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Doug Bradley played basketball with the Miracles, shared a joint with Grace Slick, and held Dionne Warwick’s hand when he told her Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated. He watched his Doo-Wop singing brother and World War II veteran father battle over the birth of rock and roll, brought the music of Stax and Motown to a small college in the West Virginia hills, and soaked in the sounds of CCR, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix as an Army journalist in the “air-conditioned jungle” in Vietnam.
In The Tracks of My Years: A Music-Based Memoir, the acclaimed co-author of Rolling
Stone’s 2015 music book-of-the-year, We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of Vietnam War, tells the story of a life lived with, and in, music. He provides a poignant, sometimes painful, series of portraits of a young man maneuvering the intricacies of family life, love and romance, and a complicated relationship with a high school teacher who inspired him but was a constant source of bewilderment. As Bradley discovers who he is and, crucially, who he isn’t, the soundtrack evolves from Sinatra and the Beatles to Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan.
The Tracks of My Years is a book for anyone who grew up in post-World War II America, and for their children and grandchildren trying to look beyond the haze of myths surrounding Baby Boomers. It opens windows into the echoes of the heart. Cue up Alexa, Siri, or Spotify and curl up for a journey through The Tracks of My Years.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Doug Bradley is an author, educator, and veteran who spends his time in Wisconsin and Arizona.
He spent his early years in American Bandstand-ed Philadelphia listening to his aspiring vocalist father croon big band songs and his older brother show off his falsetto with street-corner Doo-Wop groups. After two years in Ohio, Doug and his family landed in the gritty suburbs of Pittsburgh where DJs like Porky Chedwick and Clark Race helped local artists like the Skyliners, Marcels, Del-Vikings, Vogues, and Lou Christie move up the pop charts. While Doug endured his share of ups and downs at Thomas Jefferson (TJ) High School outside Clairton, he amassed a superb 45 RPM record collection and spun the platters at countless TJ dances and sock hops. A first-generation college student, Doug was awarded a scholarship by tiny Bethany College in nearby Bethany, West Virginia, where he served as social chairman from 1967-69, bringing 19 prominent singers and bands to Bethany, among them Count Basie, Smokey & the Miracles, Jefferson Airplane, Dionne Warwick, the Association, and the Fifth Dimension.
After graduation from college in 1969, Doug was drafted into the U. S. Army in March 1970. He served as a combat correspondent for the U. S. Army Republic of Vietnam headquarters at Long Binh, South Vietnam, from November 1970-November 1971. After completing his M. A. at Washington State University, Doug relocated to Madison, Wisconsin, in 1974 where he helped establish Vets House, a storefront, community-based service center for Vietnam era veterans. He has been writing and advocating on veterans’ issues for more than five decades.
Professionally, Doug spent more than 30 years working for the University of Wisconsin in communications; media and public relations; marketing; and local, state, and federal stakeholder relations. For eight years he and UW-Professor Craig Werner taught a highly popular course at the UW entitled “The U. S. in Vietnam: Music, Media, and Mayhem.”
Learn more about Doug on his website at https://www.doug-bradley.com/.
He has blogged for PBS’s Next Avenue and The Huffington Post, taught at UW-Madison, Baldwin-Wallace University, Edgewood College, and Arizona State University, and is the author of three books grounded in the Vietnam experience, including DEROS Vietnam: Dispatches from the Air-Conditioned Jungle, Who’ll Stop the Rain: Respect, Remembrance, and Reconciliation in Post-Vietnam America, and co-author of We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War, named the Best Music Book of 2015 by Rolling Stone magazine.
Doug has been happily married to retired attorney Pam Shannon for 49 years. They are the parents of two grown children and four grandchildren.
Praise for The Tracks of My Years:
“Bradley’s memoir is remarkable. Through the use of music, he anchors the reader not only to the time of the narrative, but the feeling of the time. Few writers achieve this in any genre.” ~Karl Marlantes, NY Times bestselling author of Matterhorn, What It Is Like to Go to War, Deep River, and Cold Victory
“A sometimes heart-wrenching, sometimes humorous, unfailingly insightful chronicle of a life lived with, in, and through music. The story of a young man working out what it means to be a son, a brother, a friend and/or lover, a husband and a father, it's at once a record of a world in constant change, its soundtrack spinning from jazz and doo-wop to Motown and psychedelic soul. Written by an award-winning music writer and dedicated veteran activist, The Tracks of My Years bears witness to the power of music to make sense of a world that mostly doesn’t.” ~Craig Werner, professor emeritus UW-Madison; former member Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Nominating Committee; author A Change is Gonna Come: Music, Race & The Soul of America
“For nearly 20 years, Vietnam Veteran Doug Bradley has used popular music as a means of connecting with a fractious population divided by class, culture, and politics. The Tracks of My Years reminds us of songs and messages of unity that serve as a testament to the deep connection between music and memory." ~Jeff Kollath, Director Emeritus, Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis
“Doug Bradley has an incisive way of getting to the heart of the role music plays in our lives, how it lifts and supports us in difficult times and allows us to access our deepest emotions. His writing illustrates brilliantly the importance of music and how it is a universal force for good.” ~Maggie Ayre, Series Producer, “Soul Music,” BBC Radio Four
“I served as a U. S. Army nurse stationed at the 24th Evacuation Hospital in Vietnam in 1970-71. Doug Bradley was in Vietnam at the same time, but we didn’t meet until the publication of We Gotta Get of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War where he and Craig Werner captured the life, energy, and critical connections music brought to our unreal existence. Then Doug’s Who’ll Stop the Rain provided similar affirmation of our more recent journey to post-Vietnam reconciliation. Now, in The Tracks of My Years, Doug Bradley once again uses music to transcend words as he broadens the shared view of our lives in rear-view mirrors.” ~Mary Reynolds Powell, Captain, U. S. Army Nurse Corps 1970-71, Author, A World of Hurt: Between Innocence and Arrogance in Vietnam
“All of us – from the ‘Greatest Generation,’ to Baby Boomers, Millennials, and Gens throughout the alphabet—have our own soundtracks. Whether they hum softly in the background or orchestrate our lives, they’re there. Doug Bradley’s particularly tight relationship with the consequential music of his era creates an intense, economical, and engaging memoir. I highly recommend it as a solo read, or as a companion to his earlier, eclectic music-filled works.” ~Susan O’Neill, First Lieutenant, U. S. Army Nurse Corps, 12th Evacuation Hospital, Cu Chi, 1969-70
“With music as his backdrop, Doug Bradley writes using wit and his reporter’s eye to record his own and his country’s post-WWII coming-of-age stories. He adds clarity for a generation that continues to seek deeper understanding of the impacts of those tumultuous times. ~Judith Gwinn Adrian, author, From Hardship to Hope: Crossing the great divides of age, race, wealth, equity, and health
"Reading Doug Bradley's new book caused me major musical flashbacks. It was as if someone had just cued up a CD featuring the greatest hits of my lifetime. There I was in Vietnam listening to CCR, Janis, Motown jams, and the Beatles. And there was Doug relating much of what was behind many of those defining tunes. Whether you lived during the time or came along later, Tracks of My Tears is a magical mystery tour." ~Dale A. Dye, USMC (Ret.) Author, Shake Davis Trilogy
“As hard as it is to imagine, there may be people whose lives do not include music. Doug Bradley is most definitely not one of those people. His entire life is a discography, each period—from childhood to adolescence to adulthood and beyond—inseparable from the songs that defined those years and times. As he describes in his honest, brave, heart-felt, and at times heart-wrenching, “music-based memoir,” The Tracks of My Years, music guided Bradley “through all that was coming at us like a wildfire out of control.” In a life examined note by note, music eased the pain of love lost or squandered, accompanied the incomprehensible loss of friends and mentors, and provided refuge from the Dickensian existential crises of imagining a Vietnam veteran’s seeming inevitable place in Arlington National Cemetery. On every page, every ecstatic high, soul-crushing low, or confounding human mystery, Bradley manages to sing through it all, songs that give his life and ours an aura and context that make it all meaningful and, even perhaps, possible." ~Neil Heinen, award-winning broadcast journalist; former Editorial Director for WISC TV andMadison Magazine
"As a composer and Vietnam veteran, I have always used music to express my experiences in Vietnam. I have never been able to find the words that succinctly capture what that experience was like so I used my music compositions. Doug nailed it with words In Tracks of My Tears, Doug speaks from his personal experience and shows how music intertwined with his time in Vietnam. Reading his book has inspired me to compose more music to further share our story. This book is a must-read for anyone who wishes to truly understand the inner world of a Vietnam veteran as an individual, rather than as a stereotype." ~Kimo Williams, Captain, US Army Retired (Vietnam 1970); Composer, Fulbright Specialist; Co-Founder The Lt. Dan Band
“As someone who shared the same cloistered, emotionally choked Catholic childhood as Doug Bradley, grooving to the birth of rock 'n' roll, summoned by the black hit parade artists showing us that negroes were not to be frightened of and certainly made the best music, this book is like reading my own youthful diary of the explosive Fifties. If you want to know what that era truly felt like, open these pages and become a grateful time traveler, and learn how and why music lured and guided an entire generation." ~Roger Steffens, Vietnam veteran and author So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley