Tony Scherman

Tony Scherman is the author of Backbeat: Earl Palmer’s Story (Smithsonian; Da Capo paperback), about one of the fathers of rock ’n’ roll.

Articles by this Author

When Pop Turned the Art World Upside Down, February/March 2001 | Vol. 52, No. 1

Andy Warhol and friends oversaw the death of a centuries-old tradition and the birth of the postmodern.

A Neglected Classic Called "American Humor", December 1997 | Vol. 48, No. 8

The Omni-American, September 1996 | Vol. 47, No. 5

ALBERT MURRAY SEES AMERICAN CULTURE AS AN incandescent fusion of European, Yankee, frontier, and black. And he sees what he calls the “blues idiom” as the highest expression of that culture.

What is Jazz?, October 1995 | Vol. 46, No. 6

Wynton Marsalis believes that America is in danger of losing the truest mirror of our national identity. If that’s the case, we are at least fortunate that, today, jazz’s foremost performer is also its most eloquent advocate.

Country, November 1994 | Vol. 45, No. 7

It’s the fastest-growing music in America. It’s a three-billion-dollar-plus industry. Cable stations devoted to it reach 62,000,000 homes. And yet, says one passionate follower of country music past and present, its story is over.

The Very Best Country-music Albums, November 1994 | Vol. 45, No. 7

A Personal Choice

“He Is the Original Rock’n’Roll Guy”, July/August 1991 | Vol. 42, No. 4

How Robert Johnson showed the way to Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, and a whole generation of musicians

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Kai Bird is a historian and Executive Director of Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York. He is best known for writing about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, US-Middle East relations and biographies of political figures. Bird is the author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, a New York Times bestseller. His most recent book is The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.

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