THE READING ROOM: The Best Books By and For The Musicians We Lost Last Year

Former president Jimmy Carter died at age 100 on December 30, 2024. Carter will be remembered as a humanitarian and human rights activist, but he’ll also be remembered as the “rock and roll president.” His close relationship with Greg Allman and the Allman Brothers Band, and his meetings and friendships with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson illustrated how deeply music mattered in his life. Carter invited these and other musicians often to the Governor’s Mansion when he was Governor of Georgia and then to the White House when he was President. Carter’s death gives a chance to reflect here on some of the musicians we lost in 2024. We’ll remember them through their music, of course, but in many cases, the artists themselves told their stories in memoir, or others told their stories in biographies or critical analyses. Here is a short list of those we lost and the books by or about them.

Peter Yarrow: Yarrow died on January 7, 2025. He became most famous, of course, as a member of the trio Peter, Paul and Mary. He never wrote a memoir, and there is no biography devoted specifically to the group, although there are several books about the folk scene in the 1960s that include material on the trio. (David Browne’s Talkin’ Greenwich Village: The Heady Rise and Fall of America’s Bohemian Music Capital is one of the most recent.) There is a coffee table book, released to accompany a PBS special about the 50^th anniversary of the trio, titled Peter, Paul and Mary: Fifty Years in Music and Life (Imagine) that’s chock full of photos from the group’s rise and glory years. And Yarrow himself write two illustrated children’s books based on songs he wrote or co-wrote: Puff, the Magic Dragon (Pan Macmillian) and Day is Done (Union Square Kids).

John Mayall: The great British blues master died on July 22, 2024. Mayall’s group, the Bluesbreakers, spawned the careers of Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood, Mick Taylor, and Eric Clapton, among many other. In 2019, Mayall paused to reflect on his journey in his autobiography Blues from Laurel Canyon: My Life as a Bluesman (Omnibus Press). A new book, The Ultimate Book of Blues Guitar Legends: The Players and Guitars That Shaped the Music (Motorbooks), by Peter Prown, contains a profile of Mayall and his work.

Dicky Betts: The great Allman Brothers guitarist died on April 18, 2024. His tasty lead twinned with Duane Allman’s slide to produce the band’s classic sound; his crisp runs dominate his songs such as “Blue Sky” and “Jessica.” Betts didn’t leave a memoir, nor is there a single biography devoted to him. The two best books on the Allman Brothers, both of which contain many details about Betts and his life and music, are by Alan Paul: One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band (St. Martin’s) and Brothers and Sisters: The Allman Brothers Band and the Inside Story of the Album That Defined the ‘70s (St. Martin’s).

Kris Kristofferson: The troubadour and film star died on September 28, 2024. He’ll be most remembered for songs such as “Me And Bobby McGee,” “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” and “Jesus Was a Capricorn.” Kristofferson left behind no autobiography—or at least none we know about yet—nor have there been any biographies of Kristofferson. There is a critical analysis of Kristofferson’s work in Mary Hurd’s Kris Kristofferson: Country Highwayman (Rowman & Littlefield). The most memorable profiles of Kristofferson are in two recent books by Nashville music writers. Tim Ghianni recalls his friendship with Kristofferson in his Pilgrims, Pickers and Honky-Tonk Heroes: My Personal Time with Music City Friends and Legends in Rock ‘n’ Roll, R&B, and a Whole Lot of Country (Backbeat). The late Peter Cooper also offers an entertaining biographical profile of the silver-tongued devil: Johnny Cash & Charley’s Pride: Lasting Legends and Untold Adventures in Country Music (Spring House Press).

Phil Lesh: The Grateful Dead co-founder and bassist died on October 25, 2024. He wrote one of the Dead’s most cherished songs, “Box of Rain,” with lyricist Robert Hunter. There are numerus books on and about the Grateful Dead, including Dennis McNally’s excellent A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead (Crown). Lesh left us with his own candid memoir, Searching for the Sound (Back Bay), in which he traces the long strange trip of the Dead from the 1960s until Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995 and the years beyond.

Joe Bonsall: The tenor singer of the Oak Ridge Boys died on July 9, 2024. He performed until a few weeks before the end. When Bonsall wasn’t writing songs or touring with the Oaks, he was writing, and his most intimate and honest memoir, I See Myself: Musings and Memories from a Blessed Life (Fidelis), was published a few months after his death. He also wrote another memoir, focused on his life of making music with the Oak Ridge Boys: On the Road with The Oak Ridge Boys: Forty Years of Untold Stories and Adventures (Harvest House).

Roni Stoneman: The great banjo player—“The First Lady of Banjo”—left us on February 22, 2024. In her vibrant memoir Pressing On: The Roni Stoneman Story (Illinois), she recounts her life from growing up “beyond poverty stricken” Appalachian childhood to her stint in the family band to her roles on the television show Hee Haw. Murphy Hicks Henry’s Pretty Good for a Girl: Women in Bluegrass (Illinois) also provides an engaging profile of Stoneman.