Devault-Graves Books

NEW JOHN LENNON BOOK: NOW AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER

Before John Lennon retreated peacefully into private life in 1975, he fought a major legal battle that went under the public radar.
Just as his Rock 'n' Roll oldies album hit the market, Morris Levy, the Mob-connected owner of Roulette Records, released Roots, an unauthorized version of the same record. Levy had used rough mixes of John's unfinished Rock 'n' Roll recordings-and claimed the former Beatle had verbally agreed to the arrangement. The clash led to a lawsuit and countersuit between Levy and Lennon.

Attorney Jay Bergen, a partner in a prestigious New York City law firm, represented John in this epic battle over the rights to his own recordings. Millions of dollars were at stake.

Jay tells the intimate story of how he worked closely with John to rebut Levy's outrageous claims. He also recounts how John explained his recording process in poetic, exacting terms before a judge who knew little about the Beatles and John's solo career.
Lennon, the Mobster & the Lawyer catches the high drama of the courtroom skirmishes in this previously untold story. It also paints a detailed personal picture of John and his world in 1975-76, when he was soon to have a new son and went into happy seclusion to be a husband and father.

Published by Devault Graves Books. Release date is May 1, 2022 but available for pre-order now wherever books are sold.

For more information, please check out our website at:
www.lennonthemobsterandthelawyer.com

REX REED'S CLASSIC BOOK OF CELEBRITY PROFILES IS NOW BACK IN PRINT!

For over two decades, the art of the interview was very nearly the sole province of Rex Reed, the Master of the Celebrity Profile. While still in his twenties Rex Reed became a widely-syndicated film critic and from that vantage point began to interview everyone in the film and theater worlds who mattered. In Do You Sleep in the N**e?, the first of his four best-selling celebrity profile collections, he captures the ego and zany personality of soon-to-be-superstar Barbra Streisand, the elusive Warren Beatty just finishing Bonnie and Clyde, the last ever interview with legend Buster Keaton, and a classic and much reprinted portrait of Ava Gardner in her waning years.

Writer Tom Wolfe said about Reed: "Rex Reed...raised the celebrity interview to a new level through his frankness and his eye for social detail. He has also been a master at capturing a story line in the interview situation itself."

Along with Wolfe, Truman Capote, Kenneth Tynan, and Harry Crews, Rex Reed achieved a literary reputation for a genre, the celebrity profile, once relegated to gossip journalists who as often as not wrote studio-approved fantasies of the lives of the stars.
Devault Graves Books has reissued Do You Sleep in the N**e? in trade paperback. Virtually anyone who was anyone during the 1960s, '70s, and early '80s in the movie and theater world are captured for the ages in these books. When asked why he no longer writes celebrity profiles, Mr. Reed answered simply: "The movie stars of today are no longer interesting."

But when they were, Rex Reed was there to file them away for history. It is to the reader's pleasure to rediscover them.
Included in Do You Sleep in the N**e? are profiles of: Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty, Carson McCullers, Lucille Ball, Ava Gardner, Lotte Lenya, Michaelangelo Antonioni, James Mason, Bill Cosby, Marlene Dietrich, and many more.

Do You Sleep in the N**e? is available on-line from amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com and your favorite indie bookstore. Or you can order the book from the publisher for $24.95 plus $5.00 shipping and handling. To order go to this Paypal address: [email protected]

COMING SOON FROM DEVAULT GRAVES BOOKS: Our latest book coming July 1st is Timekeeper: My Life In Rhythm by one of Memphis' most lauded drummers, Howard Grimes.

Howard Grimes is the guy driving the beat behind some of Stax's earliest singles and was a member of the Mar-Keys, although Stax was afraid to photograph him with his white music mates.

When Hi Records brought Willie Mitchell on-board to produce the soul music they were beginning to record, it was Howard Grimes that Willie wanted on drums. He played on virtually every hit to come from Hi Records and he is heard on tracks by Al Green, Ann Peebles, and all the others. You know that beat and now you get to know the man behind it.

Grimes tells the gritty story of growing up in Memphis and drumming his way through the soul years, from its height to its demise. He has a boots-on-the-ground view of the whole scene and doesn't hold back on the truth and the details, no matter how scandalous.

This book is for anyone interested in Memphis soul music, in drumming, and in Memphis.

You can pre-order the book very soon before its official July 1st release.

Devault Graves Books keeps bringing you the very best in Memphis books and every kind of great reading!