Mark Ribowsky has 7 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 7 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 6 ratings. The most-rated is Hank.
Hank
Summary
After he died in the backseat of a Cadillac at the age of 29, Hank Williams - a frail, flawed man who had become country music's first real star - instantly morphed into its first tragic martyr. Having hit the heights with simple songs of despair, depression, and tainted love, he would, with that outlaw swagger, become in death a template for the rock generation to follow. Six decades later, Mark Ribowsky now weaves together the first fully realized biography of Hank Williams in a generation. Examining his music while also re-creating days and nights choked in booze and desperation, Ribowsky traces the miraculous rise of this music legend - from the dirt roads of rural Alabama to the now-immortal stage of the Grand Ole Opry and finally to a sad, lonely end on New Year's Day 1953. The result is an original work that promises to uncover the real Hank beneath the myths that have long enshrouded his legacy.
©2017 Mark Ribowsky (P)2016 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Whiskey Bottles and Brand-New Cars
Summary
This intimate story of Lynyrd Skynyrd tells how a band of lost souls and self-destructive misfits, with uncertain artistic objectives, clawed their way to the top of the rock 'n' roll world. Based on interviews with surviving band members, Whiskey Bottles and Brand-New Cars shares how lead singer and front man Ronnie Van Zant guided the band's hugely successful five-year run and, in the process, created not only a new country rock idiom, but a new Confederacy in constant conflict with old Southern totems and prejudices. Placing the music and personae of Skynyrd into a broad cultural context, this book gives a new perspective to a history of stage fights, motel room destructions, cunning business deals, and brilliant studio productions. It also offers a greater appreciation for a band whose legacy, in the aftermath of their last plane ride, has since descended into self-caricature.
©2015 Mark Ribowsky (P)2015 ListenUp Production, LLC
Signed, Sealed, and Delivered
Summary
The first definitive biography of music legend Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder's achievements as a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer are extraordinary. During a career that has spanned almost fifty years, he has earned more than 30 Top 10 hits, 26 Grammy Awards, and a place in both the Rock and Roll and Songwriter Halls of Fame - and he's not finished yet. On the verge of turning 60, he is still composing, still touring, and still attracting dedicated fans around the world. For the first time, Signed, Sealed, and Delivered takes an in-depth look at Stevie Wonder's life and his evolution from kid-soul pop star into a mature artist whose music helped lay the groundwork for the evolution of hip hop and rap. Explores the life, achievements, and influence of one of America's biggest musical icons, set against the history of Motown and the last 50 years of popular music. Based on extensive interviews with Motown producers, music executives, songwriters, and musicians, including founding Temptation Otis Williams, Mickey Stevenson, surviving Funk Brother Eddie Willis, synthesizer genius Malcolm Cecil, guitar legend Michael Sembello, and many others. Traces Stevie's personal and musical development through the decades, from the early 1960s R&B of "Fingertips" to the social and political themes of "Living for the City" and other 1970s classics, through periods of musical and personal confusion, uncertainty, and, later, renewal. Listen to Signed, Sealed, and Delivered to explore the life and work of one of pop music's most compelling masters of invention.
©2010 Mark Ribowsky (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Ain't Too Proud to Beg
Summary
The first and only definitive biography of legendary Motown group, the Temptations... The Temptations are an incomparable soul group, with dozens of chart-topping hits such as "My Girl" and "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone". From the sharp suits, stylish choreography, and distinctive vocals that epitomized their onstage triumphs to the personal failings and psycho-dramas that played out behind the scenes, Ain't Too Proud to Beg tells the complete story of this most popular - and tragic - of all Motown super groups. Based on in-depth research and interviews with founding Temptations member Otis Williams and many others, the book reveals the highly individual, even mutually antagonistic, nature of the group's members. Venturing beyond the money and the fame, it shares the compelling tale of these sometime allies, sometime rivals and reveals the unique dynamic of push and pull and give and take that resulted in musical genius. The first book to tell the whole story of Motown's greatest group, with all-new interviews and previously undiscovered sources and photographs Gives the last word on enduring Motown mysteries, including the deaths of Paul Williams and David Ruffin and the truth behind Ruffin's tumultuous romance with Tammi Terrell Reveals the secret "can't miss" formula behind the Temptations' 37 chart hits Draws on more than 100 interviews with the group's associates, industry figures, family members, and most importantly, founding Temptation Otis Williams. Ain't Too Proud to Beg takes a cohesive and penetrating look at the life and enduring legacy of one of the greatest groups in popular music. It is essential reading for fans of the Temptations, music lovers, and anyone interested in the history of American popular culture over the last 50 years.
©2010 Mark Ribowsky (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
The Last Cowboy
Summary
As the coach during professional football’s most storied era, Tom Landry transformed the gridiron from a no-holds-barred battlefield to the highly-technical chess match it is today. With his trademark fedora and stoic facade, he was a man of faith and few words, for 29 years guiding “America’s Team” from laughingstock to well-oiled machine, with an unprecedented twenty consecutive winning seasons and two Super Bowl titles. Now, more than a decade after Landry’s death, acclaimed biographer Mark Ribowsky takes a fresh look at this misunderstood legend, telling us as much about our country’s obsession with football as about Landry himself, the likes of whom we’ll never see again.
©2014 Mark Ribowsky (P)2014 Recorded Books
Dreams to Remember
Summary
When he died suddenly at the age of 26, Otis Redding (1941-1967) had already become the conscience of a new kind of music. Sure, Berry Gordy might have built the first black-owned music empire at Motown, but Redding was doing something as historic: mainstreaming black music within the whitest bastions of the post-Confederate south. As a result, the Redding story - still largely untold - is one of great conquest but, sadly, grand tragedy. Now, in this transformative work, Mark Ribowsky contextualizes Redding's life within the larger cultural movements of his era, whisking us from the "sinful" clubs of Macon to the trendsetting studios in Memphis and, finally, to the pulsating stage of the Monterey Music Festival where, in a single set, Redding immortalized himself as "soul legend". What emerges in Dreams to Remember is not only a triumph of music history, but also a reclamation of a visionary who would come to define an entire era.
©2015 Mark Ribowsky. Recorded by arrangement with W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. (P)2015 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Shula
Summary
Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1997, Don Shula remains the winningest coach of all time with 347 career victories and the only undefeated season in NFL history. But before he became the architect of the Dolphins dynasty, Shula was a hardworking kid selling fish on the banks of Lake Erie. As acclaimed sports biographer Mark Ribowsky shows, Shula met serious resistance at home when he asked to play high school football, but when his parents finally relented, they discovered that their son had an unmatched mind for the game's strategy and a stomach for its brutality. With rugged determination, the jut-jawed Shula started as a defensive back in the 1950s, later beginning his 32-year coaching career as the then-youngest coach ever with the Baltimore Colts. The Colts had several successful years, but Shula never quite recovered from the historic loss to the upstart New York Jets in Super Bowl III, and when a lucrative job opened in Miami, he took his talents to South Beach, where he led the Dolphins to the first perfect season in NFL history. Tracing Shula's singular rise from his blue-collar origins to his glory days in the Miami heat, Ribowsky reveals a man of grit and charisma who never lost sight of a simple creed: "All I've ever done is roll up my sleeves, figure out what to do, and start doing it."
©2019 Mark Ribowsky (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books