Hoskyns, Barney (The Band; Dylan, Bob; Hendrix, Jimi; Joplin, Janis; Morrison, Van et al.)

Small Town Talk: Bob Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix & Friends in the Wild Years of Woodstock

New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2016. Second Printing. Hardcover. “In ‘Small Town Talk,’ Barney Hoskyns re-creates Woodstock’s community of brilliant dysfunctional musicians, scheming dealers, and opportunistic hippie capitalists drawn to the area by Dylan and his sidekicks from the Band. Central to the book’s narrative is the broodingly powerful presence of Albert Grossman, manager of Dylan, the Band, Janis Joplin, Paul Butterfield, and Todd Rundgren—and the Big Daddy had a personal fiefdom in Bearsville that encompassed studios, restaurants, and his own record label. Intertwined in this story are the Woodstock experiences and association of artists as diverse as Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Tim Hardin, Karen Dalton, and Bobby Charles (whose immortal song-portrait of Woodstock gives the book its title)” (from front flap copy). If you say the name “Karen Dalton” or “Bobby Charles” to a musician, songwriter, or audiophile-afficionado you’re very likely to grab their attention. I’m reminded of Wynton Marsalis’s’ short, expository aria in Ken Burns’ classic “Jazz” documentary, in which Marsalis exhorted, “Great art is not going to come to YOU….You have to come to IT.” Dalton & Charles exemplify the sort of deep-cuts that keep all such seekers coming back to the ennobling, devotional, inspirited worlds inhabited by the great musicians-songwriters of the late 1960s. While the cameos of figures like Dalton and Charles provide a certain satiating enrichment to obsessives like Your Devoted Curators here at TMB, the work is best read wholistically — “each look a world-glance,” as Lawrence Ferlinghetti would have put it. For fullest impact, one must not be clubbed into star-struck bedazzlement by the avalanche of anecdotes here arrayed. Drink it in...like "sweet cherry wine." Hardcover in unclipped dust-jacket: First Edition, despite not being explicated as such on copyright page; 2nd Printing, as indicated by number sequence thereon. [ISBN: 978-0-306-82320-6]. In strong fine condition with only minute-to-moderate shelf-wear, rubbing to front, back covers & some light, nonuniform spotting-browning near/at bottommost fine-edge of front cover, otherwise clean. Dust-jacket in strong fine condition with only minute-to-moderate shelf-wear, light creasing-crinkling to fine-edges & corners of front, back covers & spine; similarly minute-to-moderate rubbing at select locales of same, else pristine. Very Fine / Very fine. [Item #5332]

Price: $20.00