Roots and Rhythm: A Life in Music

A beautifully crafted memoir unveiling the ancestral, musical, and spiritual roots of Grammy Award-winning music producer Charlie Peacock.

In this artful memoir, Grammy Award-winning music producer Charlie Peacock flexes his literary chops and gives readers the gritty backstage stories they crave: biographical anecdotes, geeky trivia, and how the hits were written and recorded (from jazz to rock and pop). Threaded throughout is Peacock's unique ancestral and spiritual story--the roots. Like Coltrane, Dylan, and Bono before him, Peacock reveals a Christ-affection while refusing genres too small for his music.

Peacock, the great-grandson of a Louisiana fiddler, is an American musical polymath. He's been the young jazz musician sitting at the feet of trumpeter Eddie Henderson and pianist Herbie Hancock; the singer-songwriter plucked from the Northern California punk/pop underground by legendary impresarios Bill Graham and Chris Blackwell; a pioneering, innovative contributor to the nascent rise of gospel rock in the 1980s; and the genre-busting producer behind such diverse artists as Al Green, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Chris Cornell, Audio Adrenaline, The Civil Wars, Switchfoot, Turtle Island Quartet, and John Patitucci.

Roots and Rhythm includes Peacock's seminal NorCal days, the story of indie labels Exit and re: think, his first decade as a Nashville producer (1989-1999), and his essential role in the 21st-century folk/Americana boom (The Civil Wars, Holly Williams, The Lone Bellow). While his exploits and achievements grace the book (including the story of Amy Grant's "Every Heartbeat" and the evergreen "In the Light"), Peacock is hardly the only character. Instead, he writes as a Joan Didion-style essayist, weaving together a quintessential American story. Beat poet Gary Snyder, evangelist Billy Graham, producer T Bone Burnett, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, and writers Wendell Berry and Isabel Wilkerson all appear in this sweeping tale where ancestry, migration, teenage love, Jesus, and Miles Davis collide.

The book is an invitation to all, including aspiring musicians: embrace the roots and rhythm of our own lives, letting the music and God's insistent love lead us to gratitude and wonder.

Author: Charlie Peacock
Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Published: 02/04/2025
Pages: 389
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.41lbs
Size: 8.58h x 5.51w x 1.18d
ISBN: 9780802884374


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 02/01/2025 pg. 70

About the Author
Charlie Peacock is a Billboard chart-topping musical creator, a six-time Grammy Award-winning music producer (Folk, Country, Rock Gospel), and three-time recipient of the Gospel Music Association's Producer of the Year award (his recordings and productions exceed 25 million albums). Named by Billboard's Encyclopedia of Record Producers as one of the 500 most important producers in popular music history, Charlie has produced music for film and television and held executive and A&R positions at EMI/Universal and Sony/ATV. Charlie is the founder of the Universal Music Group imprint re: think; founder and director emeritus of the Commercial Music Program at Lipscomb University; and a longtime advocate for social justice, working directly with International Justice Mission, and the ONE Campaign beginning in 2002 when Charlie and wife Andi hosted co-founder Bono in their home, putting the rock-star activist in front of Nashville's artist community. Charlie is the creator/host of the Apple Top 100 music podcast Music & Meaning, and continues to create his own jazz/improvisational and singer-songwriter recordings, including Every Kind of Uh-Oh, a full-length vocal album produced by Charlie and his son, Grammy and Oscar-nominated songwriter and producer Sam Ashworth (H.E.R., Andy Grammer, Leslie Odom Jr.).