Background

Holly George-Warren was born on October 10, 2019, in Asheville, North Carolina, United States.

Education

Holly George-Warren studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Career

After graduating from university, Holly George-Warren worked as a waitress in New York City. In the 1970s she became interested in the East Village underground scene. Subsequently, she created a lot of work on music. She has written for Rolling Stone from 1993 till 2001, the New York Times, the Village Voice, Redbook, More, Entertainment Weekly, MOJO, Harp, the Journal of Country Music, the Oxford American, Paper, Time Out, Tracks, Paste, Relix, Cowboys & Indians, Texas Music, Men's Journal, Country Music, American Cowboy, and No Depression. Her writing appears in the books Will The Circle Be Unbroken; Classic Country; The Show I'll Never Forget; The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock; Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop, Rap, and Jazz; The Encyclopedia of Country Music; Country on Compact Disc; The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll; and The Rolling Stone Jazz and Blues Album Guide, among other anthologies.

She is the editor of The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats (1999), Farm Aid: A Song For America (2005), and Stairway to Heaven: The Final Resting Places of Rock Legends (2005), and co-editor of The Appalachians: America's First and Last Frontier (2004), Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: A Musical Journey (2003), American Roots Music (2001). She served as music editor to the first-ever Zagat's survey of the top 1000 albums of all time. George-Warren has appeared on numerous television programs on various networks to discuss music, pop culture, and Western Americana including CBS Sunday Morning, MTV, VH1, CMT, PBS, and NBC, and at such book festivals as the Southern Festival of Books, the Texas Book Festival, and the Northwest Festival of Books, and conferences like SXSW, the International Country Music Conference, the Ponderosa Stomp, and the EMP Pop Music Conference.

She has also served as a consulting producer to several documentary films, including Woodstock: Now & Then and Welcome to the Club: The Women of Rockabilly, Nashville 2.0 and the Sundance entry Muscle Shoals. She coproduced Rhino's five-CD box set, R-E-S-P-E-C-T: A Century of Women in Music, the three-CD set The Rolling Stone Women in Rock Collection, a series of CDs with the Lifetime network and a Wanda Jackson tribute album, Hard Headed Woman, for Bloodshot Records. In addition, she has served as an archivist/curator for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation and The GRAMMY Museum. She is the director of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum Oral History Program and serves on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominating committee. She teaches Arts Journalism at the State University of New York in New Paltz, New York, has lectured at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University, and has guest lectured at Cornell, Penn, MTSU and CUNY, among other universities.

Holly George-Warren's other books include A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton, From Box Tops to Big Star to Backdoor Man (2014), The Road to Woodstock (with Michael Lang, 2014), Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry (2007), The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: The First 25 Years (2009), Bonnaroo: What, Which, This, That, the Other (2012), Cowboy! How Hollywood Invented the Wild West (2002), Punk 365 (2007), Grateful Dead 365 (2008); and the children's books Honky-Tonk Heroes and Hillbilly Angels: The Pioneers of Country & Western Music (2006), Shake, Rattle & Roll: The Founders of Rock & Roll (2001), and The Cowgirl Way (2010). Her most recent book is Janis: Her Life and Music (2019). Janis: Her Life and Music is a study that tracks Janis Joplin’s Texas childhood, her rise to international stardom, her sudden death at twenty-seven, and her enduring musical creations.

Achievements

• Holly George-Warren is the award-winning author of sixteen books, including the New York Times bestseller The Road to Woodstock. Holly George-Warren received both the 1996 and 2002 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, as well as was nominated for Grammy awards twice.

Works

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  • Cowboy! How Hollywood Invented the Wild West

    (One hundred years ago, cowboys were a driving force in po...)

    2002
  • Janis: Her Life and Music

    (Janis Joplin’s first transgressive act was to be a white ...)

    2019
  • Punk 365

    (Thirty-plus years ago a dark rumble of noise gurgled up f...)

    2007
  • The Road to Woodstock

    (The Woodstock music festival of 1969 is an American cultu...)

    2009
  • Shake, Rattle and Roll: The Founders of Rock and Roll

    (An introduction to the pioneers of rock-and-roll music hi...)

    2001
  • Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry

    (The only performer to earn 5 stars on the Hollywood Walk ...)

    2007
  • Honky-Tonk Heroes and Hillbilly Angels: The Pioneers of Country and Western Music

    (Discover the surprising beginnings and humble origins of ...)

    2006
  • Bonnaroo: What, Which, This, That, The Other

    (Set on 700 acres of rolling farm hills in Manchester, Ten...)

    2012
  • A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton, From Box Tops to Big Star to Backdoor Man

    (A Man Called Destruction is the first biography of this e...)

    2014
  • Grateful Dead 365

    (In 1965, the Grateful Dead came to life in the heart of S...)

    2008
  • The Cowgirl Way: Hats Off to America's Women of the West

    (The 1840s ushered in the beginning of the largest migrati...)

    2010