True Adventures with the King of Bluegrass- Jimmy Martin [Hardcover]

Tom Piazza (Author), Marty Stuart (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 29, 1999

Jimmy Martin was just twenty-two years old when Bill Monroe asked him to join the Blue Grass Boys. That invitation was the start of a fifty-year recording career, recently celebrated with Martin's induction into the International Bluegrass Music Association's Hall of Honor. At age seventy-two, he still regularly performs with his band, the Sunny Mountain Boys. Yet the man himself remains an obscure figure, compared with other bluegrass greats like Ralph Stanley or the Osborne Brothers. Fiction writer and music critic Tom Piazza couldn't understand why Martin wasn't better known. So, on assignment from the Oxford American magazine, he drove from his home in New Orleans to Nashville to find out. Although aware that Martin had "a reputation as a heavy drinker and a volatile personality," Piazza found himself pitched headlong into a world he couldn't have anticipated. Martin's mercurial personality drew the writer into a series of escalating encounters (with mean dogs, broken down cars, and near electrocution), culminating in a harrowing and unforgettable expedition, with Martin, to the Grand Ole Opry.

Piazza captured his visit with Martin in supple, electric prose, and the result, when it appeared in the Oxford American, quickly became a word-of-mouth sensation among musicians and fans alike. Included in this keepsake edition are a new afterword by Piazza, an essay on Martin's recordings, and a timeline of Martin's career.

True Adventures with the King of Bluegrass is a funny, scary, and powerfully poignant portrait of one of the living legends of American music.

Co-published with the Country Music Foundation Press

Editorial Reviews

Review

...one of the most engaging, revealing, funny and sad books ever written about a Nashville musician
--The Tennessean

Tom Piazza unlocks the back door of bluegrass in his three-hundred-and-sixty-degree portrait of Jimmy Martin's tragic genius. Step inside--it's a fascinating, scary world, and you'll never be the same again.
Tim O'Brien

About the Author

Tom Piazza's writing on American music has appeared in the Sunday New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and The Village Voice. He is the author of The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz (University of Iowa Press), which won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor award for music writing, and Blues and Trouble (St. Martin's Press), which won a James Michener award for fiction. He lives in New Orleans and is working on a novel.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 108 pages
• Publisher: Vanderbilt/Country Music Foundation; 1st edition (October 29, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826513603
• ISBN-13: 978-0826513601
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,747,046 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tom Piazza is the author of ten books, the most recent of which is "Devil Sent The Rain: Music and Writing in Desperate America," a collection of essays and journalism on music, literature and politics.

His other books include the novel "City Of Refuge," which won the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction, and the post-Katrina classic "Why New Orleans Matters." His novel "My Cold War" won the Faulkner Society Award for the Novel, and his short-story collection "Blues and Trouble," won the James Michener Award for Fiction. He is currently a writer for the HBO series "Treme" and is at work on a new novel.

No less a literary critic than Bob Dylan has said, "Tom Piazza's writing pulsates with nervous electrical tension - reveals the emotions that we can't define." A well known writer on American music as well, Tom won a Grammy Award for his album notes to "Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: A Musical Journey" and is a three-time winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for Music Writing. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Bookforum, The Oxford American, Columbia Journalism Review, and many other periodicals. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and he lives in New Orleans.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Bluegrass Biographical Piece Ever!, June 29, 2000

By 

plfmud - See all my reviews

This review is from: True Adventures with the King of Bluegrass- Jimmy Martin (Hardcover)

Tom Piazza has captured Jimmy Martin to a T! This story was originally published in the Oxford American and was copied over and over by bluegrass fans and mailed all over the world. It was such an underground hit that it was published in book form along with some additional musings by the author. Piazza recounts a visit he and Martin made backstage at the Grand Ole Opry. It's the kind of thing you will never read in Bluegrass Unlimited. It is just too real! If you've ever seen Jimmy in person, you know what an outreageous character he is, and you'll love this book. Don't miss it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great, albeit quick, read!, December 3, 2005

By 

Megan Romer (Lafayette, LA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: True Adventures with the King of Bluegrass- Jimmy Martin (Hardcover)

I'm so tired of music biographies where the subject is either villainized or practically canonized; none of us are perfect saints, nor are we completely evil. That's why I always find it refreshing when a writer presents the true person, most of whom are a little of both. Piazza has done that here.

Martin is something of a tragic figure; a mad genius. In candid interviews, Piazza has found all the good in the man, as well as peeled back some of the bad. He shows that if Martin had been born in another era, or been a king of another genre, he would have been a hero, but in the holier-than-thou bluegrass scene, the hard-living Martin was considered something of a black sheep, despite his obvious brilliance.

This is a great book, and definitely one of the best music biographies ever written.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Snapshot of the King of Bluegrass, April 2, 2004

By 

Mark J. Fowler "Let's Play Two!" (Jacksonville, Florida) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: True Adventures with the King of Bluegrass- Jimmy Martin (Hardcover)

Tom Piazza has written a piece which captures with photographic detail several hours spent in the company of the Mad 3-chord Genius (as Marty Stuart writes in his forward) and Self-Proclaimed King of Bluegrass, Jimmy Martin. This "book" is essentially a fleshed out magazine article, but it's a good one. Less than 100 pages and written in a style that moves right along while giving you a "you are there" first person sense, it's an enlightening way to pass an hour or two.

Mr. Piazza has a keen and insightful sense of Jimmy Martin's musical genius and place in Bluegrass History, and to me the most poignant moments in the book are when the writer is moving to shield or protect the intoxicated, loud-mouthed King of Bluegrass from injuring his already mussed reputation. As he observes, much of what makes Jimmy Martin "great" also dooms him to the edges of the limelight and that Grand Ol' Opry Membership that Jimmy Martin yearns for so badly will likely never happen, exactly for the reason of his unwillingness to back down or compromise.

This isn't a "biography" so much as a thumbnail sketch of who Jimmy Martin is framed in a skillful depiction of a few volatile hours spent with a prime example of the "Tortured Artist".

I can't help but wonder if a well-written first-person account of a weekend spent with Van Gogh would have been eerily similar.