Always a Song is a collection of stories from singer and songwriter Ellen Harper-folk matriarch and mother to the Grammy-winning musician Ben Harper. Harper shares vivid memories of growing up in Los Angeles through the 1960s among famous and small-town musicians, raising Ben, and the historic Folk Music Center. This beautifully written memoir includes stories of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, The New Lost City Ramblers, Doc Watson, and many more.
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"This book is a love song and at times a blues song; but always a folk song of community, compassion and justice. Full of love of family and love of music, a most fertile ground for sowing seeds of human harmony. Each chapter unfolds like another Child Ballad to the heartbeat of this remarkable woman, Ellen Harper. Indeed, there is always hope as long as we keep on singing." -JOHN YORK, former bassist for The Byrds—-"
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I read this book in a weekend, riveted by the intimacy and the honesty of Ellen's narrative. Always a Song is an eloquent, searching account of a life lived for truth, love, and music." -JACKSON BROWNE—-
Ellen Harper is folk music royalty, growing up with Pete Seeger and Joan Baez around the dinner table. Her story is both heartrending and a pleasure to read." -ROGER MCGUINN, Leader of the Byrds—-
Ellen Harper's unique vantage as red-diaper baby, folk connector, counterculture witness, and maven of family and community is matched by her memory, wit, and compassion." -JONATHAN LETHEM, New York Times bestselling author of Chronic City and Motherless Brooklyn—-
A bridge back to the world I remember as a child of folkies, beatniks, free lovers, poets, and intellectuals-all fighting for a new way of life-Harper's memoir is of a wonderful complicated family, the story of a woman, the story of America." -BOB FORREST, lead vocalist for Thelonious Monster and The Bicycle Thief—-
Ellen Harper's extraordinary story is revelatory, inspiring, and compulsively readable. Harper's account of fighting the establishment in the name of art and equality is required reading-a songbook of protest, of freedom, of revolution and resurgence." -BRET ANTHONY JOHNSTON, internationally bestselling author of Remember Me Like This—-
Truth-teller Ellen Harper writes through five generations of her multi-cultural family's odyssey of fighting to keep music real and powerful in American life. At times heartbreaking and humorous, but always inspiring and not to be missed by songwriters and singers, music fans, or anyone who likes a meaningful story." -PETER CHASE, Singer, Songwriter, Producer—-
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Janina Edwards, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, is a native of Chicago and a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts acting program. Her 2016 performance of Voice of Freedom was a finalist for the Audie Award.