Donald Clarke (writer)

Donald Milton Clarke (born 1940) is an American writer on music.

Career
Clarke was born in 1940 and raised in Kenosha, Wisconsin. From 1959 through 1969, he worked at a car factory in Kenosha American Motors Corporation. In 1973, he graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison with a Bachelor of Science in education with honors. He lived in England from 1973 to 1998, during which time, from 1974 to 1979, he worked for Marshall Cavendish Publications.

From 1998, Clarke lived in Austin, Texas, moving in 2003 to West Des Moines, Iowa, where he worked for a time on the music e-zines BluesWax and FolkWax. He then moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania, in 2009, and in 2014, to Colorado Springs.

Clarke was the author/editor of the Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music (1989, 1998), which is now available free on website. His other books include Wishing On The Moon: The Life and Times of Billie Holiday (1994), The Rise And Fall Of Popular Music (1995), and All Or Nothing At All: A Life Of Frank Sinatra (1997). The Billie Holiday biography was reprinted by Da Capo Press in 2000 under the title Billie Holiday: Wishing On The Moon.

Selected work
Books


 * ; ISBN 0-6708-0349-9 (hardback), ISBN 0-1405-1147-4 (paperback).
 * ; ISBN 0-3121-1573-3
 * ; ISBN 0-6708-3771-7; ISBN 0-3068-1136-7;.
 * ; ISBN 0-6708-3771-7; ISBN 0-3068-1136-7;.

Articles


 * (2nd ed; 2002); ;.