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Here Comes the Night
- The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
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Publisher's summary
"I don't know where he's buried, but if I did I'd piss on his grave."
—Jerry Wexler, best friend and mentor
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: Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler, Burt Bacharach, Phil Spector, Gerry Goffin and Carole King, and anyone who was anyone in New York rhythm and blues. In seven quick years, he went from nobody to the top of the pops producer of monumental r&b classics, songwriter of "Twist and Shout", "My Girl Sloopy", and others.
His fury to succeed led Berns to use his Mafia associations to muscle Atlantic Records out of a partnership and intimidate new talents (like Neil Diamond and Van Morrison) he signed to his record label, only to drop dead of a long-expected heart attack, just when he was seeing his grandest plans and life's ambitions frustrated and foiled.
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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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Outlaw
- Waylon, Willie, Kris, and the Renegades of Nashville
- By: Michael Streissguth
- 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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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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Shining Star
- Braving the Elements of Earth, Wind & Fire
- By: Philip Bailey, Keith Zimmerman, Kent Zimmerman
- Narrated by: Philip Bailey
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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With more than 90 million records sold and eight Grammy Awards throughout its 40-year history, Earth, Wind & Fire has staked its claim as one of the most successful, influential, and beloved acts in music history. Now, for the first time, its dynamic lead singer, Philip Bailey, chronicles the group's meteoric rise to stardom and his own professional and spiritual journey. Never before had a musical act crossed multiple styles and genres with a quixotic blend of astrology, universalism, and Egyptology as Earth, Wind & Fire (EWF) did when it exploded into the public's conscience during the 1970s.
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Great book, but needed pro narrator
- By Wayne on 03-23-16
By: Philip Bailey, and others
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Cowboys and Indies
- The Epic History of the Record Industry
- By: Gareth Murphy
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 15 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Epic, yet incomplete.
- By Rob G. on 10-14-14
By: Gareth Murphy
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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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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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1965
- The Most Revolutionary Year in Music
- By: Andrew Grant Jackson
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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During 12 unforgettable months in the middle of the turbulent '60s, America saw the rise of innovative new sounds that would change popular music as we knew it. In 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music, music historian Andrew Grant Jackson (Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of The Beatles' Solo Careers) chronicles a groundbreaking year of creativity fueled by rivalries between musicians and continents, sweeping social changes, and technological breakthroughs.
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Seems like a good overview
- By wylie smith on 01-12-23
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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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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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Small Town Talk
- Bob Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Friends in the Wild Years of Woodstock
- By: Barney Hoskyns
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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When musicians in the New York folk scene of the 1960s grew tired of city life, they decided to "get it together in the country". They headed for Woodstock - not to the site of the infamous music festival of 1969 but to the Catskills, to Bearsville, to Woodstock proper. Counterculture revolutionaries like Janis Joplin, Richie Havens, and Paul Butterfield got "back to the land", turning the once sleepy hollow into a funky Shangri-La.
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Captured the era - too many mistakes
- By Frank Canino on 04-17-16
By: Barney Hoskyns
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Walk This Way
- Run-DMC, Aerosmith, and the Song That Changed American Music Forever
- By: Geoff Edgers
- Narrated by: Geoff Edgers
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Washington Post staff writer Geoff Edgers takes a deep dive into the story behind "Walk This Way", Aerosmith and Run-DMC's legendary, groundbreaking mashup that forever changed music.
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A MUST LISTEN/READ
- By Aron Teo Lee on 05-17-19
By: Geoff Edgers
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So Many Roads
- The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead
- By: David Browne
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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No longer dismissed as relics of the hippie era, a new generation has lionized the Dead for creating a culture that paved the way for social networking, free music swapping, and the uncompromising anticorporate attitude of indie rock. Now, fifty years after the band first began changing rock 'n' roll both sonically and psychically, So Many Roads paints the most vivid portrait yet of the Grateful Dead, one of the most enduring institutions in American music and culture.
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Great first book on the Dead
- By robert on 10-30-15
By: David Browne
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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
What listeners say about Here Comes the Night
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Gene Thorpe
- 03-30-22
Bert Burns the Legend!
This was a great book that gives an inside glimpse into the New York music scene! I recommend it strongly to anyone interested!
Gene Thorpe’s Little Red Rooster TV. YouTube
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- The Blimmer
- 10-14-23
Great book.
Good performance....but...Gerry Coffin??????ummm....edit much? Aw it's ok. Love the book a lot
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- Rabid Readers Reviews
- 03-18-15
Fascinating look at the history of R&B
Would you consider the audio edition of Here Comes the Night to be better than the print version?
The narration certainly enhanced the rapid fire presentation of material recited in the cool whiskey toned slightly southern voice of the reader.
Who was your favorite character and why?
The general look at the music industry is fascinating. This is not a work of non-fiction in which one character could be called out but I think the cool deception of the players and the chess play of artists was interesting to read.
Have you listened to any of Christian Rummel’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
This is the first work I've heard narrated by Christian Rummel but believe that there could not have been a better narrator for this sort of non-fiction. The overload of information was given the feeling of sitting in a bar with the reader as he tell the story of all he's seen in his career.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Listening to this book in one sitting might be a bit overwhelming. It is a true treasure trove of insider stories and a detailed look at the music industry as well as the life of Bert Berns. It is, however, a book that I was always thinking about when not listening and to which I was eager to return.
Any additional comments?
"Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues" is a fabulous look at the inside of the R&B industry of the 50s and 60s. It is engaging and uncensored. I had never heard of Bert Berns before picking up "Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues" though he'd written some of my favorite songs ("Brown Eyed Girl" "Under the Boardwalk") and was a key player in the British Invasion. Bert Berns and the R&B industry were not subjects that I thought interested me before reading Joel Selvin's exceptionally well researched piece. If you're a music fan of the era, pick this one up today.
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- George Guarino
- 09-09-21
Deep - Full of pop music history
I have a new appreciation and understanding of Bert Berns and this special time in pop music history. Didn’t want the book to end… yet I knew he died young and the book would end, but not the story.
Production was great and the voice reader did a terrific job.
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- Rob G.
- 07-13-15
Inside the Brill Building.
Really, this book was as much about the Brill Building and that era of pop music as it was about Bert Berns which makes sense as they're fairly intertwined. As a big fan of that era, this book was pretty fascinating. Interesting times and this book is vivid and fun. I was sorry it ended.
One comment to another review that claimed this book lifted a lot from others, specifically "The Last Sultan", maybe I haven't read enough, but I'm not seeing it. Sultan covered Ahmet Ertegun's story but here his Atlantic partner Jerry Wexler is the main interest. A lot of stuff that wasn't in Sultan, like the attempted sale of Atlantic to ABC-Paramount, is covered extensively and not mentioned at all in the other book.
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- P F
- 04-12-20
Listening to music clues mentioned in the story...
Stale of the music and a critical collaborator in music that still stir up the people when heard... Always a mess about who got the money and the greed in the business of ctreating and marketing r & b... A compelling story that pushes deep into music of the 50s and 60s with Bert Berns racing stars full throttle to beat the bad heart...
P. F.
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- Gert van Wyk
- 12-24-21
The best musical journey that can be undertaken.
What a book!!. It is full of music information from 1945 that is ready to pour out into your ears. Loved it.
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- M. Graham
- 03-10-15
Great Subject Dragged Down by Dud Narrator
This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?
1) Someone who hasn't read other music histories of the era (a lot of this book comes directly from other books, like The Last Sultan), 2) someone who doesn't mind listening to an old poop read cliched and pseudo-"hip" lingo from the 50s, and 3) someone who isn't particular about grammar and verb tenses.
What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)
I am not sure I will make it to the end. I have tried to ignore the narrator, but how is that possible when the entire experience of an audiobook is the audio? Listening to this book should be fun, but it's become punitive and depressing.
How could the performance have been better?
For starters, how about making sure the narrator has a pulse before he starts reading? Pretty ironic that a story about an artist who helped to create some of the most exciting pop music in US history, lived a fast and interesting life, and died young is narrated by someone who sounds like an 80-year-old fart. The energy of the story is drained away by this ponderous, tedious voice. I listened to samples of this narrator's work on other books, and he sounds a bit more lively and less irritating. Too bad he thought he had to approach this story as if it were the Old Testament.
You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?
The subject of the book is great. The stories that are new to the book are fun and interesting. I would have been able to tolerate this book as a reading experience, I think, but the awful narrator made the book's limitations seem glaring.
Any additional comments?
All of the books I have listened to that are narrated by British performers have been enjoyable experiences. What is wrong with so many American narrators? They seem either ponderous or pretentious, and mispronounce SO many common words.
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