Sound Bites: A Lifetime of Listening

A lifetime collection of interviews, essays, and reviews of music and the artists who create it.

During a conversation on Bob Edwards’ radio show some years back, longtime CBS News correspondent Mike Wallace indicated that he had forgotten most of the thousands of interviews he ever conducted. Several years before his death, Pete Seeger said that he could remember only a few dozen songs, if that, when he once knew hundreds. Ramblin’ Jack Elliot appeared on T.V. the other night and told the host, “You know why I’m sure I played the Newport Folk Festival? ‘Cause somebody just told me I was there.” Funny, and yet . . .

So before allowing his own memories to evaporate into the nether world of Proust’s lost time, music collector and author Tom Wilmeth wanted to commit some scenes to print while he still recalled them, and to collect some of his previously written articles on music.

The result is this magnificent book, a wonderful collection overflowing with Tom Wilmeth’s writings on music from 1969 to the present. It includes essays and reviews of concerts and recordings, memorials to departed artists, observations, interviews and so much more.