“I can’t think of another book that has brought me so many hours of joy as I combed through the intense level of detail, looking up names & songs on YouTube & Wikipedia, Googling venues to get addresses to look up.” - Steve Patterson, Urban Review St. Louis “Authors Steve Pick along with Amanda E. Doyle poured their hearts & souls into this masterpiece & their obvious love of music can be felt on every page.” - Laurie Beakley, Arch City Media “...you’ll be sure to discover many acts and artists that are expected, a handful you may not have realized even had roots in the Lou, as well as a few with which you have forgotten.” - Danya Artimisi "The most surprising thing about the new book St. Louis Sound is the simple fact that, until now, it never existed. Sure, there have been scholarly studies of St. Louis music history, excellent genre- and scene-focused tomes, but no book has ever connected the dots or charted the evolution of what makes this city, and its outlying regions, one of the most important and vibrant places for musical invention and enjoyment in the world. St. Louis Sound changes that. The hefty and striking coffee-table book is billed as an "illustrated timeline," a phrase that's both accurate and modest. The illustrations are extraordinary, handsomely laid out to tell their own stories, with many photos no one outside of archivists at the Missouri Historical Society has likely ever seen. Those stunning images, coupled with the witty and knowledgeable writing of co-authors Steve Pick (a veteran music writer and longtime KDHX DJ) and Amanda E. Doyle (writer of five previous books, including 100 Things to Do in St. Louis Before You Die and To the Top! A Gateway Arch Story), sprawl across 170-plus entries covering centuries of St. Louis music. Put plainly, it will change the way you think of this city and its culture." (Roy Kasten, Riverfront Times) From the French fiddlers of the fur trading days to the rock and hip hop icons of the present millennium, St. Louis has been a town rich in musical history. Though it has rarely been cited as a center of any scene, any area that has been home to Chuck Berry, Miles Davis, Ike & Tina Turner, Grant Green, Pavlov’s Dog, Uncle Tupelo, Nelly, and Pokey LaFarge has clearly deserved more attention. This book tells the story of music in St. Louis, from the symphonic to the singer/songwriter, from the radio stations that propelled it to the fanzines that documented it, from the musicians who left here for greater fame to those who stayed and made this town more vibrant. This is the first time that all the tributaries of the great St. Louis river of song have been covered in one place; classical, jazz, blues, r&b, rock’n’roll, country, hip hop, and more. Steve Pick was born in 1958 in St. Louis, Missouri. His life-long interest in music became an obsession when he co-founded Jet Lag magazine in 1980, then spent 13 years reviewing concerts and writing a music column for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He began working in record stores in 1983, and played guitar in a handful of bands in the 1980s. From 1988 through 1993, and again from 2001 to the present, he has hosted a weekly radio show on KDHX-FM. In his lifetime, he has seen more than half the musicians in this book play live.