A treat for the Man in Black’s many fans.
A profusely illustrated volume documents a celebrated performer’s struggles and hard-won triumphs.
Veteran music journalist Light (What Happened Miss Simone?: A Biography, 2016, etc.) offers an admiring yet cleareyed biography of Johnny Cash (1932-2003), a composer, singer, and guitar player who crossed many genres. Though associated mainly with country, in 1992, when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cash acknowledged a wide range of influences, including Alan Lomax’s field recordings of hill country music, Hank Williams, and gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Cash’s cultural contributions went beyond music; he was also an actor, writer (of two autobiographies and a novel), and social and political activist. “You could guide your ship by him,” his friend Bob Dylan said. “Listen to him and he always brings you to your senses.” Cash made his first major concert appearance in 1955, opening for Elvis Presley in Memphis; “Cash don’t have to move a muscle, he just sings and stands there,” Presley remarked. “The whole world will know Johnny Cash.” His early recordings—“Folsom Prison” and “I Walk the Line”—were immediate hits, topping country and pop charts. But neither his career nor his personal life was smooth. Married with four children, he fell in love with singer June Carter and desperately wanted his Catholic wife to agree to a divorce. In the 1960s, he descended into alcoholism and drugs, “gobbling amphetamines at a ferocious pace.” During a seven-year period, he found himself in jail seven times for drug-related offenses. Throughout the book, Light interrupts the chronology of Cash’s life with “spotlights,” concise essays on four themes: musical influences, social concerns, marriage to June (complex, tense, and often volatile), and religion (he was a good friend of Billy Graham). The author draws on Cash’s autobiographies, music history and criticism, interviews, and writings by Cash’s family to produce an intimate and engaging portrait. By far the greatest strength of the book, though, are the illustrations: memorabilia from family archives and abundant photographs that capture Cash’s undeniable charisma.
A treat for the Man in Black’s many fans.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-58834-639-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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