Customer Reviews

A Heartbeat and a Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears

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Antonino D'Ambrosio's A HEARTBEAT AND A GUITAR is a fascinating, complex story, ostensibly about Johnny Cash's BITTER TEARS album, but in fact it covers so much more. Indeed, it is a dual biographyof the famous, Cash, and the basically unknown, Peter LaFarge, an advocate for Native American rights while composing a number of riveting songs. D'Ambrosio weaves together many fascinating strands, including the stories of various performers, the politics of the 1950s and after, Native American protest history, American foreign policy, and so much more. The author demonstrates that analyzing the songs of one album can lead to so much understanding of cultural, musical, and political history. The discussions of Native American music and protest movements are particuarly refreshing, with the intriguing and complex LaFarge remaining as the story's centerpiece. Must reading for all music lovers, as well as political activists.

Although this book is titled with Johnny Cash's name there is really very little about him. It does tell a lot about the 1960's folk scene with background on a number of different artists . All in all an interesting read if you are a fan of folk music.

This is a very interesting book on an album made by a great artist.It has interesting info about Ira Hayes,the Native American who was one of soldiers raising the flag on Iwo Jima.I enjoyed reading about a special time in American history (it gives a good insight into it)and about an important album that I actually have.