Always Been There

Rosanne Cash, The List, and the Spirit of Southern Music

Contributors

By Michael Streissguth

On Sale
Dec 15, 2009
Page Count
256 pages
Publisher
Da Capo Press
ISBN-13
9780306819261

In 1973, Rosanne Cash’s father gave her a list of 100 songs, many from the Southern tradition, that he felt a young musician had to know. Always Been There tells the inside story of the album that, more than thirty-five years later, resulted from “the list.”

Based on original interviews conducted in the studio, at home in New York City, and on tour in Europe, Always Been There documents a pivotal episode in Rosanne Cash’s long and fascinating career. As she, along with producer and husband John Leventhal, painstakingly reconstructs what songs made “the list” and why, we gain an unmatched understanding of a longer musican continuium that includes the Carter Family and other fabled names of the Southern pantheon and their influence on her music and writing. We also see how Leventhal’s talents as an arranger and musician pair with Rosanne’s searching vocal performances to make these old songs new again.

Always Been There tracks Rosanne Cash’s singular and storied career from her early commercial hits with albums like King’s Record Shop through her controversial split with Nashville tradition on albums like the mercurial Interiors to the sublime Black Cadillac. It paints an unforgettable portrait of Rosanne confronting music-making in the aftermath of serious brain surgery, her lifelong search for her legacy, and her unique creative partnerships.

Formats and Prices

Price

$9.99

Price

$12.99 CAD

Format

ebook

Format:

ebook $9.99 $12.99 CAD

Michael Streissguth

About the Author

Highways and Heartaches is Michael Streissguth’s tenth book. Among the others are the critically acclaimed Johnny Cash: The Biography and Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris and the Renegades of Nashville, which was named one of the top music books of 2013 by Rolling Stone.  He has written and directed three documentary films, including the award-winning Nighthawks on the Blue Highway and The Tower Road Bus and served as a program advisor on Ken Burns’ PBS documentary series Country Music (2019).  His writing has appeared in the Washington Post MagazineIrish TimesMojoBluegrass Unlimited, Living Blues, the Journal of Country Music, and other outlets, and he frequently contributes to rollingstone.com.  He is a professor in the Department of Communications and Film Studies at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York.

 

Learn more about this author