Nick Tosches (1949–2019)

With a subtitle like "The Twisted Roots of Rock 'n' Roll", I was expecting a somewhat different book; perhaps a Country music version of Hollywood Babylon. Instead I got a sometimes hard to follow, potted history of Country music, with surprisingly meagre references to some big names of Country music (and in Johnny Cash's case, that reference isn't positive).

The characters that gain the most coverage in Country are Emmett Miller, who Tosches considers the true father of Country music, and Jerry Lee Lewis, who obviously caught Tosches attention enough that he would subsequently write a whole book about the Killer.

If nothing else, Country made me search out Emmett Miller on You Tube.… (mere)

A wealth of information about country and early rock music, but also bluegrass, soul, r&b, blues, rockabilly and any number of genres and styles that brushed up against each other and country.

Nick Tosches in the preface says, as far as country, he likes "the old stuff. At once so real and so fraudulent, so repressed and so uncontrollable." He lauds Emmett Miller, virtually unknown now, as "one of the most intriguing and profoundly important men in the history of country music." This edition has an appendix with more information about Miller that Tosches and others dug up since previous editions. That's the kind of book this is. Well-researched and in-depth.… (mere)