"The legendary talent agent behind such superstars as Groucho Marx, Blondie and Raquel Welch chronicles his life and career in the entertainment industry, discussing such topics as his Jewish childhood in Long Island, his international travels at the sides of half a century of celebrities and the time he was punched by Janice Joplin,"--NoveList.

This enhanced e-book includes 49 of the greatest songs Ralph Peer was involved with, from groundbreaking numbers that changed the history of recorded music to revelatory obscurities, all linked to the text so that the reader can hear the music while reading about it. This is the first biography of Ralph Peer, the adventurous-even revolutionary-A&R man and music publisher who saw the universal power locked in regional roots music and tapped it, changing...

Jermaine Dupri has reached modern-day mythical status in the music industry. He is the power behindthe music of top artists including Mariah Carey,Usher, Lil Jon, and Janet Jackson. At the age of sixteen, Jermaine Dupri had discovered the child rap duo Kris Kross; by the age of nineteen, Dupri had produced a platinum album and had become a millionaire; and by twenty he was operating his own independent record label, So So Def. Today Dupri is the...

If you love the music of Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, or Smokey Robinson, you will love Berry Gordy's life story. Founder of Motown, Gordy was instrumental in launching the careers of these and many other popular musicians, singers, and songwriters. In this candid autobiography, Gordy gives an authentic personal account of his career from the inception of his label, founded with $800 borrowed from his family to the development...

In The Soundtrack of My Life, music legend Clive Davis recounts an extraordinary five-decade career in the music business, while also telling a remarkable personal story of triumphs, disappointments, and encounters with some of the greatest musical artists of our time, including Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Simon & Garfunkel, Barry Manilow, the Grateful Dead, Patti Smith, Whitney Houston, Carlos Santana, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, and Alicia Keys. Orphaned...

Re-release of the first book ever published in America about the legendary Motown Record Company, with a new foreword by legendary music journalist Greil Marcus! 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...

Without Lou Pearlman, there would have been no Backstreet Boys, no *NSYNC, and possibly no Justin Timberlake. In the late 1990s, Pearlman's boy bands ushered out guitar-and-angst-driven grunge music, and *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys began to dominate the television and radio airwaves. At the core of this squeaky-clean pop revolution was a sinister international fraud conceived by Pearlman, a husky huckster who first honed his crooked business skills...

"A New Yorker writer's intimate, revealing account of Tupac Shakur's life and legacy, timed to the fiftieth anniversary of his birth and twenty-fifth anniversary of his death. In the summer of 2020, Tupac Shakur's single "Changes" became an anthem for the worldwide protests against the murder of George Floyd. The song became so popular, in fact, it was vaulted back onto the iTunes charts more than twenty years after its release--making it clear that...

Seymour Stein is America's greatest living record man. Not only has he signed and nurtured more important artists than anyone alive, now sixty years in the game, he's still the hippest label head, travelling the globe in search of the next big thing. Since the late fifties, he's been wherever it's happening: Billboard, Tin Pan Alley, The British Invasion, CBGB, Studio 54, Danceteria, the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, the CD crash. Along that winding path,...