For more than four decades, Hendersonville has been home to extraordinary musical talent. Music icons of the early 1960s like Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash and June Carter migrated to the city and the tranquility of the lake. These musicians became part of the close-knit Caudill community, which was and continues to be home to southern music royalty. Orbison's legendary "Pretty Woman" came from his time in Hendersonville with his first wife, Claudette. Johnny Cash's critically acclaimed version of Trent Reznor's "Hurt" was filmed in Cash's Hendersonville home, leading to a new generation of fans. The '60s, '70s and '80s were a popular time for musicians to move to Hendersonville. Authors Jennifer Bruce and Tena Lee offer up the legendary history.

Historically the state of Ohio has maintained an active role in the promotion of southern gospel music. Many gospel artists, including some of the Nation’s finest, were either born, or lived a portion of their life, in Ohio. Development of these ministries and the events that have taken place along the way has become a valuable part of Ohio’s history. Over the past two years, desiring to preserve a portion of this history, I have completed extensive research interviewing gospel artists throughout the state. I then compiled this information into a unique collection of history to be shared with everyone. To help the reader more fully appreciate “life on the road” the stories of these gospel artists are presented within the context of eight road tours covering the entire state of Ohio. Travelling along on each tour we will experience a variety of emotions from laughter to frustration. At each stop we will learn some fascinating facts about the town and while in town we’ll stop by and visit with a few of those southern gospel artists and/or groups who claim the town as part of their heritage. Each tour will end with a short walk down memory lane as we view photos of those gospel artists whom we have just visited. So come on! Open the book, climb on board and prepare yourself for eight exciting tours across the great state of Ohio where we’ll meet some truly inspiring people. Hope you enjoy the book!

Expanded book version about "Nashville portraits," including the sixty photographs in the traveling exhibition and new materials: five additional photos, an essay by folklorist/historian WIlliam R. Ferris, and biographies and quotations to accompany the photographic project.

Marshall Chapman knows Nashville. A musician, songwriter, and author with nearly a dozen albums and a bestselling memoir under her belt, Chapman has lived and breathed Music City for over forty years. Her friendships with those who helped make Nashville one of the major forces in American music culture is unsurpassed. And in her new book, They Came to Nashville, the reader is invited to see Marshall Chapman as never before--as music journalist extraordinaire. In They Came to Nashville, Chapman records the personal stories of musicians shaping the modern history of music in Nashville, from the mouths of the musicians themselves. The trials, tribulations, and evolution of Music City are on display, as she sits down with influential figures like Kris Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris, and Miranda Lambert, and a dozen other top names, to record what brought each of them to Nashville and what inspired them to persevere. The book culminates in a hilarious and heroic attempt to find enough free time with Willie Nelson to get a proper interview. Instead, she's brought along on his raucous 2008 tour and winds up onstage in Beaumont, Texas singing "Good-Hearted Woman" with Willie. They Came to Nashville reveals the daily struggle facing newcomers to the music business, and the promise awaiting those willing to fight for the dream. Co-published with the Country Music Foundation Press

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.

"A sometimes eye-goggling history of political corruption in one corner of the postwar South. . . . [Squires'] grandfather was a sheriff's deputy who carried a gun and a clenched fist, a man . . . [who] was also, Squires relates, one of the muscle men behind a vicious cabal of power brokers headed by one Boss Crump. . . . That machine involved, for a time, much of Nashville's leading citizenry. It engineered elections, stole votes, organized lynch mobs, ran an illegal gambling empire, and in the 1950s, when it appeared that the traditional Democratic Party was going soft on civil rights, brokered the advent of Republicanism in one corner of the South." —Kirkus Reviews "His richly textured narrative charts the Nashville machine's rupture with the state's top political boss, Edward Crump of Memphis, and traces the sweeping reforms that shattered rural white control of the state legislature. Squires dramatically reenacts the downfall of Nashville lawyer Tommy Osborn, convicted of jury tampering in 1964 after defending Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. He follows Nashville's transformation into a crucible of the civil rights movement in this stirring chronicle of the South's coming-of-age." —Publishers Weekly