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Otis Redding
- An Unfinished Life
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 17 hrs and 48 mins
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Publisher's summary
The long-awaited, definitive biography of the King of Soul, timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Redding's iconic performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.
Otis Redding remains an immortal presence in the canon of American music on the strength of such classic hits as "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay", "I've Been Loving You Too Long", "Try a Little Tenderness", and "Respect", a song he wrote and recorded before Aretha Franklin made it her own. As the architect of the distinctly Southern, gospel-inflected style of rhythm & blues associated with Stax Records in Memphis, Redding made music that has long served as the gold standard of 1960s soul. Yet an aura of myth and mystery has always surrounded his life, which was tragically cut short at the height of his career by a plane crash in December 1967.
In Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life, Jonathan Gould finally does justice to Redding's incomparable musical artistry, drawing on exhaustive research, the cooperation of the Redding family, and previously unavailable sources of information to present the first comprehensive portrait of the singer's background, his upbringing, and his professional career.
In chronicling the story of Redding's life and music, Gould also presents a social history of the time and place from which they emerged. His book never lets us forget that the boundaries between Black and White in popular music were becoming porous during the years when racial tensions were reaching a height throughout the United States. His indelible portrait of Redding and the mass acceptance of soul music in the 1960s is both a revealing look at a brilliant artist and a provocative exploration of the tangled history of race and music in America that resonates strongly with the present day.
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Story
The remarkable life and times of the man who popularized American folk music and created the science of song. Folklorist, archivist, anthropologist, singer, political activist, talent scout, ethnomusicologist, filmmaker, concert and record producer, Alan Lomax is best remembered as the man who introduced folk music to the masses. Lomax began his career making field recordings of rural music for the Library of Congress and by the late 1930s brought his discoveries to radio, including Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Burl Ives.
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They Done Good
- By DonnaMarie113 on 06-26-22
By: John Szwed
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Respect Yourself
- Stax Records and the Soul Explosion
- By: Robert Gordon
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 17 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of Stax Records unfolds like a Greek tragedy. A white brother and sister build a record company that becomes a monument to racial harmony in 1960’s segregated south Memphis. Their success is startling, and Stax soon defines an international sound. Then, after losses both business and personal, the siblings part, and the brother allies with a visionary African-American partner. Under integrated leadership, Stax explodes as a national player until, Icarus-like, they fall from great heights to a tragic demise.
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Great narration
- By A. K. Moore on 10-29-14
By: Robert Gordon
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All Shook Up
- How Rock ‘n’ Roll Changed America
- By: Glenn C. Altschuler
- Narrated by: Jack Garrett
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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As Glenn Altschuler reveals in All Shook Up, the rise of rock 'n roll--and the outraged reception to it--in fact can tell us a lot about the values of the United States in the 1950s, a decade that saw a great struggle for the control of popular culture. Altschuler shows, in particular, how rock's "switchblade beat" opened up wide fissures in American society along the fault-lines of family, sexuality, and race.
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50's Rock&Roll was more of a force than I thought
- By James on 10-19-11
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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
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Uncommon People
- The Rise and Fall of The Rock Stars
- By: David Hepworth
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The age of the rock star, like the age of the cowboy, has passed. Like the cowboy, the idea of the rock star lives on in our imaginations. What did we see in them? Swagger. Recklessness. Sexual charisma. Damn-the-torpedoes self-belief. A certain way of carrying themselves. Good hair. Interesting shoes. Talent we wished we had. What did we want of them? To be larger than life but also like us. To live out their songs. To stay young forever. No wonder many didn't stay the course.
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INSIGHTFULL!
- By CLAUDIA R KENNEDY on 02-18-18
By: David Hepworth
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Dig If You Will the Picture
- Funk, Sex, God and Genius in the Music of Prince
- By: Ben Greenman
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Ben Greenman, New York Times best-selling author, contributing writer to The New Yorker, and owner of thousands of recordings of Prince and Prince-related songs, knows intimately that there has never been a rock star as vibrant, mercurial, willfully contrary, experimental, or prolific as Prince. Uniting a diverse audience while remaining singularly himself, Prince was a tireless artist, a musical virtuoso and chameleon, and a pop-culture prophet.
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Reads like a indepth career review & analysis
- By herb on 05-18-17
By: Ben Greenman
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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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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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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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Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?
- Larry Norman and the Perils of Christian Rock
- By: Gregory Alan Thornbury
- Narrated by: Stephen R. Thorne
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1969, in Capitol Records' Hollywood studio, a blonde-haired troubadour named Larry Norman laid track for an album that would launch a new genre of music and one of the strangest, most interesting careers in modern rock. Having spent the bulk of the 1960s playing on bills with acts like The Who, Janis Joplin, and The Doors, Norman decided that he wanted to sing about the most countercultural subject of all: Jesus.
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Hagiography not Biography
- By Keith Howard on 10-29-18
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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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Beatles '66
- The Revolutionary Year
- By: Steve Turner
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The year that changed everything for the Beatles was 1966 - the year of their last concert and of Revolver, their first album created to be listened to rather than performed. This was the year the Beatles risked their popularity by retiring from live performances, recording songs that explored alternative states of consciousness, experimenting with avant-garde ideas, and speaking their minds on issues of politics, war, and religion. Music journalist and Beatles expert Steve Turner investigates the enormous changes that took place in the Beatles' lives and work during 1966.
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Great listen
- By Tad Davis on 07-28-18
By: Steve Turner
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Lynyrd Skynyrd
- Remembering the Free Birds of Southern Rock
- By: Gene Odom, Frank Dorman - contributor
- Narrated by: Arthur Flavell
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1964 Jacksonville, Florida teenager Ronnie Van Zant and some of his friends hatched the idea of forming a band to play covers of the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Yardbirds, and the country and blues-rock music they had grown to love. Naming their band after Leonard Skinner, the gym teacher at Robert E. Lee Senior High School who constantly badgered the long-haired aspiring musicians to get haircuts, they were soon playing gigs at parties, and bars throughout the South.
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A tragic sorry, but honestly told
- By Mark D. Schnittman on 09-27-21
By: Gene Odom, and others
What listeners say about Otis Redding
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Mark R. Segal
- 06-06-20
Fantastic!
To understand Otis Redding, there’s a lot of social history that needs to be unpacked. This book exceeded in this feat.
A great biography and examination of race relations in the South.
Worth every minute of listening time.
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- ANTHONY THOMPSON
- 05-19-20
An Inspirational life
Loved the narration, and the beautiful uplifting story of Otis Redding. Very motivating life story.
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- txlawyer
- 04-28-18
Excellent history
Gould packs this book with social and musical history. It’s a fascinating story of a time in America for civil rights and the explosion of musical genres in US and beyond highly recommended. Plus, I love Otis Redding.
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1 person found this helpful
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- John M. Twomey
- 03-11-21
a brilliant musical history lesson
it seems like the book was going to start off a little dry and academic at the start, but the further I got into it, the more I realized the subtle and underneath sense of humor that was in the writing style, and the more fascinated I became by the way the author weaved together the threats of the development of music in the US with the civil Rights struggle, the migration to the north, and a the evening whole slew of other social factors. the overall scene setting and history lesson almost made Otis a secondary character in his own story, because there was such a wealth of detail and information. of course, I learned plenty about Otis Redding himself, but the social history this book gave was brought, deep, and fascinating. highly recommended!
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- Tim Gronkowski
- 07-23-17
Book Full of Soul
I thoroughly enjoyed this book as a factual recount of the life of Otis Redding. But more than anything, this book sets the context for how to interpret one exceptional man's (short) life.
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- Bruce6735
- 08-04-19
Great Biography
I was a college student during the mercurial rise of Otis Redding. I cried as if I had lost a friend and brother when he died. This is a great refresher for those of us products of the 60's.
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