Reviews

Red Hot and Blue: Fifty Years of Writing About Music, Memphis, and Motherf**kers by Stanley Booth

alexhouston's review

5.0

Few can say "I was there" regarding major musical moments of the 20th century as frequently, truthfully, and impressively as Stanley Booth, who toured with the Rolling Stones, joined Otis Redding at Stax days before his death, and swept the Memphis streets with Furry Lewis, among other existential accomplishments. Luckily for the rest of us, Booth is also an extraordinarily gifted stylist, who lends skills honed by reading deeply and widely to subject matter too often covered by amateurs. Less fortunately, for decades he'd only produced three books over a 50+ year career -- iconic, almost holy tomes by the estimation of any true student of music history. Now, at last, comes another, just as the 20th century recedes into a strange, often burdensome memory, in need of some redemptive interpretation. Booth's reflections on American music, his renderings of artists known and unknown, and the gravity and grace he grants these subjects, remind us that, as he's written elsewhere, American music contains, at its best, "a deep strain of mysterious insurrection," which has fueled some of the finer moments of our spotty collective history. Booth's work is a light in the darkness in which we find ourselves.