The folk and roots reference shelf

This shelf is the working bibliography for the rest of the site. It is read by section rather than cover to cover. Each entry is short on purpose; the longer essays live elsewhere on the journal and link back to the shelf as needed.

The aim is to keep a usable list, not a comprehensive one. A reference shelf that tries to include everything ends up unread. A shelf of fifty carefully chosen items, that points to a hundred more by implication, is more useful in practice.

The records

A short standing list of records that the rest of the site quotes from most often.

• The Band, Music From Big Pink (1968) and The Band (1969). The pair to read first.
• Bob Dylan, John Wesley Harding (1967), Nashville Skyline (1969), Blood on the Tracks (1975), and Desire (1976).
• Neil Young, Harvest (1972), On the Beach (1974), Comes a Time (1978).
• Gram Parsons, GP (1973) and Grievous Angel (1974). Read the Grievous Angel piece afterwards.
• The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Gilded Palace of Sin (1969).
• Emmylou Harris, Pieces of the Sky (1975), Elite Hotel (1975).
• Townes Van Zandt, Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas (1977).
• John Prine, John Prine (1971), Sweet Revenge (1973).
• Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska (1982). Pair with Bruce Springsteen Goes Twang.
• Lucinda Williams, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (1998).
• Gillian Welch, Time (The Revelator) (2001).
• Sandy Denny, Sandy (1972). The British folk-revival tail belongs on this shelf.

A short note: this list omits any record I have not actually played enough times to recommend. It is not exhaustive on purpose.

The films and television

Films and television footage referenced often by the editorial pages.

• Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution (1968). Long reading on the site.
• Nashville (1975), Robert Altman. Pair with the Ronee Blakley interview.
• Heartworn Highways (1976). Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark on screen.
• The Last Waltz (1978).
• Greaser's Palace (1972). The site's piece on it is a short, fond reading.
• Midnight Cowboy (1969). The site's soundtrack piece sits next to it.
• No Direction Home (2005), Scorsese on Dylan.

For television, the Dylan-on-Quest segment that the Movie Lounge piece treats is short and worth tracking down on its own.

The books

Books that the writing on this site quietly assumes the reader has either read or might.

• Greil Marcus, Mystery Train.
• Peter Guralnick, Lost Highway, Sweet Soul Music, the two-volume Elvis biography.
• Robert Hilburn, Johnny Cash: The Life. Pair with the Cash auction items piece.
• Levon Helm, This Wheel's on Fire.
• Patrick Humphries, The Many Lives of Tom Waits.
• Clinton Heylin, No More Sad Refrains: The Life and Times of Sandy Denny.
• Sid Griffin, Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes.

Two of these are uneven. Mystery Train in particular is a book that is interesting in part because it is wrong about a few things in confident voice. The shelf includes it for the writing rather than for the verdict.

The archives and reference works

A few public reference points that the editorial pages on the site link to honestly. The list is short on purpose.

• The Library of Congress music collection for older recordings, field documentation, and oral history. The deeper you go, the more useful it gets.
• The Smithsonian Folkways catalogue, which is treated separately on the American roots music primer page.
• The Discogs database, which is treated separately on the collecting vinyl field notes page.

The Library of Congress link is the one I'd point a reader to first if they had never spent serious time inside a music archive. It is not curated in the way streaming platforms are; that is the point.

The radio and podcast tail

Two formats the rest of the site does not quote from often, and that are worth a small mention.

• Long-running music documentary radio. The BBC Radio 2 documentary tradition, the Sound Opinions back catalogue, and a handful of US public radio shows have produced documentary work that holds up the same way the books in this shelf do.
• Podcasts that sit closer to oral history than to interview-circuit promotion. The few that survive past their first three years tend to be the ones worth listening to.

These are mentioned here so that a reader looking for an audio companion to the shelf has a starting direction.

Reading routes through the shelf

Three short suggested routes.

1. The Band, top to bottom. Start with Music From Big Pink, read What Would Levon Helm Do, then the Levon Helm Rambling on the Roots piece, then The Band, then The Band Goes Twang.
2. Gram Parsons in three steps. The Gilded Palace of Sin, then the Joshua Tree picture book, then The Return of the Grievous Angel.
3. Dylan country. John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline, then Dylan Goes Twang Part Three, then Blood on the Tracks, then the Bob Dylan on Quest piece.

The shelf grows slowly. New entries get added when the editorial pages start to lean on a record or film often enough that it deserves its own line in the bibliography.

Where to go next

If this is the first reference page you have read, the natural next step is the American roots music primer. It is the entry essay that pairs with this shelf. Together they form the orientation pair for the Guides section.