| NEW
IN PAPER
Maxine Brown's website
Check
out Rick Bass's Fall novel, Nashville
Chrome, about Maxine and the Browns.
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Looking
Back to See
A Country Music Memoir
Maxine Brown
Foreword by Tom T. Hall
Revealing, entertaining window
on the music of the ’50s and ’60s
Maxine
Brown: Featured Artist of the Month (Oxford American)
Click
here to read the interview and listen to songs from The
Browns.
“Looking Back to See is a good book. It touches
my heart to hear her story and to think back to my boyhood.
Her story is real.”
—Eddy Arnold, legendary music star
“Fascinating.
. . . She’s warm, honest, gossipy, and outrageously
funny. . . . Maxine wasn’t just present at the birth
of rock ‘n’ roll, she was one of its midwives.”
—Edward Morris, former country music
editor of Billboard
“An
irreplaceable narrative by a participant in the golden age
of country and ‘hillbilly’ music who witnessed
and made its history.”
—Charles McGovern, former curator of
twentieth century popular culture at the Smithsonian’s
National Museum of American History
“The
Browns became leading exponents of what was then developing
as the ‘Nashville Sound.’ That sound was making
musical history and increasing the popularity of country music
worldwide. Maxine was right in the middle of it.”
—Ralph Emery, former host of TNN’s
Country Homecoming
The Browns—Maxine,
Bonnie, and Jim Ed—are a trio of siblings that had tremendous
success in the 1950s and 60s. Following in the tradition of
the best of such books, such as Loretta’s Lynn’s
Coal Miner’s Daughter, this memoir, told in
Maxine’s own plucky, spirited style, delves deeply into
the Browns’ remarkable past, beginning with a Depression-era
childhood in rural south Arkansas. From it emerged a duo,
Maxine and Jim Ed, and in 1954 they had a Top Ten hit with
“Looking Back to See.” Sister Bonnie later joined
them, and strengthened by shared experience they sang their
way on to Little Rock’s Barnyard Frolic in
1952, and were soon regulars on the well-known Louisiana
Hayride. They would eventually help a young Elvis Presley
get started on the show and toured with him as their opening
act, and it wasn’t long before he became a close friend
of the family. Other hits followed, including “I Take
the Chance” and “I Heard the Bluebirds Sing.”
Early mismanagement
(which Maxine describes quite graphically in her own gutsy
style) couldn’t prevent the Browns’ careers from
soaring. The group began a long relationship with RCA, and
with Chet Atkins, and later joined the Grand Ole Opry cast.
In 1959 their rendition of Edith Piaf’s song, “The
Three Bells” not only went to the top of the country
charts but spent weeks at number one on the pop charts, and
led to appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show and American Bandstand.
A vocal group without
peer, The Browns were central artists in the changing sound
of country and American popular music at mid-century. They
were part of major changes in the entertainment business and
American culture, participated in the folk music movement
in the ‘60’s, and saw the steady birth of rock
‘n’ roll up close as they worked with Presley
and others. Illustrated with many never-before-published photographs,
Looking Back to See is a remarkable story told here
for the first time.
photo
album
January
6 x 9, 359 pages, 58 photographs,
discography, hits and awards, glossary, index
$19.95 paper
ISBN 978-1-55728-934-6
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