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One Man's Blues: The Life and Music of Mose Allison
Traces the life of blues musician Mose Allison from his upbringing in Mississippi through his long singing career.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 28, 2022
This is really a great book and Patti Jones does a wonderful job of telling the story of Mose's life in such a way that it helps to inform even an avid fan (me) more about his music than I could get from it's constant place in my rotation.
Mose's story is a good one, though not in the way some would expect to hear about a musician. His story isn't a tour through drugs and alcohol and obsession but hard work and dedication to following one discipline through to perfection. I find it more inspiring than reading about someone's rise from the depths of chemical hell. Think about it this way: here's someone who would always have had the chance to walk away. He always would have had the chance to be a regular 9-5 dude. Someone like Mose could've walked away at any tough moment except it would be a compromise and one to regret. Of course Mose couldn't have done so, but the very banal normalcy of his non-musical life has it's own beauty and inspires the reader not to be defined by job or degree or whatever institutional conference they've earned/achieved thus far but, instead, by their passions.
Mose's story is a good one, though not in the way some would expect to hear about a musician. His story isn't a tour through drugs and alcohol and obsession but hard work and dedication to following one discipline through to perfection. I find it more inspiring than reading about someone's rise from the depths of chemical hell. Think about it this way: here's someone who would always have had the chance to walk away. He always would have had the chance to be a regular 9-5 dude. Someone like Mose could've walked away at any tough moment except it would be a compromise and one to regret. Of course Mose couldn't have done so, but the very banal normalcy of his non-musical life has it's own beauty and inspires the reader not to be defined by job or degree or whatever institutional conference they've earned/achieved thus far but, instead, by their passions.
March 7, 2019
Required reading for the diehard, dedicated fan. Mose was/is "the man"!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews