The New York Times Book Review, Tom Graves
Piazza ... pulls the reader in so close to the action that one can practically smell the odor of whisky on Martin's breath...


Book Description
Jimmy Martin was just twenty-two years old when Bill Monroe asked him to join the Blue Grass Boys. That invitation was the start of a fifty-year recording career, recently celebrated with Martin's induction into the International Bluegrass Music Association's Hall of Honor. At age seventy-two, he still regularly performs with his band, the Sunny Mountain Boys. Yet the man himself remains an obscure figure, compared with other bluegrass greats, such as Ralph Stanley or the Osborne Brothers. Fiction writer and music critic Tom Piazza couldn't understand why Martin wasn't better known. So, on assignment from The Oxford American magazine, he drove from his home in New Orleans to Nashville to find out. Although aware that Martin had "a reputation as a heavy drinker and a volatile personality," Piazza found himself pitched headlong into a world he couldn't have anticipated. Martin's mercurial personality drew the writer into a series of escalating encounters (with mean dogs, broken down cars, and near electrocution), culminating in a harrowing and unforgettable expedition, with Martin, to the Grand Ole Opry. Piazza captured his visit with Martin in supple, electric prose, and the result, when it appeared in the Oxford American, quickly became a word-of-mouth sensation among musicians and fans alike. Included in this keepsake edition are a new afterword by Piazza, an essay on Martin's recordings, and a timeline of Martin's career. True Adventures with the King of Bluegrass is a funny, scary, and powerfully poignant portrait of one of the living legends of American music.


About the Author
Tom Piazza is well known both as a writer on American music and as a fiction writer. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Story, The New Republic, The Village Voice, and many other periodicals. Since 1997 he has been the Southern Music columnist for John Grisham's magazine The Oxford American. His books include the short-story collection Blues and Trouble (St. Martin's Press, 1996; paperback 1997), which won the James Michener Award for fiction, and The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz (University of Iowa Press, 1995; now in its third printing), which won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for Music Writing. His most recent book is Blues Up And Down: Jazz In Our Time (St. Martin's Press, 1997; paperback 1999), a collection of his essays, journalism, and criticism on jazz and other American music. A dynamic, funny, and extremely engaging speaker and reader, Piazza has read and lectured at the Chautauqua Institute, the National Arts Club, Williams College, Louisiana State University, Florida International University, Loyola University, the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, and many other schools, literary festivals, and gatherings. He also performs as a country singer and a jazz pianist. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he was both a Maytag Fellow and a Teaching- Writing Fellow, he has held residencies for fiction writing at Yaddo and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and a fellowship in fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He lives in New Orleans and is at work on a novel.


Excerpted from True Adventures with the King of Bluegrass (Profiles in Country Music) by Tom Piazza, Marty Stuart. Copyright © 1999. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
"Somewhere along the way, moonshine and dynamite collided. The result is the musical genius and three-chord scholar named Jimmy Martin. Baptized in the same fire that gave us Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, this reigning King of Bluegrass is no doubt a charter member of the elite fraternity of southern musicians that helped forge what the world now knows as bluegrass, rockabilly, country, and rock 'n' roll music. . . . He's part preacher, part prophet, and a card carrying madman who is completely filled with the musical holy ghost. Time spent with the King of Bluegrass is not for the lily-livered or the faint of heart."-Marty Stuart, from the Foreword

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Jimmy Martin was just twenty-two years old when Bill Monroe asked him to join the Blue Grass Boys. That invitation was the start of a fifty-year recording career, recently celebrated with Martin's induction into the International Bluegrass Music Association's Hall of Honor. At age seventy-two, he still regularly performs with his band, the Sunny Mountain Boys. Yet the man himself remains an obscure figure, compared with other bluegrass greats, such as Ralph Stanley or the Osborne Brothers.

Fiction writer and music critic Tom Piazza couldn't understand why Martin wasn't better known. So, on assignment from The Oxford American magazine, he drove from his home in New Orleans to Nashville to find out. Although aware that martin had "a reputation as a heavy drinker and a volatile personality," Piazza found himself pitched headlong into a world he couldn't have anticipated. Martin's mercurial personality drew the writer into a series of escalating encounters (with mean dogs, broken-down cars, and near electrocution), culminating in a harrowing and unforgettable expedition, with Martin, to the Grand Ole Opry.

Piazza captured his visit with Martin in supple, electric prose, and the result, when it appeared in The Oxford American, quickly became a word-of-mouth sensation among musicians and fans alike. Included in this edition are a new afterword by Piazza, an essay on Martin's recordings, and a timeline of Martin's career. True Adventures with the King of Bluegrass is a funny, scary, and powerfully poignant portrait of one of the living legends of American music.

FROM THE CRITICS

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