Ricky Nelson (he later preferred "Rick") was 8 years old when he began his career in show business. After a successful run on radio, his family's situation comedy The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet enjoyed a 14 year television tenure. On the April 10, 1957, episode, "Ricky the Drummer," Nelson started his singing career by lip syncing to Fats Domino's "I'm Walkin'." He scored 36 Top 40 singles between 1957 and 1972 and ranked number 5 in Billboard's Top 25 Artists of the Decade 1950-1959. As a country rock pioneer, Rick Nelson influenced Buffalo Springfield, Linda Ronstadt, and the Eagles. This book is a candid account of his life in rock and roll through stories told by musicians and producers on the road and in the studio with him. Actors and family members also provided invaluable memories and insights.

Almost the only indisputable fact about Colonel Tom Parker is that he was the manager of the greatest performer in popular music: Elvis Presley. His real name wasn’t Tom Parker †“ indeed, he wasn’t an American at all, but a Dutch immigrant called Andreas van Kujik. And he certainly wasn’t a proper military colonel: he purchased his title from a man in Louisiana. But while the Colonel has long been acknowledged as something of a charlatan, this book is the first to reveal the extraordinary extent of the secrets he concealed, and the consequences for the career, and ultimately the life, of the star he managed. As Alanna Nash’ prodigious research has discovered, the Colonel left Holland most probably because, at the age of twenty, he bludgeoned a woman to death. Entering the US illegally, he then enlisted in the army as ‘Tom Parker’. But, with supreme irony for someone later styling himself as Colonel, Parker’s military career ended in desertion, and discharge after a psychiatrist had certified him as a psychopath. He then became a fairground barker, working sideshows with a zeal for small-scale huckstering and the casual scam that never left him. And by the height of Elvis’s success, Parker had become a pathological gambler who, at the same time as he was taking, amazingly, a full 50% of Presley’s earnings, frittered away all his wealth in the casinos of Las Vegas. As Nash shows, therefore, the often baffling trajectory of Elvis Presley’s career makes perfect sense once the secret imperatives of the Colonel’s life are known. Parker never booked Presley for a tour of Europe because of the dark secret that ensured he himself could never return there. Even at his most famous, Elvis was still being booked to play out-of-the-way towns in North Carolina †“ because the former fairground barker (who shamelessly negotiated as such even with top record company and film executives) knew them from his days on the circus circuit. And Elvis was trapped playing years of arduous seasons in Las Vegas †“ two shows nightly, seven days a week, until boredom and despair brought on the excessive drug use that killed him †“ because for Parker he was “an open chit†? whose huge earnings prevented his manager’s losses at the gambling tables being called in. Alanna Nash knew Parker towards the end of his life, and has now uncovered the whole story, improbable, shocking, and never less than compelling, of how this larger-than-life man made, and then unmade, popular music’s first and greatest superstar.

The fascination with tragedy and the subsequent theatre of voyeurism are part of human nature, especially when it involves our icons, celebrities and musicians. Knocking On Heaven's Door is the definitive book of rock 'n' roll, pop, R&B and blues deaths. Often, only the biggest selling artists are written about and sometimes it is the death of a personality that cements their iconic status. Knocking On Heaven's Door not only covers the rock legends who lived hard and died young, this detailed reference contains over 1,000 obituaries of music industry personalities, famous and obscure from mid-fifties to the present day. Alphabetical entries of all the important individuals, including: noteworthy producers, managers, songwriters, record company founders A&R men and even critics, puts all the information at your finger tips. Nick Talevski has spent a decade researching this comprehensive and authoritative reference book and it will be an indispensable and practical addition to every music library, full of irresistible and intriguing information.

Hailed as "a masterwork" by the Wall Street Journal, Careless Loveis the full, true, and mesmerizing story of Elvis Presley's last two decades, in the long-awaited second volume of Peter Guralnick's masterful two-part biography. Winner of the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award Last Train to Memphis, the first part of Guralnick's two-volume life of Elvis Presley, was acclaimed by the New York Times as "a triumph of biographical art." This concluding volume recounts the second half of Elvis' life in rich and previously unimagined detail, and confirms Guralnick's status as one of the great biographers of our time. Beginning with Presley's army service in Germany in 1958 and ending with his death in Memphis in 1977, Careless Love chronicles the unravelling of the dream that once shone so brightly, homing in on the complex playing-out of Elvis' relationship with his Machiavellian manager, Colonel Tom Parker. It's a breathtaking revelatory drama that for the first time places the events of a too-often mistold tale in a fresh, believable, and understandable context. Elvis' changes during these years form a tragic mystery that Careless Love unlocks for the first time. This is the quintessential American story, encompassing elements of race, class, wealth, sex, music, religion, and personal transformation. Written with grace, sensitivity, and passion, Careless Love is a unique contribution to our understanding of American popular culture and the nature of success, giving us true insight at last into one of the most misunderstood public figures of our times.

When Ozzie Nelson died in 1975, he was no longer a household name. For a guy who had created the longest-running TV sitcom in history, invented the rock video, and fronted one of the most successful big bands of the 1930s, it's baffling that Nelson has faded so far from American media memory. Larger than life offscreen--an attorney, college football star, cartoonist, songwriter, major band leader--Ozzie created a smaller-than-life TV persona, the bumbling average Dad who became known to the rock generation (which included his teen idol son Rick Nelson) as the essence of blandness. But America also saw Ozzie as their iconic Dad: not a "father knows best," since his pontifications usually proved flawed by the end of each episode, but the father who tried his best. This book is the only full-length biography of Ozzie Nelson since he published his memoirs in 1973. It treats the big band and early TV icon with affection and hints that American pop culture may owe more to Ozzie than is generally acknowledged.

The Rock Song Index, Second Edition, is a new version of a well-received index to the classic songs of the rock canon, from the late '40s through the end of the 20th century. The study of the history of rock music has exploded over the last decade; all college music departments offer a basic rock-history course, covering the classic artists and their songs.