Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
$25.00$25.00
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
$13.95$13.95
$3.99 delivery May 13 - 17
Ships from: midtownscholarbookstore Sold by: midtownscholarbookstore
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Audible sample Sample
I'm Just Dead, I'm Not Gone (American Made Music Series) Hardcover – March 23, 2017
Purchase options and add-ons
I'm Just Dead, I'm Not Gone chronicles Jim Dickinson's extraordinary life in the Memphis music scene of the fifties and sixties and how he went on to play with and produce a rich array of artists, including Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, Ry Cooder, Duane Allman, Arlo Guthrie, and Albert King. With verve and wit, Dickinson (1941–2009) describes his trip to Blind Lemon's grave on the Texas flatlands as a college student and how that encounter inspired his return to Memphis. Back home, he looked up Gus Cannon and Furry Lewis, began staging plays, cofounded what would become the annual Memphis Blues Festival, and started recording.
The blues, Elvis, and early rock 'n' roll compelled Dickinson to reject racial barriers and spurred his contributions to the Memphis music and experimental art scene. He explains how the family yardman, WDIA, Dewey Phillips, Furry Lewis, Will Shade, and Howlin' Wolf shaped him and recounts how he went on to learn his craft at Sun, Ardent, American, Muscle Shoals, and Criteria studios from master producers Sam Phillips, John Fry, Chips Moman, and Jerry Wexler.
Dickinson is a member of the Mississippi Music Hall of Fame and an inaugural inductee of the Memphis Music Hall of Fame. He has received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Engineering and Production from the Americana Music Association, a Brass Note on the Beale Street Walk of Fame in Memphis, and a Heritage Marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail. This memoir recounts a love affair with Memphis, the blues, and rock 'n' roll through Dickinson's captivating blend of intelligence, humor, and candor.
- Print length288 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherUniversity Press of Mississippi
- Publication dateMarch 23, 2017
- Dimensions6.2 x 1 x 9.1 inches
- ISBN-101496810546
- ISBN-13978-1496810540
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now
Frequently bought together
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Editorial Reviews
Review
Named for his self-generated epitaph and detailing his life up to 1972 in the literary equivalent of his grinning trickster drawl, I’m Just Dead, I’m Not Gone details an essential chapter of rock and roll history. -- Tim Stegall ― Austin Chronicle
I’m Dead, I’m Not Gone is a deeply personal chronicle of the genesis and development of the Dickinson Family’s embrace of ‘primitive modernism,’ Jim’s term for ‘a modernized history of American Roots music painted in broad strokes and basic colors. -- Robert H. Cataliotti ― Living Blues, Aug. 2017
The information and insights that Dickinson’s story covey make for fascinating reading about a marvelous period in American music, but what really brings the book to life is the narrative voice that he constructs. -- Robert H. Cataliotti ― Living Blues, Aug. 2017
Despite the ups and downs, in I’m Just Dead, I’m Not Gone, Dickinson humorously reveals the secrets to finesse and savor a satisfying life following musical passions. -- Dematt Harkins ― Clarion-Ledger
Jim Dickinson’s stories are healing. -- Jana Hoops ― Clarion-Ledger
Though fundamentally a memoir of Dickinson's life, the book is also one of the more essential, and certainly most entertaining, works of history documenting the Memphis music scene's glory years from the 1950s through the 1970s. A musical philosopher and cultural historian, Dickinson was a natural raconteur in person, and his storytelling gifts translate remarkably well across the book's nearly 250 pages documenting his life. -- Bob Mehr ― The Commercial Appeal
Get ready to move again, because your road map is Jim Dickinson’s long-awaited memoir I’m Just Dead, I’m Not Gone (University Press of Mississippi; with Ernest Suarez), and it is a Benzedrine-fueled romp with one hell of a soundtrack. . . . Dickinson’s book is history of white-boy blues, folk, and rock-and roll in Memphis. -- Richard Alley ― Memphis Flyer
Jim Dickinson communicated in parables. Stories were his tools and weapons--for teaching, entertaining, inspiring, for offending and defending. He drew not just from his musical experiences but all experiences, and his lessons, ideas, and suggestions, even if they were about a song, were about much more than music. Jim may be dead, but he ain't gone--and this collection of his life's stories ensures that those who never knew him can yet experience him. Insightful, hilarious, emotional, Jim writes the way he played: from his heart, through his soul, to the gut. -- Robert Gordon
An endlessly fascinating ride with one of the greatest artists the South ever produced. Jim Dickinson drew upon everyone from Faulkner to Furry Lewis to make his own unique sound and then share it with the world. These pages you hold in your hands are the very personal tale of that incredible journey. Above all else, Dickinson was a master storyteller. I'm Just Dead, I'm Not Gone is a trip into the depths and soul of Americana. I was mesmerized and inspired by Dickinson's final gift. -- Ace Atkins
Jim Dickinson was both student and creator of the finest in American music. As a musician and singer, he brought out the best in the songs he served. As a producer, he brought out the best in his artists. From his early work singing and playing at Sun Records, to producing brilliant and influential rock bands like Big Star and the Replacements, Jim left an undeniable mark on rock 'n' roll and roots music in a time when the two weren't so easily separated. A lot of the music I love simply wouldn't exist without Jim's legendary work. -- Jason Isbell, two-time Grammy winner
Jim Dickinson was the great instigator of rock 'n' roll. From the Rolling Stones to the Replacements, from Alex Chilton to Aretha, his fingerprints are on some of the twentieth century's most singular recordings. But who knew that Dickinson, one of music's most mind-blowing raconteurs, was also an extraordinary writer. In his memoir, I'm Just Dead, I'm Not Gone, Dickinson's prose leaps from the page, packing as much emotional punch as his piano licks on 'Wild Horses.' His eye for detail and his acute observations on his Chicago childhood, his coming of age in Memphis and Waco (as a Baylor student), and his early music career in Tennessee, Miami, and L.A., provide a stunning portrait of a seeker's odyssey in 1950s and '60s America. -- Holly George-Warren, author of A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton, From Box Tops to Big Star to Backdoor Man
Review
Book Description
About the Author
Ernest Suarez is the David M. O’Connell Professor of English at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, and executive director of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers. He was a Senior Fulbright Lecturer in Spain and China and was named the Carnegie Foundation Professor of the Yearfor the District of Columbia. He has published widely on southern literature, poetry, and music.
Product details
- Publisher : University Press of Mississippi; 1st edition (March 23, 2017)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 288 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1496810546
- ISBN-13 : 978-1496810540
- Item Weight : 1.25 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.2 x 1 x 9.1 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,133,789 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,886 in Popular Culture in Social Sciences
- #19,691 in U.S. State & Local History
- #22,504 in Arts & Literature Biographies
- Customer Reviews:
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
It's a fascinating trip through growing up in Memphis in the 50's through performing and producing music into the early 70's.
Yes, there's a lot of drugs and alcohol involved, but even those stories are fascinating in Dickinson's recounting and are necessary to understanding the milieu of rock, soul, and blues music of the era.
I wish the book continued through the balance of his life, but the epilogue does include the success of his sons, Cody and Luther, with their band the North Mississippi Allstars in the 2010's.
Unlike a number of contemporary musical biographies, there's an index, which I greatly appreciated.
of this manuscript. In the book Jim has taken the approach to highlight significant impacts in his life by telling a story about people and
events that he came in contact with. Jim also describes negative and positive influences that shaped him into the person that we all knew
as well as the influences on the music that he loved and the music that he played.
It is written from a personal perspective which make the writings more revealing as well as having a larger impact on the reader. I will be
sorry when I complete the book and put it down. It will give me an opportunity to say goodbye to Jim Dickinson..
I have been waiting for the publication of this volume since I read an excerpt from it in a journal of Southern culture three or four years ago and was delighted by the author's stylish writing about extraordinary events in his childhood. The book is a well-written autobiography with a distinctive, affable authorial voice, covering his first 30 years (1941–1972); it does not touch on his career after that. It fits right in with my interest in blues, R&B, rock-and-roll (1950s–1970s), and soul music and stands alongside my collection of books on these subjects by Peter Guralnick, Jim Gordon, Stanley Booth, Robert Palmer, and others.