Lauterbach spins the tale with enormous vitality and it's terribly fun to read. He masterfully explains the complex logistics of the entertainment industry, and studs the book with fascinating, little-known characters... The reader will finish with an overwhelming urge to turn up the volume. -- Kate Tuttle A well-researched valentine to a lost world of seedy con men, promoters and club owners, the power brokers and hustlers who made the 'circuitry spark.' -- Eddie Dean ...crucial to our understanding of late-20th-century pop music and all the more impressive for its exhaustive research. Preston Lauterbach's book-spirited, studious, surprising, occasionally hilarious-is absolutely persuasive on its subject. -- Stephen M. Deusner Opens new doors in pop-music scholarship as well as American (and African-American) cultural history. -- Michaelangelo Matos This sprawling, fascinating history drops readers into a chaotic, dangerous, utterly vanished world. -- John Repp [T]he genius prequel to an oft-told epic.
