This book by Robert Gordon is a penetrating, bare knuckles portrait of a strange town in a fertile time, and the impact it had on American music. It's about R&B and soul, the birth of rock of roll, and the painful beginnings of integration (and some of its unlikely champions, like wrestling superstar Sputnik Monroe.)

Exploits of some of the bohemian and errant geniuses in and behind the scenes come to life in vivid detail. Some of them became famous in varying degrees, like Jim Dickinson, Alex Chilton, Dan Penn, Chips Moman, and Spooner Oldham. But the author doesn’t seem to lean any harder toward the personalities that eventually rose to greater prominence, which is very interesting. He's writing history, the picture of how it was, for the enthusiast who cares to venture beyond the highlight footage.

It's a twisted tale well told by an insider, and it gets you there. That's the really amazing thing about this volume. It's not just about the scene, it's from the scene. And a lot of craziness was going down. But like the San Francisco scene of the late 60's, there was an actual regional sound emerging, bubbling up from the street and out of the corner studios that were popping up all over town.