Cowboys and Indies
The Epic History of the Record Industry
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Narrated by:
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Ralph Lister
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By:
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Gareth Murphy
About this listen
Cowboys and Indies is the definitive record-business bible, chronicling the pioneers who set the stylus on the most important labelsand musical discoveries of the last century. The narrative follows all the musical trends and developments from the phonograph to the Internet age as it delves behind the big business of corporate hit machines and the diligent industry of small, curated labels. Drawing from memoirs, archives, and over 100 exclusive interviews with legends of the record industry - including the founders and CEOs of Virgin, United Artists, Atlantic, and A&M Records - this book reveals the secrets behind the hit-making craft.
Cowboys and Indies focuses on the game changers - the indie founders, talent scouts, legendary A&R men - believers who understood the music business was two distinct parts: first music, then business. An industry insider himself, Gareth Murphy culls numerous behind-the-scenes anecdotes to bring together a clear genealogical map of the record industry’s 130-year international history. Among its revelations, Cowboys and Indies highlights the remarkable similarities between the industry crash of the 1920sand ’30s and the recent CD crash.
Witty and evocative, Cowboys and Indies offers a fresh panoramic view of the cycles and grooves of pop music and is sure to top the charts with music industry classics like Hitmaker and The Mansion on the Hill.
©2014 Gareth Murphy (P)2014 Blackstone AudiobooksListeners also enjoyed...
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- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Waylon Jennings. Willie Nelson. Kris Kristofferson. Three renegade musicians. Three unexpected stars. Three men who changed Nashville and country music forever. Streissguth's new book brings to life an incredible chapter in musical history and reveals for the first time a surprising outlaw zeitgeist in Nashville. Based on extensive research and probing interviews with key players, what emerges is a fascinating glimpse into three of the most legendary artists of our times and the definitive story of how they changed music in Nashville and everywhere.
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Revealing little-known Details does Captivate!
- By Cody Meyer on 11-20-17
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Here Comes the Night
- The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues
- By: Joel Selvin
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Here Comes the Night: Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues is both a definitive account of the New York rhythm and blues world of the early '60s, and the harrowing, ultimately tragic story of songwriter and record producer Bert Berns, whose meteoric career was fueled by his pending doom. His heart damaged by rheumatic fever as a youth, doctors told Berns he would not live to see 21. Although his name is little remembered today, Berns worked alongside all the greats of the era.
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Great book.
- By The Blimmer on 10-14-23
By: Joel Selvin
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Fire and Rain
- The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY and the Lost Story of 1970
- By: David Browne
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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January 1970: the Beatles assemble one more time to put the finishing touches on Let It Be; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are wrapping up Déjà Vu; Simon and Garfunkel are unveiling Bridge Over Troubled Water; James Taylor is an upstart singer-songwriter who's just completed Sweet Baby James. Over the course of the next twelve months, their lives---and the world around them---will change irrevocably.
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Fascinating information, easy to listen
- By NCKitkat on 07-28-11
By: David Browne
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Thelonious Monk
- The Life and Times of an American Original
- By: Robin DG Kelley
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 25 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Thelonious Monk is the critically acclaimed, gripping saga of an artist's struggle to "make it" without compromising his musical vision. It is a story that, like its subject, reflects the tidal ebbs and flows of American history in the 20th century. To his fans, he was the ultimate hipster; to his detractors, he was temperamental, eccentric, taciturn, or childlike. His angular melodies and dissonant harmonies shook the jazz world to its foundations, ushering in the birth of "bebop" and establishing Monk as one of America's greatest composers.
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The definitive bio of Monk
- By ricardo on 12-27-17
By: Robin DG Kelley
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Empire State of Mind
- How Jay-Z Went from Street Corner to Corner Office
- By: Zack O'Malley Greenburg
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Some people think Jay-Z is just another rapper. Others see him as just another celebrity/mega-star. The reality is, no matter what you think Jay-Z is, he is first and foremost a business. And as much as Martha Stewart or Oprah, he has turned himself into a lifestyle. This audiobook explains just how Jay-Z propelled himself from the bleak streets of Brooklyn to the heights of the business world.
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It was ok
- By Michelle M. on 01-03-17
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King of the Blues
- The Rise and Reign of B.B. King
- By: Daniel De Visé
- Narrated by: Cary Hite
- Length: 17 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Riley “Blues Boy” King (1925-2015) was born into deep poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi. Wrenched away from his sharecropper father, B.B. lost his mother at age 10, leaving him more or less alone. Music became his emancipation from exhausting toil in the fields. Inspired by a local minister’s guitar and by the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker and encouraged by his cousin, the established blues man Bukka White, B.B. taught his guitar to sing in the unique solo style that, along with his relentless work ethic and humanity, became his trademark.
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Excellent
- By Sonny Garcia on 01-02-24
By: Daniel De Visé
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Goodnight, L.A.
- Untold Tales from Inside Classic Rock’s Legendary Recording Studios
- By: Kent Hartman
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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From behind the walls of a handful of well-hidden, unlikely recording studios in the Los Angeles area, legends-in-waiting created masterpiece albums. It was a time of astonishing creativity and unprecedented fame and fortune. It was also a time of unfettered excess that threatened to unravel everything along the way. With access that only a longtime music business insider can provide, Kent Hartman packs Goodnight, L.A. with never-before-told stories about the most prolific time and iconic place in rock 'n' roll history.
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great stories and insight into a miraculous time
- By RWM on 05-27-22
By: Kent Hartman
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John Lennon
- The Life
- By: Philip Norman
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
- Abridged
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Philip Norman turns his formidable talent to the Beatle for whom belonging to the world's most beloved pop group was never enough. Drawing on previously untapped sources, and with unprecedented access to all the major characters, here is the definitive portrait of John Lennon. This biography takes a fresh and penetrating look at Lennon's much-chronicled life, including the songs that have turned him, posthumously, into almost a secular saint.
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Really Bad Abridgement Job (slash job)
- By Let's Be Reasonable on 12-04-08
By: Philip Norman
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Tearing Down the Wall of Sound
- The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector
- By: Mick Brown
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 17 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Phil Spector, born in the Bronx in 1940, grew up an outsider despised by his peers. But he formed a band, and had a number-one hit with "To Know Him Is to Love Him". He quickly became the top producer of early rock and roll and the originator of such girl groups as the Ronettes. Hit followed hit, and for all of them he used a new recording style called the "wall of sound". But the reign of the boy-man who owned pop music was doomed, and Spector spiraled into paranoid isolation and peculiar behavior.
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Descent Into Madness
- By Chris on 06-11-12
By: Mick Brown
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Everybody Wants Some
- The Van Halen Saga
- By: Ian Christe
- Narrated by: Fred Berman
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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How did a pair of little Dutch boys trained in classical music grow up to become the nucleus of the most popular heavy metal band of all time? What's the secret behind Eddie Van Halen's incredible fast and furious guitar solos? What makes David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar so wacky? And, are all those stories about groupies, booze bashes, and contract riders true? The naked truth is laid bare in Everybody Wants Some - the real-life story of a rock 'n' roll fantasy come true.
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Good details of albums and post-1984 career
- By IndyMATT on 12-30-18
By: Ian Christe
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The Wrecking Crew
- The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Best-Kept Secret
- By: Kent Hartman
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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If you were a fan of popular music in the 1960s and early '70s, you were a fan of the Wrecking Crew - whether you knew it or not. On hit record after hit record by everyone from the Byrds, the Beach Boys, and the Monkees to the Grass Roots, the 5th Dimension, Sonny & Cher, and Simon & Garfunkel, this collection of West Coast studio musicians from diverse backgrounds established themselves as the driving sound of pop music - sometimes over the objection of actual band members....
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Left Guessing
- By Patrick King on 04-29-14
By: Kent Hartman
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The Story of Motown
- By: Peter Benjaminson, Greil Macus - foreword
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In January 1959, Berry Gordy borrowed $800 from his family and founded the Detroit-based record company that in less than a decade was to become the largest Black-owned business in the United States. It also became one of the most productive and influential producers of popular music anywhere in the world. The Story of Motown is the story of Berry Gordy's triumph over powerful, established financial interests, entrenched popular taste, bigotry, and racism.
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Check Your Facts
- By Marie on 11-24-18
By: Peter Benjaminson, and others
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Bright lights dark shadows
- The real story of Abba
- By: Carl Palm
- Narrated by: Adrian Mulraney
- Length: 26 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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An exploration of all aspects of the Abba member’s lives and careers. Amazingly detailed, it examines the group member’s family backgrounds, the pre-Abba days, the legendary 70s, the marriages, the divorces, the business ups and downs, and the post-Abba solo careers.
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Awesome! -- All the Swedish words pronounced!
- By Howard_a on 06-18-12
By: Carl Palm
What listeners say about Cowboys and Indies
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- DaveW
- 02-03-15
Everything Old is New Again
This book does a very good job of describing the pioneering spirit of the characters that played a role in what we know to be the music business. History is often shaded and colored by those who recount it. But I thoroughly enjoyed the book.
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- Rob G.
- 10-14-14
Epic, yet incomplete.
I would agree with Gareth Murphy's subtitle. There is an epic story of the record industry to be told. Unfortunately, after finishing this book, it seems like it's still waiting for someone to tell it. While this book makes an attempt, it's too rock-centric (and Euro-centric) to really live up to the title. Specifically, this books treads the well worn path from hippy idealism to Reagan era greed to the exclusion of much more than a passing glance at much else.
Things start off well enough with a history of the invention of recorded sound, which should be a book itself with all the characters and intrigue there, leading to the birth of the recording industry. I really liked this early part of the book and it gave me high hopes for what was to come. Things move along briskly, maybe too much so, until the beginning of Beatlemania and that is where the problems begin.
What follows is the meat of the book and a lot of the same faces and same stories that if you've read much about the recording industry you will already know. As the "sharks" take over, we learn David Geffen is a high-strung diva. Casablanca was a hedonistic wonderland. Walter Yetnikoff yells a lot. Etc., etc., etc. Murphy really focuses deeply on the already very well documented time period between 1966 and 1986. Then everyone gets bought up, Nirvana happens, then the Backstreet Boys, then Napster, then EMI is broken up and then a very bizarre and rambling final chapter.
Along the way, a lot falls through the cracks. Seminal jazz and r&b labels such as Stax, Blue Note, Savoy, Prestige, Chess, Modern, etc., are only mentioned in passing, if at all (most of the labels I’ve named aren't even mentioned.) Hip-hop is reduced to Tommy Boy records, Rick Rubin's story and a sentence or two about Sugar Hill Records. Country music is all but absent entirely. And on and on.
While I do understand this is just one book and we're talking about a big history, my issue is with the decisions made, not that every thing under the sun wasn't covered. For example, we get to hear a lot about Chris Blackwell and the rise and fall of Island records. A whole lot. Maybe the most space of any one story line in the whole book. But I'm still not convinced the amount of space given to telling that story is proportional to the importance it has in the larger narrative.
On the other hand, the 90s, which may have been the most profitable time in the entire industry's history, are rushed through rapidly, quite literally jumping from grunge to boy bands in a matter of minutes. No discussion of Soundscan, which drastically changed the chart situation. No mention of the hip-hop and country music booms. No mention of Interscope records or Jimmy Iovine, who is maybe one of the last of the true record men. It just seems like a major over site to me.
Also, if it didn't happen in the UK or America, it didn't happen. I suppose it was too much to expect a global approach, but there are some fascinating record cultures around the world worth of study as well. Jamaican music, for instance, is mentioned in the context of Island's story, but their own homegrown industry, at one time the largest in the world, believe it or not, is completely ignored.
And that last chapter, I'm still trying to figure out what that was about. It starts with the expected "where do we go from here" wrap up, then veers into a discussion about Jews in the music business and spirituality in general and I'm not even sure what else. At least it does help explain why Murphy goes into great detail on the Jewish backgrounds of many of his subjects throughout the book (prior to this chapter, this always seems like a bizarre tangent.) It still seems like a tagged on afterthought rather than anything really important to the history he's telling. (Again, there's probably a book on this subject waiting to be written, but this isn't it.)
If it seems like I'm picking nits on this book, you have to understand there has already been a lot written on the record business, specifically on the time period Murphy choses to focus on. I was hoping for some new insite or piece of the story that hasn't already been written about else where. While I won't argue that what's in here isn't important and entertaining, it's just more of the same stuff that people writing about the biz like to write about. I'm sure if this is your first read on the subject, you'll get a lot more out of it than I did. Just know it's only a piece of the story, not the whole thing.
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6 people found this helpful
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- tru britty
- 06-09-15
Great journey thru recorded history
Fell in love with this book immediately. The author details the birth of recorded music in the waning days of the 19th century to the iPod and arguments over the digitizations of music.
This is a story of technology, creativity, booms, busts and amazing personalities: Emile Berliner, Thomas Edison, Clive Davis, Jak Holzman, Dylan, the Beatles, Steve Jobs.
Learned that the emergence of radio entertainment in the 1920s put the industry in a tailspin, similar to the one it is trying to wrestle itself out of now.
A good, breezy overview that whets the appetite for more in-depth reading. Ralph Lister did a great job with narration. Overall, very happy.
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- Steven Gehlen
- 01-16-21
fantastic book for anyone interested in music!
This book was extremely well researched and structured. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it.
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