Delta Lady

February 8, 2016
In the golden years of pop-rock music of the 1960s and ’70s, there were very few singers like the Grammy-winning Coolidge, whose memoir reads like a polite, lyrical confessional. She exhibits a deep understanding of human nature as she writes candidly of her loving family, especially her older singing sister, Priscilla, in the Jim Crow state of Tennessee. Upon graduating from Florida State in 1967, she moved to Memphis with Priscilla, who was starting her singing career in a racially mixed music scene with “a more driving Southern feel tinged with jazz and traditional R&B.” The Klan burned a cross on their lawn following Priscilla’s interracial marriage, and the 1968 killing of Martin Luther King Jr. shattered the Memphis scene; Coolidge fled to California. Once in L.A., she plunged into the music business, singing backup for Leon Russell, Eric Clapton, Joe Cocker, and Stephen Stills and striking gold with such hits as “We’re All Alone” and “Higher and Higher.” Coolidge’s backstage stories of her sessions with Clapton and Cocker, the drug-fueled orgies of the infamous Mad Dog and Englishmen tour, and her romances with Graham Nash and Kris Kristofferson are authentic and intimate. Agent: Daniel Greenberg, Levine Greenberg Literary.

March 1, 2016

Singer/songwriter Coolidge ("Anytime...Anywhere"), with best-selling author Walker (Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll's Legendary Neighborhood), candidly relates the story of growing up part-Cherokee in Kentucky and Tennessee during the 1940s and 1950s. Born to a Baptist minister father and schoolteacher mother, Coolidge sang harmony from an early age with her sisters in church. Listening to recordings of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Mississippi John Hurt, and Bob Dylan helped her hone her songwriting craft. Along the way her musical style was influenced by Delaney and Bonnie and their Southern R&B and rock and roll sound. There were relationships with Leon Russell, Graham Nash, and the love of her life and father of her daughter, Kris Kristofferson. She endured a bad trip on acid and never tried it again. Coolidge recounts her career highlights to include participating in the "Mad Dogs & Englishmen" tour with Joe Cocker in 1970, singing backup vocals on Stephen Stills's "Love the One You're With," and producing her signature duet with Kristofferson, "Help Me Make It Through the Night." VERDICT This title will appeal to fans of the 1960s folk and light rock period. They may also enjoy Walker's Laurel Canyon.--Elizabeth D. Eisen, Appleton P.L., WI

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2016
A surprisingly rich memoir from a two-time Grammy winner and acclaimed backup singer. Amid a glut of rock memoirs, it seems that anyone who ever had a hit has written a book, and Coolidge wouldn't seem to have the richest story to tell, as she is best known for a tepid 1970s remake of "Higher and Higher" and as the lower-profile spouse in her tempestuous marriage to Kris Kristofferson during that time. However, in a manner that rarely seems gossipy and never salacious, the author presents her perspective on the sea changes that rock underwent in the early 1970s, an era in which she played a key role in the careers and lives of Leon Russell, Joe Cocker, Eric Clapton, and Crosby, Stills and Nash. "If you look back at this period in my life, it might seem like I was sleeping with every guy in town," writes Coolidge. "I wasn't. Leon and I were together for close to a year, same with Graham." She details the seismic shifts that took place as Russell joined forces with Delaney and Bonnie, then stole their band for the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour that almost ruined Cocker, and Eric Clapton forsook the supergroup status of Cream and Blind Faith to fall under the Southern sway of Delaney Bramlett. The drummer through much of this period was Jim Gordon, whose demons would lead him to beat his girlfriend, Coolidge, unconscious and later murder his mother. The author also recounts how routinely Delaney battered Bonnie as well as Ike Turner's mistreatment of Tina. She saw marijuana give way to cocaine and heroin as British rock stars in particular developed a sense of entitlement. "I wanted to say, What is wrong with you people? What did your mother teach you?" writes Coolidge, who comes across as not all that deep but uncommonly decent. The instant attraction with Kristofferson and volatile estrangement receives a full airing, as well. Where memoirs from bigger stars often fail to deliver, this illuminating autobiography exceeds expectations.

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March 1, 2016
Coolidge, the acclaimed singer/songwriter, takes us through her life and career in this new autobiography. You can't talk about Coolidge without talking about the music scene in the 1960s and 70s, the period during which the author found her voice and had her first success. Coolidge tells both stories here, the personal saga of a young woman who was driven to sing and the account of a time in which pop music itself was finding a new version of itself. Coolidge speaks openly about her personal and professional relationships (sometimes both were with the same person, as with her complicated relationship with Kris Kristofferson), but readers thumbing through the book looking for dirt or juicy stories will come up mostly empty: this is a positive, uplifting life story, one which ends with its author thanking God and appearing genuinely to mean it. For Coolidge's legion of fans, this is a must-read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)