Daughter of a Song: A Memoir

Born in a Dust Bowl dugout on the hard, flat plainsoutside Lubbock, Texas, Sonny Curtis picked cotton as a kid, formed a band withhis high school friend Buddy Holly, and opened shows for Elvis--and that wasjust by the age of twenty-two. Now at the end of his long career, Curtis isconsidered a rock 'n' roll trailblazer. He toured the world with the Cricketsand with Waylon Jennings. He wrote the classic songs "I Fought the Law," "LoveIs All Around" (the theme song to The Mary Tyler Moore Show), and the countrystandard "I'm No Stranger to the Rain." Curtis has left an impression onAmerican myth and music that has gone heretofore undocumented. But to the author, Sonny was a loving if crypticfather as elusive as the spotlight itself. Part biography, part memoir, Daughterof 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 andlegacy together through research and recollection, following her father fromthe 1950s birth of rock 'n' roll in West Texas to the 1960s Hollywood scenewhere Sonny met his wife, a Vietnam War protester and California hippie. Thetwo of them would leave Hollywood behind for the rural Tennessee cattle farmwhere they raised Sarah. With vivid storytelling, cultural commentary, lyricalprose, and a dose of humor, Daughter of a Song considers thecomplexities of fate and fame, the cultures we shape and the ones that shapeus. It is the story of a man saved by art, and the daughter who must navigateto the center of his creativity to reckon with her own.

• | Author: Sarah Curtis
• | Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
• | Publication Date: Sep 29, 2025
• | Number of Pages: 280 pages
• | Binding: Paperback or Softback
• | ISBN-10: 1682832740
• | ISBN-13: 9781682832745