Considered by many to be the godfather of R&B, Johnny Otis-musician, producer, artist, entrepreneur, pastor, disc jockey, writer, and tireless fighter for racial equality-has had a remarkable life by any measure. In this first biography of Otis, George Lipsitz tells the largely unknown story of a towering figure in the history of African American music and culture who was, by his own description, "black by persuasion."

Author Biography

George Lipsitz is professor of black studies and sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He wrote the foreword for a recent republication of Johnny Otis's Listen to the Lambs, and he is the author of Footsteps in the Dark: The Hidden Histories of Popular Music; Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture; and American Studies in a Moment of Danger, all published by the University of Minnesota Press.