My Country Roots: MP3 Handbook

I'm back in cyberspace...hope you have all been keeping well while I've been away! One of the books I perused over my vacation is my friend Carter Little's (written with Alice Randall & Courtney Little) newly published My Country Roots: The Ultimate MP3 Guide to America's Original Outsider Music.

If you're at all into country music, you'll get a kick out of this book. It's a quirky, fun collection of 100 pre-designed playlists for your mp3. Playlists have roughly 11 songs each, and include:

Honky Tonk Angels (with Loretta Lynn's I'm a Honky Tonk Girl)

Ramblers (with Johnny Cash's version of one of my favorites--Wayfaring Stranger)

Rednecks (with Gillian Welch's Red Clay Halo)

Love & Money (with Linda Ronstadt's version of Silver Threads and Golden Needles)

Cheating (with Hank Williams' classic, Your Cheating Heart)

Coffee, Cigarrettes, & Sugar (with Doc & Merle Watson's fun novelty piece Smoke Smoke Smoke)

Simple Wisdom (with Lee Ann Womack's tearjerker, I Hope You Dance)

As George Jones writes in the forward to this book:

There is nothing in the world like country music. A great country song will tear your heart out. Country songs go with you to work, sit with you when you're crying, slide in the room when you're loving, and hang around in your heart when the loving leaves. A great country record can help turn a body on and will help hold a life together when everything falls apart.

My Country Roots is a fun introduction to country music, and for country fans, I'm pretty sure you won't be able to stop yourself from adding your favorites to the playlists and creating your own!