The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American
Music (Hardcover) by Dunstan Prial
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0374113041/wideanglereco-20

Review
"The extraordinary John Hammond has long needed a good
biography. This is it." --Pete Seeger

"John Hammond must be grinning in his grave, because
Dunstan Prial has brought back to life for
21st-century readers the man who animated much of the
20th century's greatest music. The Producer does
justice not only to Hammond's legendary role in
instigating and integrating American music, but also
to his indefatigable efforts on behalf of civil rights
and labor unions. To read this book is to bask, once
again, in Hammond's toothy smile and marvel at his
enthusiasm and insight." --Ken Emerson, author of
Doo-Dah!: Stephen Foster and the Rise of American
Popular Culture and Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp
and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era.

Book Description
A "behind the music" story without parallel
John Hammond is one of the most charismatic figures in
American music, a man who put on record much of the
music we cherish today. Dunstan Prial's biography
presents Hammond's life as a gripping story of music,
money, fame, and racial conflict, played out in the
nightclubs and recording studios where the music was
made.

A pioneering producer and talent spotter, Hammond
discovered and championed some of the most gifted
musicians of early jazz-Billie Holiday, Count Basie,
Charlie Christian, Benny Goodman--and staged the
legendary "From Spirituals to Swing" concert at
Carnegie Hall in 1939, which established jazz as
America's indigenous music. Then as jazz gave way to
pop and rock Hammond repeated the trick, discovering
Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, and
Stevie Ray Vaughan in his life's extraordinary second
act.

Dunstan Prial shows Hammond's life to be an effort to
push past his privileged upbringing and encounter
American society in all its rough-edged vitality. A
Vanderbilt on his mother's side, Hammond grew up in a
mansion on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. As a boy,
he would sneak out at night and go uptown to Harlem to
hear jazz in speakeasies. As a young man, he crusaded
for racial equality in the music world and beyond. And
as a Columbia Records executive-a dapper figure behind
the glass of the recording studio or in a crowded
nightclub-he saw music as the force that brought
whites and blacks together and expressed their shared
sense of life's joys and sorrows. This first biography
of John Hammond is also a vivid and up-close account
of great careers in the making: Bob Dylan recording
his first album with Hammond for $402, Bruce
Springsteen showing up at Hammond's office carrying a
beat-up acoustic guitar without a case. In Hammond's
life, the story of American music is at once personal
and epic: the story of a man at the center of things,
his ears wide open.

About the Author
Dunstan Prial, born in New Jersey in 1970, has worked
as a reporter with the Associated Press, and was led
to Hammond's career by his admiration for Bruce
Springsteen. He lives in Bristol, Rhode Island.

The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American
Music (Hardcover) by Dunstan Prial
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0374113041/wideanglereco-20

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