Chinaberry Sidewalks (Vintage) [Paperback]

Rodney Crowell (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 13, 2012 | Series: Vintage

In a tender and uproarious memoir, singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell reveals the good, the bad, and the ugly of a dirt-poor southeast Texas boyhood.
 
The only child of a hard-drinking father and a holy-roller mother, acclaimed musician Rodney Crowell was no stranger to bombast. But despite a home life always threatening to burst into violence, Rodney fiercely loved his mother and idolized his blustering father, a frustrated musician who took him to see Hank Williams, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash perform. Set in 1950s Houston, a frontier-rough town with icehouses selling beer by the gallon on payday, pest infestations right out of a horror film, and the kind of freedom mischievous kids dream of, Chinaberry Sidewalks is Rodney's tribute to his parents and his remarkable youth.  Full of the most satisfying kind of nostalgia, it is hardly recognizable as a celebrity memoir.  Rather, it's a story of coming-of-age at a particular time, place, and station, crafted as well as the perfect song.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Singer-songwriter Crowell's upbringing in Texas had all the prerequisite elements of a hardscrabble country music story--drinking, guns, fistfights, fierce spankings, infidelity, Pentecostal preachers, fishing, love, hate, laughter, tears, sex, drugs, and of course, music. But Crowell's storytelling abilities and narrative flair elevate this book far above the average music memoir. Born in 1950 to a blue-collar, hard-drinking, country-singing father and religious mother, Crowell lived in Jacinto City, east of Houston, in a shoddily constructed house cursed with leaks, mosquitoes, and vermin. He recalls hurricanes, fishing trips, rock throwing fights, and bow-and-arrow mishaps, all with the enthusiasm of a hyper 10-year-old pedaling at full speed (something he and neighborhood kids did when following the "Mosquito Dope Truck," a DDT spraying vehicle that they chased on their bicycles). Crowell touches on his early musical influences, including a Hank Williams concert when he was only two, and an outdoor show by Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash in a thunderstorm, as well as his first time playing music with his father's band. It's not music that's at the heart of this book, however, but his loving and turbulent relationships with his parents and their often strained but deep love for one another. (Jan.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Crowell is among the best storytellers to emerge from Nashville. Up to now, he told his stories in song, but with this heartfelt memoir, he can now be called a writer of the first order. Houston, where Crowell grew up in the 1950s and early 1960s, was a city full of characters found in stereotypical country songs: hard-drinking fathers and long-suffering mothers singing along to the beer-soaked ballads of Hank Williams. But this is not fiction; Crowell actually lived the life, soaking up its exhilarating and disturbing atmosphere. Crowell is unsparingly honest, yet there is an admirable restraint here, too. He clearly loves his family, accepting their bountiful deficiencies even when he criticizes them or wishes them harm. He can now see the kind of lives his parents wanted to live, and how they fell woefully short. He calls his father an enigma and savant; he admires his mother, who suffered from double dyslexia and epilepsy, for her towering instinct for survival. But he also discusses lighter topics, such as his early days in a rock ’n’ roll band, making for an exceptional memoir. --June Sawyers --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (March 13, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307740978
• ISBN-13: 978-0307740977
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (67 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #372,471 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Never lost interest January 30, 2011

By George Richardson

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Buy it. It is rare that I read 130 pages on the afternoon that a book is delivered. It is rarer still when I read the other 130 pages within the next two days. Rodney writes books as well as he writes songs, and he really writes them himself. This is not a money making vanity publication, it is a classic homage to a highly dysfunctional, poverty stricken, stinky bottle of polluted water that slowly transforms into fine wine through the grace of, well, Rodney mostly. A lesser man would not have survived. You really need to read it, it is a work of love, hate and art. I expect many more novels from Rodney, it is obvious he has the gift.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars NY Times said it best January 23, 2011

By cknots

Format:Hardcover

I read the review in the New York times, which was written by a book critic known to never take it easy on a writer, so I bought the book. It is poetic and linear, perfectly told. The words are chosen with care in each line, but reading it you can't help but know this is a talent of Crowell's not just the hard work and editing.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Chinaberry Joyride March 4, 2011

By Laura B. Foreman

Format:Hardcover

For years I've listened to Rodney Crowell's music, wondering where the fiction begins and the "truth" ends in his songwriting. With "Chinaberry Sidewalks," the pieces all come together in this riveting memoir of his crazy quilt childhood in Texas. As I read "New Year's Eve, 1955" (the first chapter) my nose drew closer to the page, my pulse quickened and I realized I was in for one hell of a joyride.
Crowell creates full characters in his book - full of insanity, pathos and love.
Reluctantly accompanying his mother during the Pentecostal-soaked summer of 1955, Crowell writes: "Hating these holy-rolling, speaking-in-unknown-tongues free-for-alls she loves so well, I do my best to make the trip more miserable than it already is."
But even under the preposterous tutelage of a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher - "that poor man's Billy Graham," Crowell discovers a moment of grace, "In the wink of any eye (the preacher's), I saw a compassionate, tolerant and nonjudgmental God of love and great humor. My own faith was planted as a seed that morning, and there are days its fruit sustains me still."
Like Brenda Peterson's memoir, "I Want to Be Left Behind," it takes those who have survived a childhood of "chock full of sin" to speak with the authority of forgiveness, wisdom and love. As Crowell says in his song. "I know all I need is love." And he proves it with "Chinaberry Sidewalks."