Mark Brainards A Musicians Son (Lyrics, Poems, and Memoirs) is a collection of selected works written over a span of forty years. The memoirs are a long musical journey under the tutelage of his musician father who played in the big band era with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and was a songwriter in his own rite. Influence and inspiration carried on through the rest of his family as well as friends, peers, bandmates, The Beatles, and women in his life. He has written over 200 songs and poems on many subjects including love, spirit, cars, women, heartbreak, places, experiences, and the bizarre. Many are included in this book with the stories behind them. "Even though I have accomplished so much, I feel like my life is still taking off. All my songs are my children and I'll leave them to somebody some day. Even though they never topped the charts, they're the greatest hits in my family anyway." MB

One of Hawaii's "living treasures" is the subject of this biography, Hawaiian Son: The Life and Music of Eddie Kamae. It celebrates the personal journey of an extraordinary musician and pioneering filmmaker, Eddie Kamae. The book was written by award-winning author James D. Houston (1933-2009) in close collaboration with Kamae, and was designed by Barbara Pope of Honolulu-based 'Ai Pohaku Press. The 260-page book includes more than 60 historical photographs, drawings and album covers that help to chart the high points of an influential career that has spanned more than half a century. As a young man in the late 1940s, Kamae developed a jazz picking style that forever changed the status of the ukulele. He became its reigning virtuoso. For 20 years the legendary band he founded with Gabby Pahinui, The Sons of Hawaii, played a leading role in the Hawaiian cultural renaissance. By the mid 1970s Kamae himself had become a folk-hero, known for his instrumental genius and for a vigorous singing style that carries the spirit of an ancient vocal tradition into the 21st century. During the 1980s, while continuing to perform, arrange, and lead the band, Kamae launched a second career as a filmmaker, once again proving to be a cultural pioneer. In documentaries such as Listen to the Forest and Words, Earth & Aloha he found a filmic voice that speaks from deep within his own island world. Kamae's personal journey is measured by the many teachers Kamae, now 85, has met along the way, from Mary Kawena Pukui and Pilahi Paki, to 'Iolani Luahine, San Li'a Kalainaina, and "Papa" Henry Auwae. Dancers and singers, storytellers, healers, and elders have guided him in his long quest to find the sources of a rich tradition and thus to find himself.

The long-awaited memoir from John Fogerty, the legendary singer-songwriter and creative force behind Creedence Clearwater Revival. Creedence Clearwater Revival is one of the most important and beloved bands in the history of rock, and John Fogerty wrote, sang, and produced their instantly recognizable classics: "Proud Mary," "Bad Moon Rising," "Born on the Bayou," and more. Now he reveals how he brought CCR to number one in the world, eclipsing even the Beatles in 1969. By the next year, though, Creedence was falling apart; their amazing, enduring success exploded and faded in just a few short years. Fortunate Son takes readers from Fogerty's Northern California roots, through Creedence's success and the retreat from music and public life, to his hard-won revival as a solo artist who finally found love.

The idea for the book came about while I was working abroad on a theater show, with a fair bit of downtime. Before leaving, I'd been helping our son, Arlen, as he made first contact with a few instruments: keyboards and synthesizers, guitar, and a variety of tuned percussion instruments. It did not always go well. His intense love of music was matched by an equally intense desire for immediate results. This combination often led to a considerable amount of frustration. To help Arlen cope with this frustration, I decided to write a short rhyming story that would be similar in many ways to those found in his favorite picture books. My initial vision was for the book to encourage practice and sticktoitiveness, enshrining the many virtues of delayed gratification. Mercifully, I came to my senses and abandoned that idea as utter nonsense. It dawned on me that our boy's innocence and earnestness fueled a kind of rock power, that unnamed spark of creative joy that many of us in the music industry have chased in practice spaces and recording studios for decades. It's the very thing that makes a kid, a kid. Our five-year-old boy is Thoreau's "childlike mirthfulness" come to life. He dances like there's no one watching; he doesn't know any other way. He sings with abandon, and sometimes, he roars. In the end, I thought that if he learns something from the book, wonderful, but above all else, I wanted this book to help ensure that he never forgets how to roar.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE PENDERYN MUSIC BOOK PRIZERoots, Radicals & Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World is the first book to explore this phenomenon in depth - a meticulously researched and joyous account that explains how skiffle sparked a revolution that shaped pop music as we have come to know it. It's a story of jazz pilgrims and blues blowers, Teddy Boys and beatnik girls, coffee-bar bohemians and refugees from the McCarthyite witch-hunts. Billy traces how the guitar came to the forefront of music in the UK and led directly to the British Invasion of the US charts in the 1960s.Emerging from the trad-jazz clubs of the early '50s, skiffle was adopted by kids who growing up during the dreary, post-war rationing years. These were Britain's first teenagers, looking for a music of their own in a pop culture dominated by crooners and mediated by a stuffy BBC. Lonnie Donegan hit the charts in 1956 with a version of 'Rock Island Line' and soon sales of guitars rocketed from 5,000 to 250,000 a year. Like punk rock that would flourish two decades later, skiffle was a do-it-yourself music. All you needed were three guitar chords and you could form a group, with mates playing tea-chest bass and washboard as a rhythm section.

Though you may not know the man, you probably know his music. Arkansas-born Louis Jordan's songs like "Baby, It's Cold Outside," "Caldonia" and "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens" can still be heard today, decades since Jordan ruled the charts. In his five-decade career, Jordan influenced American popular music, film and more and inspired the likes of James Brown, B.B. King, Chuck Berry and Ray Charles. Known as the "King of the Jukeboxes," he and his combo played a hybrid of jazz, swing, blues and comedy music during the big band era that became the start of R&B. In a stunning narrative portrait of Louis Jordan, author Stephen Koch contextualizes the great, forgotten musician among his musical peers, those he influenced and the musical present.