Midnight at the Barrelhouse: The Johnny Otis Story Review

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(More customer reviews)This thoughtfully written, carefully constructed and multi disciplinary work is the definitive biography of a 20th century musical polymath. An artist, visionary and activist whose contributions to American Music place him high among the ranks of our most important and treasured cultural innovators. Lipstiz chronicles Johnny Otis' more then 60 year career, showing how some of the greatest triumphs of that career were often played out behind the scenes, with Johnny as a producer, mentor and cultivator of other performers talents. He further portrays the life of John Otis as a "Life well lived" looking beyond his significant performing and recording achievements to documenting the community based activism, print, pulpit and broadcast punditry that Johnny's sensitivity and his sense of justice forced him to undertake, often at the expense of his own musical carer. The book rightfully extols Mr. Otis' work as a cultivator of new talent and an angry champion of those many forgotten and shamefully discarded (black) creators of american popular music.
Though this book is no mere biography. It is an examination of 20th Century American Society. A look at how culture, race and economy have been negotiated thru and transformed by, African Americans. In that way it is an analysis similar to the work of Ken Burns but orders of magnitude deeper, more thoughtful, less saccharin and more damming then Mr. Burns' work.
Midnight at the Barrelhouse will explain much to any american who asks, how did we get here, and it should be required reading for those many insular, self absorbed "artist" who populate todays "music industry"

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Considered by many to be the godfather of R&B, Johnny Otis—musician, producer, artist, entrepreneur, pastor, disc jockey, writer, and tireless fighter for racial equality—has had a remarkable life by any measure. In this first biography of Otis, George Lipsitz tells the largely unknown story of a towering figure in the history of African American music and culture who was, by his own description, "black by persuasion."