Reviews for Rhythm and the Blues: A Life in American Music

The average rating for Rhythm and the Blues: A Life in American Music based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-09-10 00:00:00 Alexandra Harvey Jerry Wexler has the oddest, most abstruse vocabulary of anyone I've ever encountered in print. This book is worth reading just for his conflation of the erudite and the profane through language alone. Read it, too, though, because this is the man (along with Ahmet & Nesuhi Ertegun) who built the house (Atlantic Records) in which Aretha Franklin, Issac Hayes, Aerosmith, Ray Charles, Dusty Springfield, Otis Reading, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, The Rolling Stones... (and the list goes on for miles) turned out some of the best music ever produced. I re-read this book every few years. It's currently out of print. I hope they re-issue it. Read this book in conversation with the 2007 DVD, "Atlantic Records: The House that Ahmet Built." Jerry can tell some stories, man! God bless him and may he and Ahmet rest in peace.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-09-09 00:00:00 Jeanine Stewart Jerry Wexler was surely one of the last of a sadly vanishing breed… The great record men. Wexler is best known for his time with Atlantic records which he helped build into a powerhouse by signing or producing Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, the Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin, Dire Straits, Dusty Springfield, and Bob Dylan among others. In addition, he coined the term rhythm and blues so it’s appropriate that this should be the title of his autobiography. Jerry was a great storyteller and seems like a real character, his unique voice comes through loud and clear on every page of this narrative. Certainly one of the best Music Business biographies I've read.