by Eben Dennis, Fine Arts and Music Librarian

There has been no shortage of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs of musicians published in 2017. Some of the most circulated titles in the Fine Arts and Music Department included David Bowie: A Life by Dylan Jones and two books about Prince: The Most Beautiful by Mayte Garcia and Dig if You Will the Picture: Funk, Sex , God and Genius in the Music of Prince by Ben Greenman. Additionally, the highly anticipated Gold Dust Woman: a Biography of Stevie Nicks by Stephen Davis is hitting the shelves right now. Though you may have heard of these, dozens of other bios and memoirs were published in 2017 that may have slipped under your radar. Here are twenty sentences about ten titles worth reading this winter. In no particular order…

Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell by David Yaffe. This biography, written with rare access to the subject, tells the story of an uncompromising artist, and immensely talented songwriter who transcended the “60s folk-singer” label. Big reviews in the Atlantic and the NY Times suggest that the biographer and the tuning pegs of Joni’s guitar had some things in common.

Queen of Bebop: the musical lives of Sarah Vaughan by Elaine Hayes. The long overdue bio of one of the greatest (not just jazz) singers of the 20th century. This book leans heavily on interviews with those who knew Vaughan well, making it more than a chronological story pieced together from dusty newspaper reviews and manuscript collections.

Toscanini: Musician of Conscience by Harvey Sachs. Drawn heavily from manuscript collections (forty years of newly available source material in fact!) this book updates the previous Arturo Toscanini biography written by Sachs in 1978. This 900 page tome about the most recognized conductor of the 20th century is a must read for classical music enthusiasts.

Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life by Jonathan Gould. Perhaps the most deeply researched biography of Otis Redding, published fifty years after the singer’s  tragic death at the age of twenty-six. One of American music’s best voices and one of our biggest losses.

I’m Just Dead, I’m Not Gone by Jim Dickinson. From the shadows of the Memphis music scene, Dickinson emerged to play with and produce artists ranging from Aretha Franklin and the Rolling Stones, to Big Star and the Replacements. If you enjoy American music and aren’t familiar with Dickinson this is a must read.

First Time Ever: a Memoir by Peggy Seeger. Using her own biography written by Jean Freedman for chronological reference, folk-singer Peggy Seeger writes of her own life from memory. Her beautiful recording Animal Songs for Children gives me a brief respite from some of my three year old’s other favorite albums–to Peggy I am forever grateful.

A Sick Life: TLC ‘N Me: Stories From On And Off The Stage by Tionne Watkins.This autobiography goes beyond Watkins’ life as member of best selling American girl group TLC, and delves into her private struggles and challenges dealing with sickle cell anemia. Serious question: was calling someone a “scrub” part of the popular lexicon before TLC?

Gone: A Girl A Violin A Life Unstrung by Min Kym. Born to a  traditional Korean family in Great Britain, Min Kym was a violin prodigy by the age of six and a world class player by her mid-20s. This short book recounts a period of self-reflection and recovery after the theft of her Stradivarius from a cafe leaves her emotionally crippled and unable to play.

Dolly on Dolly: Interview and Encounters by Dolly Parton. This compilation of 25 interviews with Dolly, evenly distributed from the late 60s to the present day,  is easy to skip around and read in bits and pieces. Crack it open to any page and bask in Dolly’s wit, humor, intelligence, and huge personality.

Cowboy Song: The Authorized Biography of Thin Lizzy’s Philip Lynott by Graeme Thomson. Born to a Guyanese father and a Irish mother, Lynott  emerged from Dublin as one of Ireland’s most unlikely stars. I highly recommend cranking Johnny the Fox and reading this book as a solid snow day activity this winter.

If you have other suggestions, or feel the need to point out any grievous omissions, please leave a comment on Facebook or Twitter. We would like to hear from you!

by Emily Sachs, Librarian, African American Department

July is my favorite month.  It’s the heart of summer, which evokes childhood memories of family road trips to the beach, afternoons swimming and playing H-O-R-S-E at the park, and washing the day’s sweaty adventures down with a slushie or a snowball. A powerful nostalgia surfaces when I recall these youthful experiences of relaxation and recreation, but a closer look at materials in the African American Department are a reminder of a related yet quite different chapter in history: the fight to end discrimination and segregation in recreation and leisure venues around the country. Of particular interest–and inspiration–are the local stories of community empowerment and acts of social protest that defined this period.  

While many Americans take summer travel for granted, not all citizens enjoyed the luxury of the leisurely road trip punctuated by the occasional rest stop to stretch their legs or get a cold drink.  In order to avoid discrimination and sometimes violent harassment during the Jim Crow era, African Americans often consulted the Negro Motorist Green Book, a guidebook published between 1936-1966 that listed hotels, restaurants, gas stations, taverns, and other businesses that welcomed African American travelers. Flip through our copy of the guidebook to find the local establishments that opened their doors to African American travelers–many of them located on Baltimore’s famed Pennsylvania Avenue.  

The integration of public parks was a watershed moment in history. At the library you can dig into our extensive digital archives of the Baltimore Afro-American and Baltimore Sun newspapers to uncover articles chronicling local protests, including a July 1948 interracial tennis match at Druid Hill Park that ended in 24 arrests (and an infamous steaming indictment of the state’s segregation laws by Baltimore icon H.L. Mencken) and the 1956 integration of the city’s public swimming pools.

The Free State gets several nods in Victoria Wolcott’s Race, Riots and Roller Coasters: the Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America. Wolcott’s book traces the history of racial discrimination at amusement parks and other entertainment facilities around the nation and highlights acts of resistance. Locally this includes protests at Glen Echo Park in Montgomery County, where a group of Howard University students led a famous sit-in at the park’s carousel and at Gwynn Oak Park in Baltimore County, where a series of demonstrations involving a number of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish clergy culminated in the arrest of over 260 people in July 1963 and led to the park’s integration that same year.    

In addition to protesting and picketing at segregated facilities, African Americans developed their own community spaces for recreation and leisure. In Patsy Mose Fletcher’s Historically African American Leisure Destinations around Washington D.C., photos abound of African American beach communities in Maryland such as Highland, Sparrows, and Carr’s beaches in Anne Arundel County, and smaller resorts such as Eagle Harbor in Prince George’s County and Seagull Beach in Calvert County. The largest of these venues hosted shows by famous musicians touring the “Chitlin Circuit,” the colloquial name given to the collection of performance venues considered safe for traveling African American entertainers. Veteran Pratt library employee Doris Thompson remembers visiting Carr’s Beach in the1960’s to see Jackie Wilson, Diana Washington, and James Brown. “When the stage shows came on in the evening, they’d kick us kids out back to the playground, but we’d just jump in the water, circle around behind the adults and find our way back in. Those were good times,” reminisces Thompson. Thumb through Fletcher’s book to see pictures of  pleasure seekers, from early residents who boarded steamships in their summer finery to visit African American resorts along the Potomac to swimsuit clad citizens parading, picnicking and partying at black-owned beachfront communities on the Chesapeake Bay.

To learn more about the history of African American travel, recreation, and leisure, or a variety of other topics, stop by the African American Department on the first floor of the Enoch Pratt Central Library Annex to investigate the Eddie and Sylvia Brown African American Collection. Sandwich it in between a trip to the pool and your local snowball stand, and call it a perfect summer day.