Josh Alan Friedman has chops like a wolf… This book deserves wide attention. –Jerry Wexler, Atlantic Records co-founder A can’t-put-it-down rock ‘n’ roll read … a must for any fan of good music writing and great storytelling. –William Michael Smith, Houston Press He dances off the page, improvises, hits all the grace notes. He knows the turfspeak of both showbiz and quality lit. –Michael Simmons, High Times The architects and the artists, the legends and the liars, the famously acclaimed and the anonymously unsung… each one a delectable bit of voyeurism. –PopMatters Back in print in a new, definitive edition, this unflinching, critically acclaimed collection gets up close and personal with some of the most important figures in 20th century blues and rock ‘n’ roll. From household names to the unacknowledged architects behind both the unforgettable sounds and the multi-billion-dollar industry, here are music’s big winners and tragic losers; the self-made, the self-serving, and the self-destructive. BLACK CRACKER author Friedman delivers intimate profiles, unearths secret histories, and shines a light on parts of the music business most prefer not to talk about. An antidote to antiseptic mythologizing, TELL THE TRUTH UNTIL THEY BLEED is show business without the showbiz. At long last, TRUTH is back.