CRP's Blog

To celebrate Black History Month this February, we’re featuring a different themed collection of reading recommendations each Monday. For this week, we’ve rounded up our top music titles highlighting everything from comprehensive biographies of black musicians to narratives that pinpoint pivotal moments in the history of black music. Check out our list below and get reading!

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Up Jumped the Devil by Bruce Conforth & Gayle Dean Wardlow (Coming June 2019!)

In this definitive biography of Robert Johnson, the authors relied on every possible interview, resource and document—most of it material that no one has ever seen before—to destroy every myth that ever surrounded Johnson and tell the true story. Up Jumped the Devil will astonish blues fans who thought they knew something about Johnson. This is an ideal read for anyone interested in blues, black culture and American music.

“Conforth and Wardlow have done amazing research, turning up a wealth of new details and clearing up mysteries I never imagined could be solved. This is the definitive Robert Johnson biography, and no one interested in his life, his legend or his music can afford to miss it. I read it in one sitting, and will reread it gratefully in the future.” —Elijah Wald, author of Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues

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Mary Wells by Peter Benjaminson (April 2016)

Mary Wells was the first Motown solo superstar, but she was much more than a successful singer with an alluring voice. Benjaminson tells her whole story, complete with never-before revealed details about the sex, violence and drugs in her life—and about her Motown hits that captivated the world.

“Peter Benjaminson pays tribute to the remarkable life of Mary Wells through a fascinating biography. His relentless research has resulted in not only a riveting tale of Wells’s many personal battles but also a gripping snapshot of the music industry in which she worked. Motown’s first superstar is given top-of-the-charts treatment in this terrific book.”  —Gerald Posner, author of Motown, Why America Slept and Case Closed

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98% Funky Stuff by Maceo Parker (May 2016)

Here Maceo tells his own warm and astonishing story, from his southern upbringing to his career touring the world and playing to adoring fans. This is the definitive story of one of the funkiest musicians alive.

“An important addition to any library of black music biographies.”  —DownBeat

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Hendrix on Hendrix edited by Steven Roby (November 2016)

A Los Angeles Times nonfiction bestseller, Hendrix on Hendrix includes the most important interviews from the peak of Jimi Hendrix’s career, 1966 to 1970, carefully selected by one of the world’s leading Jimi Hendrix historians.

“The closest autobiography we’ll ever have of legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix.”  —Publishers Weekly

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Party Music by Rickey Vincent (October 2013)

This book reveals the never-before-heard story of the Black Panthers’ R&B band the Lumpen and how five rank-and-file members performed popular music for revolutionaries. Beyond the mainstream civil rights movement are the stories of the Black Panthers, the Black Arts Movement, the antiwar activism and other radical movements that were central to the impulse that transformed black popular music—and created soul music.

“Comprehensive, complex and revealing, Vincent’s nostalgic journey provides an insider’s look at a remarkable band and a piercing snapshot of black history.” —Publishers Weekly

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Lightnin’ Hopkins by Alan Govenar (May 2010)

This brilliant biography—the first book ever written about Sam “Lightnin’” Hopkins—illuminates the many contradictions of the man and his myth. It explores Hopkins’s early years, his time as a recording artist and his second career playing to white audiences, singing about his country roots and injustices that informed the civil rights era with a searing emotive power.

“[Govenar’s] detailed examination of how the delightfully cantankerous Hopkins rode the folk music craze of the early 1960s to rediscovery and a second, probably more remunerative recording career should be a cornerstone of blues-covering pop-music collections.” —Booklist

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The Lost Supreme by Peter Benjaminson (September 2009)

For the first time, Flo Ballard’s heartbreaking tale is revealed, from the details of her love-hate relationship with Motown Records czar Berry Gordy to her attempts to get her life back on track after being brutally expelled from the Supremes, and much more. Flo Ballard traveled around the world in luxury, chatting with royalty and heads of state, applauded by millions. But when she died at the age of 32, she was a lonely mother of three just barely recovered from years of poverty and despair. Though we may mourn the extended silence of such a profound talent, at least now we can begin to understand how and why it happened.

“Get to know the real Flo, from the beginning to the end. A must read.” —Otis Williams, the Temptations

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Miles on Miles edited by Paul Maher & Michael Dorr (November 2008)

Miles on Miles collects the 30 most vital Miles Davis interviews. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to know what Miles Davis thought about his music, life and philosophy. Miles was not only a musical genius but an enigma, and nowhere else was he so compelling, exasperating and entertaining as in his interviews, which vary from polite to outrageous, from straight-ahead to contrarian.

“Moving forward from 1957 to the end of his life, in 1991, these sparring sessions and profound exchanges trace Davis’ dynamic artistic evolution, from poetic ballads to molten fusion, and his endless quest for liberation.” —Booklist

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I’d Rather Be the Devil by Stephen Calt (April 2008)

Skip James was perhaps the most creative and idiosyncratic of all blues musicians. Drawing on hundreds of hours of conversations with James himself, Stephen Calt here paints a dark and unforgettable portrait of a man untroubled by his own murderous inclinations, a man who achieved one moment of transcendent greatness in a life haunted by failure.

“The appearance of a book on Skip James and his worlds as thorough, clearheaded and insightful as Calt’s should be considered a gift of fate. To say I’d Rather Be the Devil is the best book on the subject of ‘country blues’ for the layperson would be an understatement on the order of ‘Air is good for your body.’” —Village Voice

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The World Don’t Owe Me Nothing by David Honeyboy Edwards (March 2000)

This vivid oral snapshot of an America that planted the blues is full of rhythmic grace. From the son of a sharecropper to an itinerant bluesman, Honeyboy’s stories of good friends Charlie Patton, Big Walter Horton, Little Walter Jacobs and Robert Johnson are a godsend to blues fans. History buffs will marvel at his unique perspective and firsthand accounts of the 1927 Mississippi River flood, vagrancy laws, makeshift courts in the back of seed stores, plantation life and the Depression.

“A deeply moving memoir…one of the last true country blues musicians…[a] story of a troubadour and of survival.”  —Studs Terkel