Lone Star Swing
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.43 (916 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0393317560 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 320 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-08-31 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
This account of his travels takes in barbed-wire museums, onion festivals, hoe-downs, ghost-towns, dead dogs, and ten thousand miles of driving through the Lone Star State. Both a quest for a musical grail and a wildly funny travelogue, Lone Star Swing captures the singular wonders of Texas and its maverick inhabitants, its staggering 100-in-the-shade heat, its mouth-blistering chilies. A constant soundtrack of vintage music from bands like the Texas Top Hands, The Lightcrust Doughboys, and the Modern Mountaineers cheers McLean as he tries, with great difficulty, to track down any trace of his greatest heroes: Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Above all it captures the spirit of the glorious mongrel music-once incredibly popular, now all but forgotten-that he crossed the world to hear.. High Fidelity meets Blue Highways in this gloriously offbeat quest for the true roots of Texas Swing. Using the prize money from his Somerset Maugham Award, Duncan McLean traveled from Orkney, Scotland, to Texas in search of the extraordinary mix of jazz, blues, country, and mariachi that is Western Swing
C. Hurley said A great book for a beginner, and a wonderful homage. So I'll admit, I find country and western music a drag, but I always loved the crossover jazz of Duke ellington, or the early "A great book for a beginner, and a wonderful homage" according to C. Hurley. So I'll admit, I find country and western music a drag, but I always loved the crossover jazz of Duke ellington, or the early 20th century trumpet sounds of the great swingers, and could always find a good word to say about the Burrito Brothers, The Byrds or even Hank Williams senior. Duncan Maclean wrote a very good first novel whose last few pages were a bit ropey - never mind, says I, the good ideas were there, t. 0th century trumpet sounds of the great swingers, and could always find a good word to say about the Burrito Brothers, The Byrds or even Hank Williams senior. Duncan Maclean wrote a very good first novel whose last few pages were a bit ropey - never mind, says I, the good ideas were there, t. A pleasure aliled Some people, judging from their reviews, just didn't "get" the book. That's okay, I can understand it. It's probably best for people like myself, folks too young to have heard Wills' music any normal way, but who somehow stumbled across it and fell in love. If you're a long-term fan of the music, or have never heard it at all, well, I can imagine the book may seem lacking - though personally, I liked the tales of Mc. Laugh-out-loud travelogue . This is a five-star book for readers who enjoy fish-out-of-water accounts of travel, where the writer's eye (ear, nose and throat, for that matter) seems to encounter only the completely incongruous and absurd. The jokes go both ways, of course - on the inhabitants of the place traveled through as well as the credulous author, whose expectations are wildly different. Paul Theroux does this in (to me) a cranky and ir
He's head over heels for a music that's not only going out of style, but is found most prevalently in Texas--a long way from his home in the Orkney Islands of Scotland. As he describes it: "This is the hottering chili-pot of New Orleans Jazz, old country fiddling, big-band swing, ragtime, blues, pop, mariachi and conjunto that dominated Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and beyond--all the way to San Francisco in the west, Memphis in the east--from the mid-Thirties till mid-Elvis. As McLean trails his favorite music over the back roa