Overview

Gold Award, Independent Publisher Book Awards Nominated, Award of Excellence in Historical Sound Research by the Association for Recorded Sound Collections The Ballad of Tommy LiPuma is the story of one of America's most successful record producers, whose work with seminal artists like Miles Davis, Diana Krall, Barbra Streisand, Rickie Lee Jones, George Benson, and Willie Nelson went on to sell over 75 million records. It is also an amazing picaresque journey that opens with the murder of a man on a dirt path in Sicily and concludes with five trips up the Grammy red carpet, a real-life Horatio Alger adventure that touches on bootleggers, gangsters, artists, hipsters, and the industry that changed popular culture around the world. Finally, it's a deeply personal account of how music saved one man's life, and how he went on to affect the lives of millions of others. The book includes Tommy LiPuma's complete discography.

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9780578964973

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Reviews

I started Ben Sidran's Tommy LiPuma book at 1:15 in the afternoon, and I just finished it at 7:30 tonight. I could not put it down. I blew off everything else. . . . I was engrossed. --BOB LEFSETZ, The Lefsetz Letter An uncut gem, the music biography of the year. --KYLE OLEKSIUK, The New York City Jazz Record As I turn the pages, it seems I keep hearing long-forgotten melodies in my head. Here's a piece of music history vividly captured. --HARUKI MURAKAMI A beautiful surprise arrived through the letterbox from America, The Ballad of Tommy LiPuma. . . . I'm fascinated by the work of A&R, the mega producers, and the history of how it all joins up. Tommy was one of the real greats. . . . An amazing guy and a fabulous book. --GILLES PETERSON The fast-moving, entertaining early sections come over a bit like 'The Godfather Part II' rewritten by Lord Buckley. . . . [The book] is warm, witty and resolutely un-PC, initially a portrait of the music biz's bygone 'Wild West' era featuring an engaging roll call of shysters, hucksters and hipsters, but also encapsulating the whole history of modern recording techniques and philosophies. --movingtheriver.com Reads like Jimmy Breslin if the legendary journalist had an encyclopedic knowledge of recording. --CLIVE YOUNG, Prosound News

Author Information

Ben Sidran was a major force in the contemporary history of jazz and rock & roll, having played keyboards with or produced such artists as Steve Miller, Mose Allison, Diana Ross, Boz Scaggs, Phil Upchurch, Tony Williams, Jon Hendricks, Richie Cole and Van Morrison. Though primarily renowned as a gifted pianist, composer, producer, among other music-related roles, Ben Sidran has also made a name for himself as a writer. Sidran's first book, Black Talk: How the Music of Black America Created a Radical Alternative to Western Literary Tradition (Da Capo Press), is based on his doctoral dissertation. Talking Jazz: An Oral History (Da Capo Press), published twenty-four years later, collects personal interviews with jazz greats such as Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins. His third literary endeavor, Ben Sidran: A Life in the Music (Unlimited Media), expresses his life-long affair with music and all its functions: as prayer, as community, as legacy, and as nothing but a party. He delves into the complex relationships between African-Americans and Jews, fathers and sons, history and hope, money and technology, ecstasy and transformation. His penultimate book, There Was a Fire: Jews, Music and the American Dream, was a 2011 finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and remains a teaching text in Jewish Studies programs everywhere.

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