T Bone Burnett: A Life in Pursuit

by Lloyd Sachs

Overview

This first critical appreciation of T Bone Burnett reveals how the proponent of Americana music and producer of artists ranging from Robert Plant and Alison Krauss to B. B. King and Elvis Costello has profoundly influenced American music and culture.

T Bone Burnett is a unique, astonishingly prolific music producer, singer-songwriter, guitarist, and soundtrack visionary. Renowned as a studio maven with a Midas touch, Burnett is known for lifting artists to their greatest heights, as he did with Raising Sand, the multiple Grammy Award–winning album by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, as well as acclaimed albums by Los Lobos, the Wallflowers, B. B. King, and Elvis Costello. Burnett virtually invented “Americana” with his hugely successful roots-based soundtrack for the Coen Brothers film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? Outspoken in his contempt for the entertainment industry, Burnett has nevertheless received many of its highest honors, including Grammy Awards and an Academy Award.

T Bone Burnett offers the first critical appreciation of Burnett’s wide-ranging contributions to American music, his passionate advocacy for analog sound, and the striking contradictions that define his maverick artistry. Lloyd Sachs highlights all the important aspects of Burnett’s musical pursuits, from his early days as a member of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue and his collaboration with the playwright Sam Shepard to the music he recently composed for the TV shows Nashville and True Detective and his production of the all-star album Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes. Sachs also underscores Burnett’s brilliance as a singer-songwriter in his own right. Going well beyond the labels “legendary” or “visionary” that usually accompany his name, T Bone Burnett reveals how this consummate music maker has exerted a powerful influence on American music and culture across four decades.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781477311561
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	09/20/2016
Series:	American Music Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	278
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

A nationally known voice on popular culture, Sachs has written about pop music and jazz for many publications, including Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, DownBeat, the Village Voice, USA Today, and JazzTimes. He was a longtime music columnist and award-winning editorial writer at the Chicago Sun-Times and a senior editor at No Depression, the prized “alt-country” magazine.

Table of Contents

• Opening Chorus: On Top of the World (or Close)
• 1. Sound Citizen
• 2. The Outsider
• 3. Player in the Band
• 4. Alpha Male
• 5. Spiritual Gumshoe
• 6. Master Builder
• 7. Co-Conspirator
• 8. Seeker
• 9. Svengali
• 10. Imagist
• 11. Native Son
• 12. Mentor
• 13. Hit Man
• 14. Reluctant Artist
• 15. Starmaker
• 16. Company Man
• 17. Coen Brother
• 18. Soundtrack Auteur
• 19. Minimalist
• 20. Lead Actor
• 21. Alchemist
• 22. Jazz Man
• 23. Blues Man
• 24. Senior Adviser
• 25. Audio Activist
• 26. Dylanologist
• 27. Televisionary
• 28. Back to the Futurist
• The Kill Squad: A Short List of Longtime Musical Associates
• Acknowledgments
• Selected Discography
• Selected Bibliography
• Index

What People are Saying About This

Geoffrey Himes

T Bone Burnett proves that a producer can make as much of an artistic impact as a performer. Enjoyable, sparkling prose.

Rodney Crowell

A record producer who’s had a hand in making some of the most timeless music of the last forty years, T Bone Burnett deftly renders singers, musicians, and songs into vital messengers of artistic truth. Lloyd Sachs’s easygoing prose frames a portrait of an enigmatic, enthusiastic, idealistic, and ultimately accessible musical raconteur/humanitarian who may very well be the most accomplished listener in modern times. In the bargain, we are reminded that Brother Burnett is himself a hell of a singer, songwriter, and musician.

Holly George-Warren

You will want a turntable and a stack of vinyl handy while reading Lloyd Sachs’s definitive music biography of the ‘King of Americana.’ This in-depth look at T Bone’s extensive body of work as a singer-songwriter, bandleader, sideman, producer, composer, and curator is a fine example of the kind of incisive music writing that helped fans originally discover ‘cult artists’ like Burnett.

Don Was

If one follows the trail of American roots music over the last three decades, the bread crumbs invariably lead to T Bone Burnett's studio. Retracing this path in T Bone Burnett: A Life in Pursuit, Lloyd Sachs unravels the tale of this great American artist in most compelling form.

Editorial Reviews

Sachs artfully weaves together news clips and original interviews to create a valuable context for the musician-producer’s work.

Texas Monthly

In telling this story, Sachs has done roots music a great turn, in fine style.

Songlines Magazine

A Life in Pursuit is the first bio of the now 68-year-old American and, smartly, author Sachs understands going in that Burnett's story is that of the music he's touched. . . . Rarely has a music biography been this jam-packed with names of artists and the records they've made—Burnett's footprint is enormous and the minutiae of that maze-like career is recounted expansively here. . . . Sachs has created what will likely remain a definitive account.

MOJO

Sachs’ fine book is a welcome addition to the living history of American music and a delightful read.

 

Booklist

"Sachs’ fine book is a welcome addition to the living history of American music and a delightful read.
"

Booklist

★ 10/15/2016
Record producer, singer/songwriter, and film and television soundtrack designer Burnett's work has influenced and in some ways defined American music in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Longtime popular music critic Sachs, whose outstanding work in the alt-country magazine No Depression deserves its own volume, tells Burnett's story and deftly analyzes his output in this work. The account is filled with such Burnett milestones as his Grammy Award-winning soundtrack for the Coen Brothers film O Brother, Where Art Thou? and collaborations with Jakob Dylan, Bob Dylan, Los Lobos, Sam Phillips, and Counting Crows. Written without Burnett's participation, the book is nonetheless authoritative. Appendixes annotating his frequent collaborators and a select discography are invaluable. Sachs's coverage of Burnett's film and television work details his methods and astutely evaluates his achievements in these media. A particular highlight is the author's consideration of his subject's contributions to the HBO series True Detective. VERDICT A much-needed critical biography of an influential artist by a superior critic of the genre.—John Frank, Los Angeles P.L.

Library Journal

2016-07-31
An exploration of a musical polyglot.Former Chicago Sun-Times music columnist and No Depression senior editor Sachs (American Country: Bluegrass, Honky-Tonk, and Crossover Sounds, 2012) views his subject as a low-profile yet indispensable innovator within a vital American idiom. As he writes, “the title ‘record producer’ can contain [Burnett] no more than ‘film director’ could contain Orson Welles.” The privacy-minded Burnett, while friendly with the author, declined to participate in a project that Sachs describes as a “critical appreciation of his extensive body of work as an artist and producer,” so he relies on research, earlier discussions, and interviews with collaborators. Burnett was born in 1948 in Fort Worth, Texas, raised by “happy-go-lucky types” who encouraged his passions. Upon graduating high school, he purchased a crude recording studio and helped make a “lost classic” LP of underground rock, confirming his “ambition and restless creativity.” After moving to Los Angeles, he was soon drafted into Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue; though he disliked the spotlight, the touring experience “instilled deep community values in Burnett.” He also became devoted to countercultural Christianity, explored in three 1970s albums with the Alpha Band, which won acclaim but not sales. Simultaneously, Burnett developed a reputation among aspiring musicians as a bold, exacting producer, which led to success in the 1980s for artists like Los Lobos, Peter Case, and the BoDeans. Burnett pursued collaborative relationships with iconoclasts like Sam Shepard and Elvis Costello, but periodic solo efforts underperformed. As he told Sachs about one acclaimed effort, “I was writing about self-deception and deceiving myself while I was doing it.” Burnett then transformed the popularity of film soundtracks through his work with the Coen Brothers, adding depth (and profitability) to their “surrealistic vision.” Sachs writes clearly and confidently about music production and the industry, and he ably captures the personalities and sometimes-contentious viewpoints of Burnett and his circle. However, the focus on Burnett’s role as a top-shelf producer makes the perspective feel slightly narrow. Intriguing, slightly impersonal catalog of a soulful mastermind’s accomplishments.

Kirkus Review