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Books
America's Musical Pulse
writings about music for the college market, Greenwood Press, 1992 Gringa in a Strange Land
Gringa in a Strange Land evokes the "countercultural" early l970's, that exhilarating and confusing time for so many young people. Erica Mason, an American living in Mexico, is torn between working to become the artist she longs to be, and the lure of the drug culture. Set mostly in the colonial city of Merida in the Yucatan peninsula, the narrative also moves among Mayan ruins, laid-back beaches and cities such as Belize and Oaxaca. A host of bohemian expats and Mexicans along with the complex character of Mexico itself, infuse this portrait of the artist as a young woman in exile, culminating in an unexpected resolution. "Like the artisans who applied kaleidoscopic colors to the Mayan pyramids, Linda Dahl paints a vivid portrait of a young American artist who thrusts herself into the exotic maelstrom of Mexico in the '70's. on a drug-, booze- and sex-suffused odyssey - a struggle to create art, find herself and seek love - amid the hippies and the druggies, the ordinary folk, the grifters and the adventurers all crossing paths in Merida and Oaxaca. You'll think of Robert Stone's work and Barbet Schroeder's film More in that the novel so adeptly renders an era, a country and a state of mind." Randolph Hogan, former editor of the "New York Times Book Review" and translator of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor 
Most Creative Writing of 2010 Award by Writers in the Sky
Morning Glory: a Biography of Mary Lou Williams
"Linda Dahl is one of the gifted biographers who can analyze her subject and put it into fascinating detail that will appeal to a large reading audience. Linda Dahl succeeds brilliantly in her biography of jazz great Mary Lou Williams in Morning Glory." Lee Prosser, www.jazzreview.com/book-reviews This is my portrait of Mary Lou Williams, the pianist, arranger and composer who, like the writer Zora Neale Hurston, was abundantly talented but too much in the shadows during her lifetime. Mary Lou Williams, born in 1910, began performing at 7 in Pittsburgh, in gambling dens and at bridge teas for the society Mellons. She mastered the jazz of the twenties and the Swing Era, always at the forefront of creativity during decades when jazz music was all about the fraternity of male musicians. Mary Lou overcame racial barriers as a key performer at Cafe Sciety in New York, the first important integrated nightclub. She was all about the music and always open to new developments. In the l940's she was on the cutting edge of bebop, a mentor and close friend to Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. In the l970's, she concertized with the avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor, and wrote Mary Lou's Mass, the first jazz mass ever performed at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Mary Lou's last years were as Artist-in-Residence at Duke University. She continued to tap her heels hard as she swung as ferociously as ever at the keyboard on concert tours before dying in l981. Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen
"The definitive work on women in music - an incredible job of research." John Hammond "A brilliant work of oral history. A triumphant performance, encyclopedic information delivered in a highly readable, often humorous, format." Publishers Weekly “What she promises and delivers, is a bookish Star Trek; she boldly goes where no man (or woman) has gone before. For people who love jazz, who get bleak when they think of what happened to Billie Holiday, this is their book.” –Carolyn See, Los Angeles Times Book Review Haunted Heart: a Biography of Susannah McCorkle
“Haunted Heart" strikingly resembles the woman it describes: it is vivacious, tender, saturnine, industrious, and deeply intelligent. Like Susannah’s way with certain ballads, it opens a wound and begins the work of healing it. I am grateful for Linda Dahl’s diligence and sympathy. Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic "I could not put it down. This fine book will linger in the reader's mind for a very long time. The writing style is crisp, concise and entertaining." Rex Reed "She paints an intimate and deeply moving portrait of this lost soul." Singer Andrrea marcovicci Come Back, Carmen Miranda: Stories about Latin America
"The main character is Latin America itself: tragic, lush, violent, romanic. A wonderful group of stories." Sarah Passell, Danbury News-Times. "She conveys that curious affect of travel, where you are transformed by the strange surroundings, all the while aware that you're just a tourist, and her eye and ear for telling detail are marvelous." George Witte,St. Martin's Press |
