As charismatic and gifted as he was volatile, Jimmy Martin recorded dozens of bluegrass classics and co-invented the high lonesome sound. Barbara Martin Stephens became involved with the King of Bluegrass at age seventeen. Don't Give your Heart to a Rambler tells the story of their often tumultuous life together. Barbara bore his children and took on a crucial job as his booking agent when the agent he was using failed to obtain show dates for the group. Female booking agents were non-existent at that time but she persevered and went on to become the first female booking agent on Music Row. She also endured years of physical and emotional abuse at Martin's hands. With courage and candor, Barbara tells of the suffering and traces the hard-won personal growth she found inside motherhood and her work. Her vivid account of Martin's explosive personality and torment over his exclusion from the Grand Ole Opry fill in the missing details on a career renowned for being stormy. Barbara also shares her own journey, one of good humor and proud achievements, and filled with fond and funny recollections of the music legends and ordinary people she met, befriended, and represented along the way. Straightforward and honest, Don't Give your Heart to a Rambler is a woman's story of the world of bluegrass and one of its most colorful, conflicted artists.

Book Prize Winner of the International Alliance for Women in Music of the 2022 Pauline Alderman Awards for Outstanding Scholarship on Women in Music The Heart of a Woman offers the first-ever biography of Florence B. Price, a composer whose career spanned both the Harlem and Chicago Renaissances, and the first African American woman to gain national recognition for her works. Price's twenty-five years in Chicago formed the core of a working life that saw her create three hundred works in diverse genres, including symphonies and orchestral suites, art songs, vocal and choral music, and arrangements of spirituals. Through interviews and a wealth of material from public and private archives, Rae Linda Brown illuminates Price's major works while exploring the considerable depth of her achievement. Brown also traces the life of the extremely private individual from her childhood in Little Rock through her time at the New England Conservatory, her extensive teaching, and her struggles with racism, poverty, and professional jealousies. In addition, Brown provides musicians and scholars with dozens of musical examples.

(Fake Book). This collection gathers more than 300 bluegrass favorites presented in the straightforward Real Book format favored by musicians including lyrics where applicable: Alabama Jubilee * Ballad of Jed Clampett * Bill Cheatham * Blue Ridge Mountain Blues * Bury Me Beneath the Willow * Dixie Hoedown * Down to the River to Pray * Foggy Mountain Top * Highway 40 Blues * How Mountain Girls Can Love * I'm Goin' Back to Old Kentucky * John Henry * Keep on the Sunny Side * The Long Black Veil * My Rose of Old Kentucky * Old Train * Pretty Polly * Rocky Top * Sally Goodin * Shady Grove * Wabash Cannonball * Wayfaring Stranger * Wildwood Flower * The Wreck of the Old '97 * and hundreds more!

I'm not a song. I don't have blue eyes like the girls you sing about. I have a blue soul. Sonnet Rosewood needs a new chapter-the kind that doesn't remind her of anything she's leaving behind in the Ozarks. So, when opportunity beckons to escape to the Great Smoky Mountains for a writing retreat, she answers with a firm yes. But the arrival of a decade-old and short-lived fling at the cabin changes everything. How quickly we push past the barriers we erected between ourselves for years." Recognizing the beautiful voice of the unexpected guest reminds her of his name, Hunter Hart: the man she wrote as forgettable, who vowed to show her he was anything but if given a second chance. Maybe you want the challenge more than you want the girl. What started as Sonnet's attempt to escape her past thrusts her straight into the responsibilities of another's, making their future sound more and more like the sad songs they've been writing together. While their passion is undeniable, their happily-ever-after is not. The single father's rules leave little room for a different kind of love. And Sonnet has rules of her own-to never again wait for a man to open his heart to her. Blind Melody is Book 3 of the Muse & Music Series. It can be read as a standalone.

NOW AN ABC TELEVISION DRAMA STARRING DAVID WENHAM AND REBEL WILSON They don't call him Lucky Les for nothing. A ticket in a raffle and Norton was off to see to US of A-Siestasota, Florida, where it turned out hot, red hot, and it wasn't just the weather.Night club brawls, mafia hitmen, too many girls called Lori, gun crazed Americans and the whole lot washed along in a sea of margaritas. Even for Les Norton it was just too hot to handle. So it was off to 'greener' pastures-the Caribbean-for reggae, rum and Rastafarians, not to mention Sultry Delta, sweet-lipped Esme, and Millwood Downie, schoolteacher, historian and would-be stand-up comic, who helps Les trace his family tree and possibly uncover the biggest earn ever. The world is finally Norton's oyster. All he has to do is get the shell open.