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  • Published: 15 February 2012
  • ISBN: 9780307740977
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $32.99

Chinaberry Sidewalks

A Memoir



The only child of a hard-drinking father and a holy-roller mother, country music star 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 live. 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.

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.

  • Published: 15 February 2012
  • ISBN: 9780307740977
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $32.99

About the author

Rodney Crowell

Born in Houston in 1950, Rodney Crowell has released nearly twenty albums in four decades, with five consecutive number-one hits, and has also worked widely as a songwriter and a producer. His honors include a Grammy, an ASCAP lifetime achievement award, and membership in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He lives in Nashville.

Praise for Chinaberry Sidewalks

  • COVER QUOTE: "Rodney Crowell's memoir of his boyhood in southeast Texas is a wonder: wistful and profane, heartbreaking and hilarious, loving and angry, proud and self-lacerating. . . . [A] splendid book." --The Washington Post
  • "A loving, affectionate tribute...this honest, forgiving, and self-assured memoir brings all the skeletons out of the closet and invites them to dance." --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
  • "Mysterious and wonderful...a rare and unaccountable instance of transcendence." --The Boston Globe