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
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