Former Times pop music critic Robert Hilburn’s new  biography on Johnny Cash, “In Search of Johnny Cash,” will be published by Little, Brown and Co., the publisher of Peter Guralnick’s massive two-volume Elvis Presley biography, “Last Train to Memphis” and “Careless Love,” and Keith Richards’ recent autobiography, “Life.”

Hilburn’s book will cover Cash’s artistic career and his turbulent life, from his days growing up in Arkansas to becoming one of the true icons of 20th century popular music.

“Of the many great rock pioneers in the 1950s,” Hilburn says, “Cash was the only one who approached his music as more than hits for the jukebox. He wanted his music to inspire and uplift people. In that goal, he was the crucial link between Woody Guthrie’s music of social idealism and commentary in the 1930s and 1940s and Bob Dylan’s music of revolution in the 1960s and beyond.

“Foreshadowing the stance of such landmark bands as the Beatles and U2, Cash recognized that he could use his music and fame to impact social attitudes, whether it was decrying the treatment of Native Americans or offering hope to others downtrodden by society,” Hilburn said by e-mail  Monday in describing his second book since leaving The Times five years ago after serving as pop music critic for 36 years.

His first, “Corn Flakes With John Lennon and Other Tales From a Rock 'n' Roll Life,” contained personal reflections on his experiences interviewing several key figures of the rock era, including Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Janis Joplin and U2 -- and Cash, whom he interviewed numerous times over four decades.  Hilburn also was the only reporter to accompany Cash at his historic 1968 performance at Folsom Prison.

“I want to treat Cash with the critical eye and historical scholarship that he deserves as one of the major socio-cultural figures in America during the 20th century,” Hilburn told Pop & Hiss. “Despite his enormous popularity, I think he was a more important and influential artist and a more complex, often troubled person than even his biggest fans realized.

“His life was often a struggle between his artistry and his addiction -- and ultimately ... each contributed to the other,” Hilburn said. “But through Cash I want to also tell the story of the challenges and demands of artistry; how someone has to keep fighting for his vision -- against record company and/or public disinterest at times -- if he or she is to achieve something truly lasting."

Hilburn just signed the deal with Little, Brown and Co., following bidding by a number of other publishers, and is still researching and writing the book, so no publication date has been set. But he added, “It's absolutely the best place for me to be because the company is so respected in the publishing world -- and they do an especially good job with music books.”

-- Randy Lewis

Photo of Johnny Cash and Robert Hilburn (on Cash's left) at Folsom Prison in 1968. Credit: Jim Marshall.

 
Bob Dylan reportedly has signed a six-book deal with Simon & Schuster for two more volumes of his acclaimed “Chronicles, Vol. 1” autobiography, which was tied to his “Theme Time Radio Hour” program that ran for three years on Sirius XM radio and additional works, according to Crain’s New York Business.

A spokeswoman for Simon & Schuster, the publisher of the first installment in the projected multi-volume autobiography, said Thursday that the company had no comment on the report.

Crain’s credited the information to “several industry insiders” and said the deal was put together by Dylan's literary agent, Andrew Wylie. No monetary figure was specified in the report, nor any proposed release dates of new books from Dylan.

“Chronicles” drew praise from critics, fans and peers for its impressionistic, time-hopping structure. “Theme Time Radio Hour” tapped Dylan’s deep knowledge of an array of pop music genres as well as his droll sense of humor during 100 episodes recorded over the show’s run.

Updated Jan. 21 at 11:07 a.m.: In response to an inquiry from Pop & Hiss, a source close to Dylan says there is "nothing to announce. [There is] a grain of truth in the Internet rumors, in that a variety of book projects are always being discussed, but no deal like that has been made."

-- Randy Lewis

Photo: Bob Dylan at last summer's Hop Farm Festival in England. Credit: Gareth Fuller / Associated Press

The Ray Charles Foundation has filed a lawsuit charging the late soul singer’s eldest son, Ray Charles Robinson Jr., with copyright infringement stemming from the use of a photograph and several of Charles’ songs in the son’s recent book “You Don’t Know Me: Reflections of My Father,  Ray Charles.”

The Foundation, which Charles assigned as the owner of his copyrights and intellectual property rights upon his death in 2004, alleges that Robinson’s book used a copyrighted photo, the titles and  lyrics of four of his songs without permission.

The action filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles seeks $150,000 for each copyright violation and also names as defendants the book’s publisher, Crown Publishing, and Crown’s parent company, Random House, and Robinson’s co-author, Mary Jane Ross. Random House officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

The dedication page of Robinson Jr.’s book, which was published in June, reads, in part, “To the memory of my father, Ray Charles Robinson, and all that you were to be and all that you dreamed you wanted to be. I love you come rain or come shine.”

-- Randy Lewis

One of the hottest properties making the rounds at that annual festival of literary wheeling and dealing, the Frankfurt Book Fair, isn’t some tome by the hot young author du jour. It’s a hard-to-classify work of nonfiction by a veteran rock star. Call it a book oddity.

To hear it from reports coming out of Frankfurt over the last four days, David Bowie’s mysterious secret project, “Bowie: Object,” has been generating a hive of buzz. Word of the book first leaked on the Publishers Weekly website last week, forcing the Thin White Duke to address its existence on davidbowie.com.

“We still don’t want to give too much away just yet, suffice to say that David Bowie has been working on a book called ‘Bowie: Object,’ ” a post on the site reads.

 

At its most elemental, the vocoder is an instrument of deception. A mode for veiled communication -- slang in binary code. The U.S and Russian militaries used it to compress and encrypt speech to elude enemy interception, but it soon acquired a sci-fi and funk addiction.

Kraftwerk re-conceived it for android enhancement -- to create skinny-tied soundtracks for transcontinental cosmopolitanism. Italy’s Giorgio Moroder sluiced its artificial glow through the shag caterpillar on his upper lip. Rammellzee didn’t need it. His language of thought and theories of linguistic warfare boasted their own encryptions. But he deployed it anyway, with such thrust that it nearly induced vomiting.

Afrika Bambaataa used it to align the planets, the Zulu Nation, uptown and downtown NYC, and even adolescents in North Carolina, who applied to Tommy Boy Records’ Future Beat Alliance, a confederacy covalently bonded through its “propagation of the funk.”

A quarter century later, Dave Tompkins, one of those electro-funk war babies, has written “How to Wreck a Nice Beach,” a megillah of maniacs, militarists and disco mustaches. It is the only book you will read in this lifetime with epigraphs from "The Simpsons" and Poison Clan, ruminations on Vincent Price imitating Oscar Wilde and oblique “Arrested Development” references. It’s unquestionably brilliant, not only one of the best music books of the year, but also one of the best music books ever written.

A few days before Christmas, Harper Teen released the young-adult novel "The Vinyl Princess." While Pop & Hiss doesn't cover the intersection of literature and music nearly as much as we should, "The Vinyl Princess" instantly caught our attention -- and not just because of the striking cover. Yvonne Prinz, the book's author, was one of the founders of Amoeba Music, and her retail experience is reflected heavily in the book. Issues facing indie retailers even crop up in the novel, although they're filtered through a teenage lens. Here is an extended version of a story that will run in Friday's Calendar section. Prinz discussed the book, and shared some of Amoeba's plans for 2010.

Young-adult novel “The Vinyl Princess” doesn’t sugarcoat its description of the independent record store. Many of the regulars? “A ragtag group of desperadoes.” The staff? “Underpaid, overworked” and a “lion’s share of the craziest people in the universe.”

And when the book’s main character, the 16-year-old, vinyl-obsessed Allie, notes that she sometimes comes home from her gig at the fictional Bob and Bob Records smelling “like an octogenarian’s closet,” the appeal of buying music online seems apparent.

Yet Harper Teen’s “The Vinyl Princess” was written by one of the most ardent supporters of indie retail, who also happens to be one of the industry’s biggest success stories. Twenty years ago, Yvonne Prinz and her husband, Dave, helped found Amoeba Music in Berkeley, the real-life store that still stands on the same real-life street, Telegraph Avenue, and that inspired the fictional Bob and Bob Records.

Prinz, who also has penned three books in the Raincoast Books’ Clare tween novel series — “Still There, Clare,” “Not Fair, Clare” and “Double Dare Clare” — drew on her first-hand experiences for the novel, a teen take on “High Fidelity” that offers a loving portrait of the indie outlet, described early in the book as a “house of worship.” The remaining customers are split between the weirdos and the diehards, but all are looking for a place to “find community.”

“It’s a church,” said Prinz, speaking by phone from her home outside Berkeley. “You meet people who never have been in a record store, and you meet people who have never left a record store.”

Sales at Bob and Bob Records aren’t on the level of those at Amoeba, one of the country’s most successful independent outlets, and Allie lives in constant fear that the store’s curmudgeon of an owner will call it quits. It’s a storyline that will sound hauntingly familiar to music fans.

Over the last several years, the physical retail market for music has been vastly diminished, as evidenced by the closing of Tower Records, the Virgin Megastore and key local shops such as Rhino Westwood and Aron’s Records.

In Allie, Prinz has a character facing many of the same issues as the retail store owner. A vinyl-obsessed junkie with a love with music history, she views Wal-Mart with skepticism, and iPods are tools for “tinny-sounding crap.” Yet it’s not spoiling the book to reveal that Allie must learn that she “can’t hide from the world in a record store,” and starts a blog with the hopes of seeking out other vinyl geeks.

Likewise, Amoeba Music will this year take its boldest stride yet into the online world, launching a digital download store this spring or summer. Amoeba will join the likes of Other Music in New York and ThinkIndie.com, a digital outlet that represents a consortium of the nation’s top indie stores, including Fingerprints in Long Beach, as one of the few independent retail outlets trying to claim a slice of the digital marketplace.

“I think the indie music scene missed the boat on the whole MP3 scene, and for an obvious reason — no one wanted to embrace it,” Prinz said. “We were purists. We thought the brick-and-mortar record store would last forever. We were almost arrogant about it. Now, after spending years ignoring the whole thing, we thought we could approach it like we approach our stores. We can be purists, and collect everything an artist has done.”

The ever-upbeat shiny-headed sidekick and bandleader Paul Shaffer will be giving an intimate talk Wednesday at the Grammy Museum.

The pianist, who first made it big on "Saturday Night Live," will be speaking about his musical career, life working on that little late night show with David Letterman, as well as his new book, "We'll Be Here for the Rest of Our Lives: A Swingin' Showbiz Saga." Shaffer will take questions from the audience, perform a few songs, and sign copies of the book. Perhaps some current events will be addressed.

Shaffer's book is actually quite a delight. Lighthearted, funny, insightful and intentionally disjointed, Paul gracefully jumps from his early days playing classical pieces to the delight of his -- very hip -- parents while in Thunder Bay, Canada, to his more wild nights leading the Blues Brothers band from city to city.

After the jump peek into Shaffer's world as he explains meeting the poet laureate of rock 'n' roll, Bob Dylan. Turns out Mr. Zimmerman's agenda while being the musical act on the Letterman show was definitely not meeting the keyboardist.

The dirty little secret to "The Girls' Guide to Rocking" -- a book by music scribe Jessica Hopper, ostensibly for teen girls -- is that as a grown-up man or woman, you will learn something from every single page of this guide. Even if you've logged hard time in a studio and can tell the difference in tone between a Melody Maker and a Rickenbacker -- or hell, how to plug in your amp -- you might not know that Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen plays a mind-blowing five-neck checkerboard Hamer guitar. Or you may have simply forgotten. "The Girls' Guide to Rocking" is a sweet little trip back to the basics that'll reinvigorate your life-long crush on music -- the lore, the technique, the post-show stop at a diner after seeing Cat Power or PJ Harvey for the first time.

Hopper is perhaps best known for her Da Capo anthologized essay, "Emo: Where the Girls Aren't," a feisty bit of feminist J'accuse, but the Chicago-based writer is equally comfortable in the big sister role -- cool but all heart. On the cover, the book states it'll teach "how to start a band, book gigs and get rolling to rock stardom." And that's part of the fun of flipping through the bright pages, many of them with fetching illustrations in black and lime green. Whether you're a band virgin who vicariously lives through her heroes or an old hand who starts a band for every life stage, all fantasies are encouraged. Even in inarguable, indie-mom instructions like "do not book a tour that takes you through the mountains in the middle of winter," there is a hint of the adventure and mission of rock and roll. And let's not forget the swagger; as the former touring bassist definitively points out, swagger ain't a dude thing -- it's a rock thing.

Hopper will be stopping by our fair city Wednesday to put on the literary equivalent of a bang-up show. After she reads from her guide, the nearly all-female punk band Mika Miko will take to the stage -- at the San-Mo Public Library, not the Smell -- and will no doubt blow some hardcovers off of their crumbly old pages. Rip it up, ladies!

-- Margaret Wappler

Jessica Hopper and Mika Miko at the Santa Monica Public Library, Martin Luther King Jr. Auditorium, 601 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica. 2 p.m. Wednesday. Free. (310) 458-8600. Also, Hopper will read at Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Feliz. 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. Free. (323) 660-1175.

Photos: Handout art of Jessica Hopper (left) and Mika Miko

A conspiracy theory regarding rock legend Jimi Hendrix began making the Web rounds on Sunday, courtesy of former roadie James "Tappy" Wright.

He happens to have a book coming out next month, and in it he alleges that Michael Jeffery, Hendrix's manager, was responsible for the musician's death.

The Telegraph today has a story about a juicy passage from the book, in which Wright makes the claim that Jeffery confessed to murdering the star a year after Hendrix died in 1970. The book "Rock Roadie," doesn't have a release date yet, according to Amazon.com.

Rather than alert the authorities (police inquisitions are such a buzz kill), Wright clearly did the honorable thing of holding onto such information for nearly 40 years before using it to sell a book.

Well, Pop & Hiss is here to save you some cash in these hard economic times, so here's the gist: Jeffery was apparently trying to cash in on an insurance policy rather than risk Hendrix leaving him for another manager.

For every McDonald’s and Waffle House blighting sight lines, the old “weird America” still lurks if you look hard enough. Over the course of three trips and 2 1/2 months, Los Feliz residents Justin and Melissa Gage rambled through the Delta Blues Trail in search of the ghosts of Robert Johnson, Son House, and Skip James — from Memphis’ Peabody Hotel to the cotton fields and alluvial lowlands of Mississippi.

The offspring of this odyssey is “Memphis & The Delta Blues Trail: Great Destinations,” a travelogue published by The Countryman Press offering tips on the best sites, sounds and places to stay along the fabled route. In addition to running  Aquarium Drunkard — one of Los Angeles’ most popular and respected music blogs — Justin Gage hosts Sirius XM and Little Radio programs, promotes concerts and runs the Autumn Tone boutique imprint, fast becoming one of the city’s finest indie labels. A former travel editor of CitySearch, Melissa Gage currently works as a freelance writer and screenwriter.

Tonight the pair will host a reading/celebration at the new Stories Books in Echo Park, with acclaimed Autumn Tone act Le Switch on hand to play a set. In advance of the festivities, Pop and Hiss spoke to Justin Gage about his experiences on the road and the drinking etiquette of Southern roadhouses.

In 1998, when David Reyes and Tom Waldman first published their authoritative history of Chicano rock 'n' roll in Southern California, "Land of a Thousand Dances," their home state was in upheaval. The aftershocks of Proposition 187 (1994) were rattling California politics. Thousands of migrants pouring in from war-torn Central America were remaking the landscape of Latino L.A. And the rock en español movement was erupting, hinting at a potentially seismic shift in Latino cultural tectonics.

A decade later, Los Angeles has a Mexican-American mayor, Latino artists are increasingly visible in U.S. culture, and the "Latinization" of American life is occurring in practically every state. But one thing hasn't changed, the authors say. Most Chicano rock bands, despite their continuing creativity, remain marginal to the mainstream rock scene.

Beyond the rock crit-Rushmore of Greil Marcus, Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer and Robert Christgau, few music journalists ever achieve name recognition. But if fame followed facility, Barney Hoskyns wouldn’t need an introduction.

The former U.S. editor of venerable British rock magazine Mojo, and a longtime contributor to British Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Rolling Stone and veritably every British publication available for purchase at steep import rates, Hoskyns’ taut and elegant prose transcends genre limitations.

A longtime L.A. resident (since re-located back to his native London), Hoskyns is one of its preeminent chroniclers, penning several music histories revolving around the City of Angels. His recently reissued “Waiting for the Sun” ranks among the most comprehensive and compelling tomes ever penned about the metropolis.

A meticulous sonic survey from Charlie Parker to Cypress Hill, “Waiting” navigates the stark dichotomy between the town’s noirish underbelly and its sunshine-and-surf sales pitch, ultimately allowing for a greater understanding of both local history and the city, writ large.

Currently the editor of invaluable Internet rock writing archive, Rock’s Backpages, Hoskyns is in town this weekend to read from both “Waiting for the Sun” and his most recent effort, “Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits.” He talks to Pop & Hiss below.