Daughter of a Song: A Memoir

Description

Born in a Dust Bowl dugout on the hard, flat plains
outside Lubbock, Texas, Sonny Curtis picked cotton as a kid, formed a band with
his high school friend Buddy Holly, and opened shows for Elvis–and that was
just by the age of twenty-two. Now at the end of his long career, Curtis is
considered a rock ‘n’ roll trailblazer. He toured the world with the Crickets
and with Waylon Jennings. He wrote the classic songs “I Fought the Law,” “Love
Is All Around” (the theme song to The Mary Tyler Moore Show), and the country
standard “I’m No Stranger to the Rain.” Curtis has left an impression on
American myth and music that has gone heretofore undocumented.

But to the author, Sonny was a loving if cryptic
father as elusive as the spotlight itself. Part biography, part memoir, Daughter
of a Song braids together an insider’s perspective on an outsider’s life.
With Sonny out on the road for long stretches, Sarah Curtis pieced his life and
legacy together through research and recollection, following her father from
the 1950s birth of rock ‘n’ roll in West Texas to the 1960s Hollywood scene
where Sonny met his wife, a Vietnam War protester and California hippie. The
two of them would leave Hollywood behind for the rural Tennessee cattle farm
where they raised Sarah.

With vivid storytelling, cultural commentary, lyrical
prose, and a dose of humor, Daughter of a Song considers the
complexities of fate and fame, the cultures we shape and the ones that shape
us. It is the story of a man saved by art, and the daughter who must navigate
to the center of his creativity to reckon with her own.

Binding Type: Paperback
Author: Sarah Curtis
Published: 09/29/2025
Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
ISBN: 9781682832745
Pages: 280
Weight: 0.89lbs
Size: 0.67″ H x 9.00″ L x 6.00″ W

About the Author
Curtis, Sarah: – Sarah Curtis‘s essays have appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Salon, The
Threepenny Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the anthology River
Teeth: Twenty Years of Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. She lives with
her family in Michigan. More of her writing can be found at
sarahcurtiswriter.com.