Luck was with Bobby Goldsboro when Roy Orbison came through the area on tour. Orbison took on Goldsboro's band and Bobby stuck with him for the next three years. Bobby went solo and soon scored a modest hit with "Molly," a song that he despised. A short while later, however, he scored a top ten song with his own "See the Funny Little Clown." Other hits followed but his superb "Broomstick Cowboy" was mistakenly seen by many radio stations as a Vietnam War protest songs and they refused to play it. Going against the grain, a Detroit station did air it and it became #1 in that area. His "Honey" was the top record for 1968 reaching #1 on every chart. "Watching Scotty Grow" was also a big hit. The early 70s saw the excellent "Summer (The First Time)" make waves. England voted it the best summer song ever. Bobby hosted a top-rated TV variety program, The Bobby Goldsboro Show, wrote and produced an Easter special for Disney and took up oil painting, of which his art is highly regarded.

The humorist asked his readers to share their least favorite tunes and chronicles the hilarious responses. When funnyman Dave Barry asked readers about their least favorite tunes, he thought he was penning just another installment of his weekly syndicated humor column. But the witty writer was flabbergasted by the response when over 10,000 readers voted. “I have never written a column that got a bigger response than the one announcing the Bad Song Survey,” Barry wrote. Based on the results of the survey, Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs is a compilation of some of the worst songs ever written. Dave Barry fans will relish his quirky take. Music buffs too will appreciate this humorous stroll through the world’s worst lyrics. The only thing wrong with this book is that readers will find themselves unable to stop mentally singing the greatest hits of Gary Puckett. Praise for Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs “Barry is his usual puckish self, but the real surprise here is how funny many of the survey respondents are.” —Kirkus Reviews “Who can resist such a book?” —Publishers Weekly

Early '70s Radio focuses on the emergence of commercial music radio "formats," which refer to distinct musical genres aimed toward specific audiences. This formatting revolution took place in a period rife with heated politics, identity anxiety, large-scale disappointments and seemingly insoluble social problems. As industry professionals worked overtime to understand audiences and to generate formats, they also laid the groundwork for market segmentation. Audiences, meanwhile, approached these formats as safe havens wherein they could re-imagine and redefine key issues of identity. A fresh and accessible exercise in audience interpretation, Early '70s Radio is organized according to the era's five prominent formats and analyzes each of these in relation to their targeted demographics, including Top 40, "soft rock", album-oriented rock, soul and country. The book closes by making a case for the significance of early '70s formatting in light of commercial radio today.

For the first time, legendary performer Roy Orbison's story as one of the most beloved rock legends will be revealed through family accounts and records. Roy Orbison is a rock and roll icon almost without peer. He came of age as an artist on the venerable Sun Records label; toured with The Beatles; had massive hits in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s; invented the black-clad, sunglasses-wearing image of the rock star; and reinvented the art of songwriting many times over. He is a member of the Rock & Roll and Songwriters Halls of Fame, a recipient of the Musicians Hall of Fame's inaugural Iconic Riff Award, and the winner of multiple GRAMMY® awards. He is known the world over for hits like "Blue Bayou," "You Got It," and "Oh, Pretty Woman" and was a member of the band that inspired the term "supergroup"-the Traveling Wilburys, with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, and Tom Petty. Despite these and countless other accolades, the story of Roy Orbison's life is virtually unknown to his millions of fans around the world. Now, for the first time ever, the Orbison Estate, headed by Roy's sons, Wesley, Roy Jr., and Alex Orbison, has set out to set the record straight. The Authorized Roy Orbison tells the epic tale of a West Texas boy, drawn to the guitar at age six, whose monumental global career successes were matched at nearly every turn by extraordinary personal tragedies, including the loss of his first wife in a motorcycle accident and his two oldest sons in a fire. It's a story of the intense highs and severe lows that make up the mountain range of Roy Orbison's career; one that touched four decades and ended abruptly at perhaps its highest peak, when he passed away at the age of fifty-two on December 6, 1988. Filled with hundreds of photographs, many never before seen, gathered from across the globe and uncovered from deep within the Orbison Vault, The Authorized Roy Orbison shows Roy Orbison as a young child and follows him all the way through to the peak of his stardom and up to his tragic end. Wesley, Roy Jr., and Alex Orbison-Roy's Boys-have left no stone unturned in order to illustrate the people, places, things, and events that forged their father, the man behind those famous sunglasses.

Bobby Vee got his break when Buddy Holly's plane crashed, killing all aboard. Vee's amateur combo answered a call for volunteers to carry on the ill-fated Winter Dance Party. It was a serendipitous beginning to one of the most successful careers in 60s music. Vee scored a #1 hit with the classic Take Good Care of My Baby and followed it with #2 Run to Him ensuring his place in history as one of the most consistent hit makers of his generation. His star dimmed when British groups took over, but bounced back with one of his biggest hits, "Come Back When You Grow Up". He racked up racked up 38 Top 100 hits. This looks at all of his recordings. Some of his best music came long after his name vanished from the music charts. He encountered Bob Dylan, worked with Leon Russell, achieved success with Holly's Crickets, and met the Beatles. Misfortune kept him from songs that became top hits for others.

Ain’t Got No Cigarettes is Roger Miller’s extraordinary life as told in taped interviews by those that knew him best: more than sixty well-known musicians and entertainers including Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson. A man who influenced some of the entertainment industry’s biggest stars, Roger Miller was respected and loved by his peers. However, with the genius came a dark side. In the 1960s and 1970s he was known for walking off stage halfway through a show, getting into fights and going days without sleep. He struggled with depression and had a serious addiction to drugs which cost him two marriages. Miller died at the age of 56 in 1992.

An affectionate look at some of the worst recordings ever made, The World’s Worst Records tells the extraordinary but true stories behind some of the most appalling audio crimes ever committed. Extensively researched, and featuring music by major stars, ‘outsider’ artists and almost forgotten singers and songwriters, read about how Elvis Presley came to record a rock ‘n’ roll version of the nursery rhyme Old Macdonald; discover the truth behind actor Peter Wyngarde’s one attempt at pop immortality; meet the beautifully bonkers Florence Foster Jenkins – possibly the most deluded singer in history; fi nd out which Paul McCartney record is most hated world over. Puzzle over why 60’s flower-power icon Donovan would record a song about the toilet habits of astronauts.