User:The Interior/Mystery Train (book)

Mystery Train (subtitle: "Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music") is a non-fiction book by author music critic Greil Marcus. It was first published in 1975. The book contains biographical sketches of six American popular music acts.

Background
In the early 1970s, Marcus left his reviewing position at Rolling Stone magazine. He made a short-lived attempt at academic writing, and undertook writing Mystery Train in 1973. Marcus took the title of the book from Elvis Presley's final recording at Sun Records. The book was first published by E.P. Dutton in 1974.

Contents
The book is structured around histories of six American musicians. The first section, titled "Ancestors", explores the stories of African American musicians Robert Johnson and Harmonica Frank, who worked in the early part of the 20th century. The second, called "Inheritors", looks at four artists of the 1950s and 1960s: Elvis Presley, Sly Stone, The Band, and Randy Newman.