Born in Houston in 1950, Rodney Crowell has released nearly twenty albums in four decades, with five consecutive number-one hits, and has also worked widely as a songwriter and a producer. His honors include a Grammy, an ASCAP lifetime achievement award, and membership in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He lives in Nashville.
www.rodneycrowell.com
"Personal and profound, an epic remembrance of his parents'
honky-tonk romance, delivered with the same hallmarks of Crowell's
best songwriting: expert pacing, gritty detail, and humor by the
bottle." --Austin Powell, The Austin Chronicle
"Thoroughly readable, unblinkingly frank, laugh-out-loud funny and
as profane as any Ship Channel longshoreman, it's a literary
triumph that will rank along with Mary Karr's The Liar's
Club as one of the finest pieces of Gulf Coast nonfiction."
--William Michael Smith, Houston Press
"[Crowell's] childhood memories of Jacinto City outside of Houston
vary from uproarious to heartwarming, all told with a sharp wit and
a Lone Star flair [and] brought to life in a manner that's simple,
eloquent, and endlessly entertaining." --Jim Caligiuri, The
Austin Chronicle "A loving, affectionate tribute...Crowell's
parents remain his heroes not in spite of their flaws, but because
of them, and because of their son's proud refusal to sugarcoat the
truth. Instead, this honest, forgiving, and self-assured memoir
brings all the skeletons out of the closet and invites them to
dance." --Gina Webb, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"Mysterious and wonderful...a rare and unaccountable instance of
transcendence." --Barbara Fisher, The Boston Globe
"A great read." --Billy Heller, New York Post
"Humid, heavily atmospheric and often raucous...both horrific and
hilarious [with] some of the most tender passages I have ever
read." --Chet Flippo, CMT
"Rodney Crowell's memoir of his boyhood in southeast Texas is a
wonder: wistful and profane, heartbreaking and hilarious, loving
and angry, proud and self-lacerating. Best known as a composer and
performer of country and folk music, he emerges here as a prose
stylist of energy and distinctiveness, a gifted storyteller who
has, as it happens, an uncommonly interesting and deeply American
story to tell....It's a measure of the subtlety that Crowell brings
to his portrait of his parents that he simultaneously is appalled
by them and deeply loves them....Love, in the end, is what
Chinaberry Sidewalks is really about [but] there is much
more to it, much of it uproarious or moving in different ways:
boisterous small-town boys making mischief, Tom Sawyers and Huck
Finns with cuss words added; seeing and hearing Hank Williams two
weeks before his death; a spectacular show by Jerry Lee Lewis,
followed immediately by an unforgettable one by Johnny Cash, who
'spoke the language of common people with uncommon eloquence.'
That, of course, is exactly what Rodney Crowell has done in this
splendid book." --Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
"This tribute to enduring love [is] rip-snorting...eloquent,
movingly spiritual....[Crowell's] hyperbole segues beautifully into
the high-intensity details and events with which the book is
studded, and the enthusiasm with which they are described." --Janet
Maslin, The New York Times
"Crowell's upbringing in Texas had all the prerequisite elements of
a hardscrabble country music story...but [his] storytelling
abilities and narrative flair elevate this book far above the
average music memoir." --Publishers Weekly, starred
review
"With this heartfelt memoir [Crowell] can now be called a writer of
the first order...Unsparingly honest...Exceptional."
--Booklist, starred review
"[A] touching, sometimes rough, and vivid chronicle of
mid-20th-century Southern life...highly recommended." --Library
Journal, starred review "This is a wonderful memoir. Full of
humor, honesty and true humility, and so well written I had to
immediately re-read it to see if it was as good as I thought it
was. It is. It is stunningly good. Maybe the best I ever read."
--Kris Kristofferson "That Rodney Crowell survived his
childhood--the poverty, the beatings, the hurricanes, the loaded
.22 in the bedroom closet--is a miracle. That he can recall it with
such gentle humor, that he can evoke his volatile mother and father
with so much love and forgiveness, makes his memoir a powerful
lesson in grace." --J.R. Moehringer "Some people can just flat
write, and other people have a great story to tell, and every now
and then it's the same lucky fool. Rodney Crowell proves one fried
chicken gizzard, one Jax beer, and one awful heartache at a time
that you can live with a crazy mama and a damaged daddy and love
them both." --Rick Bragg "Long known as a poet among songwriters,
Rodney Crowell brings his considerable lyric gifts and his innate
Texas storytelling talent to the page. This childhood is not one
you'd sign up for--hardscrabble, alcohol-sodden, violent enough to
jar your eye teeth. Yet Crowell's love for his family finds humor
and redemption in every riveting scene. By turns wild and tender,
it kept me up all night in a straight-through read." --Mary
Karr
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
