Audiobooks by David Ritz

Energy Follows Thought: The Stories Behind My Songs

For the first time ever, and to help celebrate his 90th birthday in 2023, American icon Willie Nelson provides the stories behind the lyrics of 160 of his favorite songs, along with a dynamic assortment of never-before-seen photos and ephemera. From his earliest work in the 1950s to today, Willie looks back at the songs that have defined his career, from his days of earning $50 each to his biggest hits, from his less well-known songs (but incredibly meaningful to him) to his concept albums. Along the way, he also shares the stories of his guitar Trigger, his family and “family,” as well as the artists he collaborated with, including Patsy Cline, Waylon Jennings, Ray Charles, Merle Haggard, Ray Price, Dolly Parton, and many others. Willie is disarmingly honest—what do you have to lose when you’re about to turn 90? —meditating on the nature of songwriting and finding his voice, and the themes he’s explored his whole life—relationships, infidelity, love, loss, friendship, life on the road, and particularly poignant at this juncture of his life: mortality. Revealing, funny, whimsical, and wise, this book is an enduring tribute to Willie Nelson's legacy.

David Ritz, Mickey Raphael, Willie Nelson (Author), Ethan Hawke, Willie Nelson (Narrator)

Audiobook

Me and Sister Bobbie: True Tales of the Family Band

The untold story of Willie Nelson and his sister, Bobbie, who, over the course of their lives together, supported each other through personal tragedies and triumphs and forged an unbreakable bond through their shared love of music Abandoned by their parents as toddlers, Willie and Bobbie Nelson found their love of music almost immediately through their grandparents, who raised them in a small Texas town. Their close relationship-which persists today-is the longest-lasting bond in both their lives. In alternating chapters, this heartfelt dual memoir weaves together both their stories as they experienced them side by side and apart. The Nelsons share powerful, emotional moments from growing up, playing music in public for the first time, and facing trials in adulthood, as Willie pursued songwriting and Bobbie faced a series of challenging relationships and a musical career that took off only when attitudes about women began to change in Texas. The memoir is Bobbie's first book, and in it she candidly shares her life story in full for the first time. Her deeply affecting chapters delve into her personal relationships and life as a mother and as a musician with technical skills that even Willie admits surpass his own. In his poignant stories, Willie shares the depth of his bond with his sister, and how that bond carried him through his most troubled moments. Willie and Bobbie have supported each other through unthinkable personal heartbreak, and they've always shared in each other's victories. Through dizzying highs and traumatic lows, spanning almost nine decades of life, Willie and Bobbie have always had each other's back. Their story is an inspiring, lyrical statement of how family always finds the way.

Bobbie Nelson, David Ritz, Willie Nelson (Author), Bobbie Nelson, Willie Nelson (Narrator)

Audiobook

An Outlaw and a Lady :A Memoir of Music, Life with Waylon, and the Faith that Brought Me Home

David Ritz, Jessi Colter (Author), Devon O'day, Devon ODay, Devon Oday (Narrator)

Audiobook

Pretty Paper

Willie Nelson’s inspiring Christmas fable, based on his holiday classic “Pretty Paper.” More than fifty years ago, Willie Nelson’s beloved Christmas song “Pretty Paper” first hit the airwaves. And for all these years, Willie has wondered about the real-life Texas street vendor, selling wrappings and ribbons, who inspired his song. Who was this poor soul? What did his painful trials say about our loves, our hopes, our dreams in this holiday season—and in the rest of our lives? It’s the early sixties and Willie Nelson is down and out, barely eking out a living as a singer-songwriter. The week before Christmas, he spots a legless man on a cart, selling wares in front of Leonard’s Department Store in Fort Worth, Texas. The humble figure, by the name of Vernon Clay, piques Willie’s curiosity, but Vernon is stubbornly private and—despite Willie’s charming queries—has no interest in telling his story. Willie is tenacious, though, and he eventually learns that Vernon is a fellow musician, a fine guitarist and singer. When Vernon disappears, he leaves behind only a diary, which tells an epic tale of life-altering tragedies, broken hearts, and crooked record men, not to mention backroad honky-tonks, down-home cooking, and country songwriting genius. Deeply moved and spurred on by Vernon’s pages, Willie aims to give the man one last shot at redemption and a chance to embody the holiday spirit. From the Hardcover edition.

David Ritz, Willie Nelson (Author), W. Brown (Narrator)

Audiobook

Before You Judge Me: The Triumph and Tragedy of Michael Jackson's Last Days

A powerful chronicle of the sixteen weeks leading up to King of Pop Michael Jackson's death Michael Jackson's final months were like the rest of his short and legendary life: filled with deep lows and soaring highs, a constant hunt for privacy, and the pressure and fame that made him socially fragile and almost--ultimately--unable to live. With the insight and compassion that he brought to his bestselling telling of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s final year, Tavis Smiley provides a glimpse into the superstar's life in this emotional, honest, yet celebratory audiobook. Listeners will witness Jackson's campaign to recharge his career--hiring and firing managers and advisors, turning to and away from family members, fighting depression and drug dependency--while his one goal remained: to mount the most spectacular series of shows the world had ever seen. BEFORE YOU JUDGE ME is a humanizing look at Jackson's last days.

David Ritz, Tavis Smiley, Travis Smiley (Author), Leo Coltrane (Narrator)

Audiobook

It's a Long Story: My Life

The definitive autobiography of Willie Nelson "Unvarnished. Funny. Leaving no stone unturned." . . . So say the publishers about this book I've written. What I say is that this is the story of my life, told as clear as a Texas sky and in the same rhythm that I lived it. It's a story of restlessness and the purity of the moment and living right. Of my childhood in Abbott, Texas, to the Pacific Northwest, from Nashville to Hawaii and all the way back again. Of selling vacuum cleaners and encyclopedias while hosting radio shows and writing song after song, hoping to strike gold. It's a story of true love, wild times, best friends, and barrooms, with a musical sound track ripping right through it. My life gets lived on the road, at home, and on the road again, tried and true, and I've written it all down from my heart to yours. Signed, Willie Nelson

David Ritz, Willie Nelson (Author), Christopher Ryan Grant (Narrator)

Audiobook

After the Dance: My Life with Marvin Gaye

Dear Cary meets Confessions of a Video Vixen in this searing memoir of drugs, sex, and old school R&B from the wife of legendary soul icon Marvin Gaye. On her seventeenth birthday in 1973, Janice Hunter met Marvin Gaye, the soulful prince of Motown with the seductive liquid voice whose chart-topping, socially conscious album What's Going On made him a superstar two years earlier. Despite a sixteen-year-age difference and Marvin's marriage to the sister of Berry Gordy, Motown's founder, the star-struck teenager and the emotionally volatile singer began a scorching relationship. One moment Jan was studying high school history; the next she was accompanying Marvin to parties with other pop stars, lounging with Don Cornelius on the set of Soul Train, and helping to discover new talent like Frankie Beverly. But the distractions and burdens of fame, the chaos of dysfunctional families, and the irresistible temptations of drugs overshadowed the love they shared and their marriage disintegrated. Silent since Marvin's tragic death in 1984, Jan at last opens up, sharing the moving, erotically charged story of one of music history's most fabled marriages. Unsparing in its honesty and insight, illustrated with sixteen pages of color and black-and-white photos, After the Dance reveals what it's like to ride shotgun on a wave of fame and self-destruction with a tortured genius who helped transform popular culture and whose artistry continues to be celebrated today.

David Ritz, Jan Gaye (Author), Robin Eller (Narrator)

Audiobook

My Journey with Maya

A remarkable story of friendship, love, and courage When Maya Angelou and Tavis Smiley met in 1986, he was twenty-one and she was fifty-eight. For the next twenty-eight years, they shared an unlikely, special bond. Angelou was a teacher and a maternal figure to Smiley, and they talked often, of art, politics, history, race, religion, music, love, purpose, and--more than anything--courage. Courage to be open, to follow dreams, to believe in oneself. In My Journey with Maya, Smiley recalls a joyful friendship filled to the brim with sparkling conversation--in Angelou's gardens surrounded by her caged birds, before lectures, sharing meals, and on breaks from it all, they sought each other out for comfort, advice, and above all else, friendship. It began when he, a recent college graduate and a poor kid from a big family in the Midwest, was invited to join the revered writer on a sojourn to Africa. He would be handling her bags, but Maya didn't let that stop a friendship waiting to happen. Angelou was generous, challenging, and inspirational. Like a mother to him, she was selfless. Here Tavis Smiley shares his personal memories of Maya Angelou, of a decades-long friendship with one of history's most fascinating women, one who left as indelible an imprint on American culture as she did on him.

David Ritz, Tavis Smiley (Author), David Ritz, Tavis Smiley (Narrator)

Audiobook

Rocks: My Life In and Out of Aerosmith

In the tradition of the mega-bestseller Life by Keith Richards, Aerosmith's Joe Perry opens up for the first time about the wild, inside story of his life in the legendary band he cofounded in 1970-which is still going strong today.In Rocks, Joe Perry exposes his unrepentant, unbridled life as the lead guitarist of Aerosmith. He delves deep into his volatile, profound, and enduring relationship with singer Steve Tyler and reveals the real people behind the larger-than-life rock-gods on stage. The nearly five-decade saga of Aerosmith is epic, at once a study in brotherhood and solitude that plays out on the killing fields of rock and roll. With record-making hits and colossal album sales, Aerosmith has earned their place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But theirs is ultimately a story of endurance, and it starts almost half a century ago with young Perry, the rebel whose loving parents wanted him to assimilate, but who quits school because he doesn't want to cut his hair. He meets Tyler in a restaurant in New Hampshire, sways him from pop music to rock-and-roll, and it doesn't take long for the "Toxic Twins" to skyrocket into a world of fame and utter excess. From the mega-successful song and music video with Run DMC, "Walk This Way," to the realization that he can't pay his room service bill, Perry takes a personal look into the human stories behind Aerosmith, the people who enabled them, the ones who controlled them, and the ones who changed them. In his own words, Rocks is the whole story: "the loner's story, the band's story, the recovery story, the cult story, the love story, the success story, the failure story, the rebirth story, the re-destruction story, the post-destructive rebirth story."

David Ritz, Joe Perry (Author), Joe Perry (Narrator)

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Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin

The definitive biography of the Queen of Soul from acclaimed music writer David Ritz. Aretha Franklin began life as the golden daughter of a progressive and promiscuous Baptist preacher. Raised without her mother, she was a gospel prodigy who gave birth to two sons in her teens and left them and her native Detroit for New York, where she struggled to find her true voice. It was not until 1967, when a white Jewish producer insisted she return to her gospel-soul roots, that fame and fortune finally came via "Respect" and a rapidfire string of hits. She has evolved ever since, amidst personal tragedy, surprise Grammy performances, and career reinventions. Again and again, Aretha stubbornly finds a way to triumph over troubles, even as they continue to build. Her hold on the crown is tenacious, and in RESPECT, David Ritz gives us the definitive life of one of the greatest talents in all American culture.

David Ritz (Author), Brad Raymond (Narrator)

Audiobook

Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Final Year

A revealing and dramatic chronicle of the twelve months leading up to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination Martin Luther King, Jr. died in one of the most shocking assassinations the world has known, but little is remembered about the life he led in his final year. New York Times bestselling author and award-winning broadcaster Tavis Smiley recounts the final 365 days of King's life, revealing the minister's trials and tribulations -- denunciations by the press, rejection from the president, dismissal by the country's black middle class and militants, assaults on his character, ideology, and political tactics, to name a few -- all of which he had to rise above in order to lead and address the racism, poverty, and militarism that threatened to destroy our democracy. Smiley's DEATH OF A KING paints a portrait of a leader and visionary in a narrative different from all that have come before. Here is an exceptional glimpse into King's life -- one that adds both nuance and gravitas to his legacy as an American hero.

David Ritz, Tavis Smiley (Author), David Ritz, Tavis Smiley (Narrator)

Audiobook

Balance: A Story of Faith, Family, and Life on the Line

Nik Wallenda, "King of the High Wire," doesn't know fear. As a seventh generation of the legendary Great Wallendas, he grew up performing, entertaining, and pushing the boundaries of gravity and balance. When Nik was four years old, he watched a video from 1978 of his great grandfather, Karl Wallenda, walking between the towers of the Condado Plaza Hotel in Puerto Rico, stumbling, and falling to his death because of improper rigging. When Nik heard his father quote his great-grandfather--"Life is on the wire, everything else is just waiting"--the words resonated deep within his soul and he vowed to be a hero like Karl Wallenda. Balance is the theme of Nik's life: between his work and family, his faith in God and artistry, his body and soul. It resonates from him when performing and when no one is looking. When walking across Niagara Falls, he prayed aloud the entire time, and to keep his lust for glory and fame in check, Nik returned to the site of his performance and spent three hours cleaning up trash left by the crowd. Nik Wallenda is an entertainer who wants to not only thrill hearts, but to change hearts for Christ. Christ is the balance pole that keeps him from falling.

David Ritz, Nik Wallenda (Author), David Ritz, Nik Wallenda, Steve Gibbons (Narrator)

Audiobook