{"id":750,"date":"2018-12-31T13:48:05","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T13:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=750"},"modified":"2018-12-31T13:48:05","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T13:48:05","slug":"glenn-dromgooles-texas-reads-column-appears-weekly-at-lonestarliterary-com-43","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=750","title":{"rendered":"Glenn Dromgoole’s Texas Reads column appears weekly at LoneStarLiterary.com"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/span><\/span>Texas Reads<\/span>>> archive<\/span><\/a><\/span>Glenn Dromgoole<\/span><\/h1>\n

12.4.16\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Texas songwriters featured in new books<\/h1>\n

Fans of Texas music have several new books<\/span> to choose from this fall. All involve, in one way or another, the art of songwriting. Three of the titles are non-fiction, while the other one is a novel based on an actual song.<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/span>First, the novel. More than fifty years ago, Willie Nelson<\/span> wrote a melancholy song, \u201cPretty Paper,\u201d about a street vendor selling wrapping paper and ribbons while busy shoppers pass by without noticing him. It was recorded by Roy Orbison<\/span> and became a holiday hit. Nelson penned the lyrics after seeing a legless man on a cart in front of a downtown Fort Worth department store. But he always wondered about the man\u2019s real life. Who was he? How had his life come to this?<\/p>\n

Pretty Paper: A Christmas Tale<\/span><\/a><\/span> by Willie Nelson<\/span> (Blue Rider Press, $23 hardcover) offers an inspiring, fictionalized account of the man behind the lyrics. With the help of co-author David Ritz,<\/span> Nelson spins a fast-paced story that is hard to put down. I literally read it in one evening.<\/p>\n

Texas A&M University Press has published three hardcover volumes in its Texas music series sponsored by the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University. Without Getting Killed or Caught: The Life and Music of Guy Clark<\/span> by Tamara Saviano<\/span> ($29.95) is the definitive biography of the late, beloved Clark, who grew up in Texas and became a guru to dozens, if not hundreds, of aspiring songwriters in Texas and Nashville.<\/p>\n

Saviano, a Nashville music journalist, began working on the biography in 2008, spending numerous hours interviewing him as well as about a hundr3ed of his friends and fellow musicians.\u00a0 \u201cFrom the first interview,\u201d she writes, \u201cGuy surprised me. The moment I turned on the recorder, Guy opened his mouth and spilled stories that many of his closest friends hadn\u2019t heard.\u201d She finished the book shortly before Clark passed away last spring.<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/span>Saviano also has a piece on Clark in a new collection of essays, Pickers and Poets: The Ruthlessly Poetic Singer-Songwriters of Texas<\/span><\/a><\/span> (Texas A&M University Press, $29.95). Edited by Craig Clifford<\/span> and Craig Hillis,<\/span> Pickers and Poets includes more than thirty stories about such noted Texas songwriters as Townes Van Zandt, Kris Kristofferson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Kinky Friedman, Billy Joe Shaver, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Willie Nelson, Robert Earl Keen, Rodney Crowell,<\/span> and Miranda Lambert.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kent Finlay, Dreamer: The Musical Legend Behind Cheatham Street Warehouse<\/span><\/a><\/span> by Brian Atkinson<\/span> and Jenni Finlay<\/span> (Eight 30 records, $25.95) tells the story of a songwriter\/dance hall proprietor who helped launch a number of aspiring musicians\u2019 careers through his San Marcos venue. George Strait<\/span> was one of them, and he writes about Finlay in a foreword: \u201cHe and his great little honky-tonk with indoor toilets gave me and a whole host of others a place to learn our craft.\u201d Finlay died in 2015.<\/p>\n

Glenn Dromgoole\u2019s<\/span> latest book is West Texas Stories<\/span><\/a><\/span>Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.<\/p>\n

>> Read his past Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life here.<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Texas Reads>> archiveGlenn Dromgoole 12.4.16\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Texas songwriters featured in new books Fans of Texas music have several new books to choose from this fall. All involve, in one way or another, the art of songwriting. Three of the titles are non-fiction, while the other one is a novel based on an actual song. First, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}