Lost Highway - by Peter Guralnick (Paperback)

About the Book

LOST HIGHWAY spotlights Ernest Tubb, Hank Snow, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Merle Haggard, and others in a tribute to American country music, the blues, and their revolutionary offspring, rockabilly. "You put the book down feeling that its sweep is vast, that you have read of giants who walked among us".--Lester Bangs, LOS ANGELES HERALD EXAMINER. 140 photos.

Book Synopsis

Winner of ​Ishmael Reed's Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award

This masterful explorationof American roots music--country, rockabilly, and the blues--spotlights the artists who created a distinctly American sound, including Ernest Tubb, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Elvis Presley, Merle Haggard, and Sleepy LaBeef. In incisive portraits based on searching interviews with these legendary performers, Peter Guralnick captures the boundless passion that drove these men to music-making and that kept them determinedly, and sometimes almost desperately, on the road.

Review Quotes

"A book not just for fans, but for anyone interested in music, American popular culture, and quietly eloquent writing."--John Rockwell, New York Times

"A companion volume to Guralnick's classic Feel Like Going Home and, startlingly, far better. . . . Guralnick has produced more than a tribute to the lost highway that carries the music he loves best: he has come through with a map of it."--Rolling Stone

"A powerful, affecting, compelling work....Probably the most moving and revealing book on country music to date."--Douglas Green, Country Music

"A superb source of information about American music and a perceptive, compassionate look at people at work--admittedly very special work--that is compelling even for readers who might not be primarily interested in music. . . . Like the music of the people Guralnick has written about, Lost Highway is inspired, honest work."--Tom Smith, New Haven Advocate

"For all of his sophistication as a writer, Guralnick maintains a palpable soft spot for populist American values and what one almost blushes to call the essential goodness of the common man. . . . Guralnick's honesty and willingness to immerse himself in all aspects of his musical passions sets him apart as a writer. He is a fan of the failures as well as the successes, and he recognizes that the two usually coexist in close proximity."--Steve Tomashefsky, down beat

"Guralnick deploys a master's touch and a lover's intensity to the simultaneous depiction of the character of the individual subject and the world in which he moves. Each profile gives the reader a coherent and evocative image not simply of a musician but also of a music. You learn not only who someone is, but where he's been, where he's going, and why. Neither details nor their significance escape his attention."--Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express

"Guralnick writes with an intimacy that comes as close as anyone to giving the reader an almost tangible understanding of the music, even if the reader isn't already familiar with it...To get a real feeling for Southern music and its roots, one should turn to [this] book."--Walter Dawson, Memphis Commercial Appeal

"Guralnick's book is almost too rich to take in at once....A major statement about the possibilities and limits of American musical culture....Lost Highway is less a study of musical genres, or even of individual performers, than it is a very closely observed and broadly applied study of vocation."--Greil Marcus, New West

"Indispensable.... [The chapter on Merle Haggard] is as if Chekhov had filed a report from Harrah's in Lake Tahoe."--Nat Hentoff, Village Voice

"Peter Guralnick is a national resource. No one writes as penetratingly as he about so wide a range of our indigenous music."--Nat Hentoff

"Peter Guralnick is among that rare breed of music writers who listen to--and do not hastily pigeonhole--their subjects....He goes far beneath the surface of mere historical biography to probe deeper issues....Guralnick is a thinking man's music writer [and] Lost Highway is a book that fills a void both in subject matter and in the art of music criticism."--Steve Morse, Boston Globe

"Practically every one of these snapshots provides glimpses of not only an artist and his work, but also his home; his wife and children; his friends and family; his musicians; his business partners and managers; his drinking cronies; the roots from which he sprang and the community which continues to sustain him....Guralnick remains both an evocative chronicler and a passionate advocate. Lost Highway, like his widely (and justifiably) praised earlier work, Feel Like Going Home, is a book that can revive old enthusiasms and awaken new ones. As with most of the artists he admires, Guralnick's work comes straight from the heart."--Don McLeese, Chicago Reader

"This book is not so much about music as about musicians--a book about the stresses and the joys that the music brings to the performers who create it and to their audiences. . . . What you will find [are] touching images of the lives and spirits of the people behind the music."--John Goldrosen, Goldmine

"You put the book down feeling that its sweep is vast, that you have read of giants who walked among us....Guralnick understands so well and expresses so eloquently the forces that grind many of America's greatest artists to dust [and yet] never loses sight of the dream that set them all on that highway in the first place....He consistently gives us scenes along the road that are so strange and haunting, or touching, that they make the whole trip worthwhile."--Lester Bangs, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner