in graduate school as well as learned by potential mentors and those seeking leadership themselves. Golumbus’ skill in relating these lessons to the historical herky-jerky prograss of Ike’s career is carefully structured and presented in such a way as to make it palatable to all the but the most heedless people who find themselves stymied in their ambitions.

At the close of the war Eisenhower accepted the presidency of Columbia University, a role he was totally unsuited for, while preparing for his run at the presidency. In assessing Ike’s role as president, Golumbos points to his achieving world peace and insuring American prosperity, while developing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to resist Soviet expansion in eastern Europe. Eisenhower’s entire career path had prepared him to use guile, charm, and power in equal proportions to maintain the U.S. at the top of world influence. He spent lavishly on retaining military strength while campaigning ceaselessly for peace, all with his world famous Eisenhower grin.

The book contains only one mention of Ike’s relationship to his driver Kay Summersby, but there’s a longer and more useful note that helps redress that oversight. Also, his deteriorating relationship with his wife, Mamie, who became a difficult alcoholic as she aged, is hardly discussed in the text, which focuses very successfully on Ike’s developing leadership skills, his ability to work across a wide range of personalities, organizational goals, and systems to achieve what Golambos calls a “middle way.”

Louis Golambos

Louis Golambos is professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University. He edited The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, a massive twenty-four volume collection.

Eisenhower is often seen as a plodder who emerged from a very long development period, rising to the demands of command during World War II and then rode his fame to two terms as President. He is revealed. Eisenhower: Becoming the Leader of the Free World  (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018, 296 pages, $23.65, 25.58) in this very thorough account of his professional military and political life, as a talented leader, able to encourage subordinates to obtain the best from them with a vision far greater than he is often given credit for having. Almost one third of the text is devoted to references and extensive notes. Golumbos has made a substantial contribution to understanding of this important military and political leader of the second half of the twentieth century. I read the book as an electron pre-publication copy provided by the publisher by Edelwiess: Beyondthe Treeline. I read it on my Kindle app.

Please remember that if you wish to purchase and read this book, you can click on any of the live links in this review to assure that I receive a small commission. You can also meet all your Amazon needs by using the Amazon portal at the upper left of the blog. Thanks for your support!

Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson - Book Review

Walter Isaacson’s huge biography Leonardo da Vinci (Simon & Schuster, 2017, 624 pages, $35.00/16.99/14.88) big, thick, heavy, beautifully illustrated provides a wonderful journey through the life, mind, and works of a genius who lived more than 400 years ago, but whose creativity, versatility, and imagination rebound through the ages to still affect our sensibilities today. Isaacson, whose previous biography of Einstein I also read and reviewed, stands as one of the major public intellectuals in America. Because he, himself, approaches his subjects with such appreciation and wonder, his books serve to open the minds of their readers, making the subjects accessible to ordinary folks.

Was Leonardo truly the greatest genius of all time, or did he happen to come along when all the conditions were right for a single person to capture and embody huge chunks of the world’s knowledge and experience? Science, math, engineering, art, sculpture, and technology were all encompassed in his studies and interests. His observational skills were without peer. He has obsessive about following through on questions that occurred to him, for instance, insisting on a comprehensive knowledge of anatomy to build invisible skeletons under the skins and clothing of his paintings.

Leonardo, born in Vinci, a town near Florence, Italy in 1452, the illegitimate son of notary Piero da Vinci, who was able to help promote his artistic efforts despite never having legitimated his brilliant son Leonardo, was apprenticed to an artist in Florence where he soon distinguished himself as a master of perspective, color, and drafting. Throughout his long and illustrious career, Leonardo moved restlessly from Florence to Milan to Rome, and eventually to France, where he spent his last years attached to King Francis I and died in 1519. Leonardo is renowned for his great paintings The Mona Lisa and The Last Supper as well others. Beyond painting, his achievements and ideas in engineering, technology, anatomy, military science, mathematics and further were recorded in his journals. Many of his discoveries and speculations were lost for hundreds of years, because he neglected to publish his writings and drawings, while abandoning or procrastinating in completing many of his most famous paintings. Despite this, on his death he was recognized throughout Europe as one of history’s greatest geniuses, a reputation which has only become brighter through the ages.

Mona Lisa

If you’re a person who goes to museums or enjoys paintings and painting, you’ll never look at a canvas or drawing with the same perspective (pun intended) after reading Isaacson’s chapter on the “Science of Art,” which explores Leondardo’s deep and inter-related developing ideas spreading far beyond art into the realms of science and math. “Just as he blurred the boundaries between art and science, he did so to the boundaries between reality and fantasy, between experience and mystery, between objects and their surroundings.” (270) Thus the sciences become metaphysical, moving into the space where observation interacts with belief and knowledge.

Isaacson makes the discovery, search, acquisition, and verification of Leonardo’s work into exciting detective stories, bringing the tales into the present day while remaining thoroughly in the 15^th and 16^th centuries. Names like Bernard Berenson and Kenneth Clark vie with Sforza and Ludivico as important in the Leonardo story, giving the whole book a shade of a contemporary thriller without the boiler plate of Dan Brown. A hint of a Mona Lisa smile flits around Isaacson’s mind as he weaves the story of how art, technology, and science first combined in Leonardo’s ceaseless search for more remains alive with the search for the Master. The chapter on La Bella Principessa, a previously unattributed drawing, provides as good detective writing as any novel while its owner covers Europe and the U.S. to confirm the insight which had first prompted him to purchase the piece.

Leonardo's Drawings

Leonardo’s intellectual development from being a believer in experience as the best teacher to combining his own current experience with traditions and knowledge handed down from antiquity in writing, architecture, mathematics, science, optics, engineering, sculpture, and art help him create the qualities that so characterize the Renaissance as re-birth and new birth of how to know. Much of Leonardo’s writing becomes a treatise on ways of knowing. Isaacson delights in exploring Leonardo’s mind through his almost limitless works distributed worldwide to libraries, museums, and private collectors. Leonardo’s experiments with using shadows, colors, shapes as well as his thought experiences recounted with words and illustrations suggest the breadth and intensity of his quest. “Just as he blurred the boundaries between art and science, he did so to the boundaries between reality and fantasy, between experience and mystery, between objects and their surroundings.” (270) Thus the sciences become metaphysical, moving into the space where observation interacts with belief and knowledge.

Walter Isaacson

Walter Isaacson, University Professor of History at Tulane, has been CEO of the Aspen Institute, chairman of CNN, and editor of Time magazine. He is the author of Leonardo da Vinci; Steve Jobs; Einstein: His Life and Universe; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life; and Kissinger: A Biography. He is also the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. In Leonardo da Vinci, he emerges as a benevolent character himself, taking joy in his own searches as he seeks to fathom the genius of this exceptional character in human history.

Perhaps no artist, no character, in history has left so much data while remaining such an enigma. Yet, as Isaacson brings his narrative to a close, Leonardo becomes increasingly difficult to encompass. His passions, his intelligence, his ceaseless questioning followed by obsessive studies helped lead him to some understanding of the answers he sought leaving those viewing his work with a certain frustration. While giving so much, Leonardo, like his most famous painting, holds himself slightly aloof, leaving uncertainties for us to contemplate for eternity.

Isaacson challenges the reader. In his discussion of Leonardo’s thoughts about how water flows and eddies, he interrupts the discussions to say, “Try noticing all that when you next fill a sink,” (432) stopping the reader to consider staring deeply into the bowl of water after shaving. His own delight at exploring Leonardo’s world, his insatiable curiosity and his ability to illustrate revelations clearly and precisely intrigue and elevate the author’s own thinking. Isaacson’s books on Leonardo, Franklin, Einstein, and Jobs detail the exploration of the world through the eyes of geniuses most of us can’t fathom ourselves, let alone illuminate for the thoughtful reader. I bought my own copy of Leonardo da Vinci and give it my highest recommendation.

Some thoughts on how to read this book: I bought Leonardo di Vinci as a hardback book on the recommendation of a commentator who mentioned the quality of the photographs, which are very good. However, if I were to purchase it again, however, I would buy it as a Kindle book, even though, at present, the Kindle version is more expensive than the hardback. I found it advantageous to access the largest image available on Google Images using my browser to focus in on small details as I read. Many of the details Isaacson writes about emerge on such close attention. It would be better still, to be able to examine the originals in detail. Unfortunately…..

The Mayor of McDougal Street by Dave Van Ronk with Elijah Wald

“Back at Our Lady of Perpetual Bingo where I went to school, along with the rack, thumbscrew, and bastinado, they has a curious custom of announcing grades in the final exam and then making everybody hang around for an extra week before turning us loose for summer vacation. Presumably they did this to reinforce or belief in Purgatory.” How can anyone resist a book that opens with this paragraph as Dave Van Ronk’s autobiography, The Mayor of McDougal Street (Hachette Book Group/Da Capo Press,2013, $15.99/9.99 or used from $3.06) written with Elijah Wald, does? A creature of New York, Van Ronk, of Swedish and Italian descent was born in Brooklyn, but migrated to Queens as a child, where he grew up following his own muse, early becoming entranced with music on his way to becoming perhaps the finest white blues guitarist and singer in America during the late fifties and sixties, the time of the folk music craze in America, and beyond.

Throughout this memoir, Van Ronk emerges as a smart, articulate, thoughtful observer of the music scene generally and the emergence of Greenwhich Village at the center of the New York folk music world during the fifites and sixties. Dropping out of school when he was thirteen or so, he gradually migrated to the Village, where he spent years perfecting his craft on the guitar, learning blues from a variety of mentors, becoming an active participant and then central feature in the weekly Sunday hootenannies in Washington Square Park. A voracious reader and listener, he also became involved in the left wing politics pervasive at that time, and remained a dedicated lefty until his death from cancer in 2002.

Van Ronk, looked at from fifty years after his greatest popularity was achieved, probably is most important as a chronicler of his times and a commentator on music and musicians of rare insight combined with clever articulation. Here I’ve culled a few of his many gems:

“...to be a musician requires a qualitatively different kind of listening”...Van Ronk studied jazz with old jazz man Jack Norton on Saturday’s with a group of other teens besotted with jazz and developing skill along the way. Learned to listen, that less is more, “never use two notes when one will do. Never use one note when silence will do. The essence of music is punctuated silence.” He later learned from guitar great Mississippi John Hurt, and many of the other long hidden black blues guitarists of the early twentieth century. He devotes an entire chapter to the influence of the Rev. Gary Davis on American blues and his own music.

Rev. Gary Davis – Hesitation Blues

Dave Van Ronk – Hesitation Blues – 1950 – 1961

“Theft is the first law of art.”

“I think it was a good thing that, back in the Renaissance, people like Michelangelo were treated like interior decorators. A well-written song is a craft item. Take care of the craft, and the art will take care of itself.”

His thoughts on Dylan’s going electric: “Working musicians are very rarely purists. The purists are out in the audience kibitzing, not onstage trying to make a living.”

The distinction between folk, rock & roll, and country: “...if the accompaniment to this music is acoustic, then it’s folk. With amplified backup, then it’s rock & roll, except in those cases where a pedal steel is added, then it’s country.”

Van Ronk is a great story-teller! His account of the so-called “feud” between him and Bob Dylan is filled with both humor and nuance, with a retelling of how Dylan recorded The House of the Rising Sun, each of their refusals to continue singing it, and his final discovery of the real House of the Rising Sun in New Orleans while with Odetta. Familiar names from a well-remembered musical period keep dropping, each one evoking memories, a sense of deja vu. Throughout the book, the stories abound, yet this book presents a cohesive picture of an important period in American music with one of the seminal figures who both created and inhabited it.

Van Ronk’s social activism and increasingly frequent writing in small magazines and slingers sometimes emphasized the need for folk singers and other musicians to refuse to work for free in situations where the person they were working for was exploiting their labor while hiring dishwashers, cooks, and other necessary employees. His writing in this area, as a developing professional musician still resonates into the musical world, where too many musicians are giving it away in settings other than benefit concerts. He maintains his sense of political radicalism, it seems, throughout his career, although his comments suggest he looks back at his adolescence and early adulthood with wry irony.

Dave Van Ronk

Elijah Wald

Dave Van Ronk, while not having a formal education, was a voracious reader and student of what he saw. Elijah Wald, whose writings include a noted biography of bluesman Robert Johnson and a recent account of Bob Dylan’s famous and controversial move to electric guitar, as well as lots of other writing, is listed as co-writer. When I asked him how much was Van Ronk and how much his, he wrote me, “The language is entirely Dave's -- as, I must say, is much of mine, since he was a huge influence on the way I think, talk, and write. He dropped out of school long before college, around age 12 or 13, but was phenomenally well read and also had spent years arguing politics and poetry with the best minds of Greenwich Village….” He went on to say, “I did write some connecting material, but it was minor and I swear he couldn't have picked out what wasn't his, if he'd had a chance to read it-nor can I, except a couple of lines I was particularly pleased with, and I'm not telling which those were.”

For those interested in the emerging music scene of the fifties and sixties, the moves from jazz, to folk to rock and roll, Van Ronk’s book is must reading. He’s intelligent, funny, a cogent and unbalanced observer of the scene he was such a crucial part of. His life was always chaotic, existing on the edge of poverty as well as the front edge of musical change. The South and Appalachia become source material which comes to New York and Newport rather than a world he, himself, explores. He knows people like blueser Gary Davis or bluegrass great Earl Scruggs through their appearances in Washington Square and Carnegie Hall rather than on their home territory. Written with Elijah Wald, I recommend The Mayor of MacDougal Street most highly. I bought the book.

Dave Van Ronk – St. James Infirmary Blues

Woman Walk the Line by Holly Gleason - Book Review

Woman Walk the Line: How Women in Country Music Changed Our Lives edited by Holly Gleason (University of Texas Press, 2017, 236 pages, $19.65) is a brilliantly conceived and executed project on which twenty-seven women associated with music as writers, producers, performers, or in some other capacity write about twenty-seven noted woman country and bluegrass performers chosen chronologically from Mother Maybelle Carter and Lil Hardin to Rhiannon Giddens and Patty Griffin. While much of the coverage seems to linger in the rich transitional period from the late sixties into the late eighties, from classic country to more rock influenced and overtly feminist takes on the importance of the artists, the scope of artists considered and the range of interests and backgrounds of the women writing the profiles is sweepingly broad.

The writers are both highly personal and deeply analytical, using their experience to enrich their understanding of artists and eras, thus rewarding the reader with much needed perspectives on the contributions of these marvelous women, not just at singers, but as cultural icons, too. The writing varies from luminous rock and roll journalism to self-indulgent self-puffery, but generally is of such high quality as to shine spotlights on the performers as well as their own era from a later and more highly self-aware historical perspective. The chapter on Hazel Dickens (written by Ronni Lundy, winner of this year's prestigious James Beard award for book of the year) called “Plangent to the Bone,” is worth the price of this book. Like the other chapters in this volume, it celebrates Hazel through her own life and its testimony as well as her effect upon the writer as both a woman and a musician/writer about music. As such it captures the rich interplay of experience between music producer and consumer in beautiful, sisterly language which crosses gender lines with, as should be the case in anything written about Hazel, scorching plain talk about love, life, work, and relationships.

The strategy of having women writers, many of whom are musicians in their own right (write) works in most of the profiles. Each contributor brings to life the character of the performer she writes about by examining the influence she wields on the the writer’s own life. Many of the profiles are the result of personal relationships developed through interviews, while others are written at a greater distance. For instance, Ali Berlow, a producer at Access Hollywood, writes about her deep sense of loss when her gay friend Dennis sends her home from Africa. Soon, he returns to visit, dieing of AIDS. She connects her own loss to Emmylou Harris’ career, based so much on the loss of her one great love, Gram Parsons. The duality works, deepening my own understanding of both women, and, in a larger sense, of women. Through the struggles for finding self, the writers are able to dig into the person inside the performer, struggling for expression and recognition in the male dominated world of country music. Berlow writes a paean to finding ones own voice as she allows Emmylou to give her permission.

Writing about Barbara Mandrell, Shelby Morrison says, “Barbara Mandrell helped to shape who I am, a confident woman, a woman who believes in herself. Barbara was in charge, she had a purpose and she inspired me to tuck my tiny Wranglers into my red Roper cowboy boots, cinch my belt buckle, crack my knuckles and get to work to find my purpose. She was everything I wanted to be.” In a sense, most of the writers describe a process and purpose much like the one Morrison explicitly identifies. Some use prosaic approaches, while others reach poetic heights. The essays vary in length and complexity. Each, however, tells almost (maybe more) as much about the writer as it does about the subject. If you’re looking for biography, look elsewhere. If you seek insight, revelation, and inspiration to boot, this is the book for you.

Each entry is an intertwining of a building relationship between a singer, for most of the women profiled are singers or singer/songwriters, and the profiler to create an intertwined portrait, like fine art and the artist. While reading, I realized these women were offering me more about their world, its glories and problems, than I had known, while teaching me how to write better about music as well as to listen to it more intelligently. Reading this book requires a new understanding of reading, since it asks the reader, no, commands the reader to become a participant in the enterprise. Many good readers do this anyway, but Woman Walk the Line helps define the line and then forces you to teeter along the tightrope with those actually having the experience.

Holly Gleason

Photo by Allister Ann

Editor Holly Gleason is a music critic, academic, and artist development consultant. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, HITS, Musician, CREEM, the Oxford American, No Depression, and Paste. She lives in Nashville. The contributors, too many to name, include poets, television producers, activists, teachers, historians, curators, Grammy-winners, and music critics. David Menconi, of the Raleigh News-Observer, is the co-editor of the University of Texas Press American Music Series, which published this remarkable book.

Holly Gleason, in Woman Walk the Line ( University of Texas Press, 2017, 236 pages, $19.65) has presented twenty-seven women who are country singers profiled by twenty seven woman writers each of whose experience has been enriched by they relationship to the woman they have profiled. The writers’ perspective in the contemporary world, young-middle aged, parent, child, straight, gay, trans, newbies, established, performer who writes, writer who performs inform, and are informed by the world in which they live and which they observe, just as the singer/songwriter seeks to do as a participant observer. What a way to develop postures toward the world of music! As the songs themselves move from abstracted reflections on life and love to increasingly personal and revelatory through, now, nearly 90 years of music covered in this marvelous volume, the book projects elements of society and changes in music that many might decry. Lovers of Maybelle Carter or Hazel Dickens may find themselves turning away from Taylor Swift or Kacey Musgraves as too self-revelatory. Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton fans might decide that Lucinda Williams and Patty Griffin aren’t their cup of tea. But Holly Gleason has unleashed a lushly written, highly personalized book of profiles that captures the artists and the writers in revealing ways that make this book irresistible. I read the Woman Walk the Line as a digital download provided by the publisher through Edelweiss on my Kindle app. It gets my highest recommendation.

Please remember that if you order this book through the links on my review or the Amazon portal on the left side of my blog, I receive a small commission which helps support this blog and our travels to bluegrass events.