"The Chitlin' Circuit: And the Road to Rock 'n' Roll" by Preston Lauterbach
A review by David Kirby
It's 1951, and a group of teenagers who call themselves the Kings of Rhythm are motoring up Highway 61 from the Mississippi Delta, their instruments tied to the top of the car. A 19-year-old named Ike Turner is driving, and he and the band are on their way to Memphis when they hit a bump that sends their equipment flying. Turner and the others hail from Clarksdale, where poor folks make instruments out of wire and broomsticks, so when they discover a fracture in their amplifier, they just patch it and shoulder on. The story begins with a musician and entrepreneur named Walter Barnes, a mover and shaker who crossed racial lines to buddy up with Al Capone, who taught him how to organize. In the Jazz Age, so-called territory bands played out of hotel ballrooms and broadcast over low-watt radio stations but also traveled as far as their reputations (and broadcasts) carried them. Barnes contacted dance-hall operators, promoters, colored-friendly hotels and restaurants, and took the...
|
 |
Previously Reviewed by The Christian Science Monitor
Sort: by date | by title | by author
Minefields of the Heart: A Mother's Stories of a Son at War by Sue Diaz
 Several visceral, difficult-to-forget books, like David Finkel's The Good Soldiers and Dexter Filkins' The Forever War, have chronicled the daily bravery, fear, and pain of American troops in Iraq as they struggle with the enemy, the meaning of their mission, and the loneliness of being away from...
The Original of Laura by Vladimir Nabokov
 When Vladimir Nabokov died in Switzerland in 1977, he left explicit instructions for his heirs to destroy the penciled index cards that made up his work to date on his unfinished 18th novel, The Original of Laura (Dying is Fun). Vera, his loyal wife and amanuensis, who died in 1991, couldn't bring...
|
More Than Three Decades of Quality Writing and Criticism
The National Book Critics Circle, founded in 1974, honors outstanding writing and fosters a national conversation about reading, criticism, and literature. To learn about how to join, click here.
|
|
Don't Miss
