GOODBYE, LITTLE ROCK AND ROLLER

Legendary country and rock singer/songwriter Chapman has seen many of her more than 250 songs ("Betty's Bein' Bad," "The Perfect Partner") made famous by other artists like Jimmy Buffett, while her own recording career never went beyond cult status. This wild and woolly memoir deserves to gain her a much wider audience than just her loyal fans. Structured as a series of essays about 12 of her songs "that have the best stories around them," this is a hilarious and entertaining look at life by a fascinating 40-something artist who is not afraid to admit that she wrote one of her favorite songs ("Rode Hard and Put Up Wet") after waking up "around noon facedown in my front yard—which was a vegetable garden—wearing nothing but my underpants." The rebellious child of an upper-middle-class family in South Carolina, Chapman moves from college life at Vanderbilt to Nashville in the early 1970s, "about when the ' 60s hit the South," just in time to be a part of the "outlaw" country music era along with Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson ("hell, back then, Willie didn't even bathe on a regular basis"), and she gives excellent insight into the rowdy ways of that much storied era. She also uses the creation of other songs to discuss everything from her "career of dating criminals" to her current sobriety with her true love, a man who wouldn't be fazed if Chapman chopped wood "with nothing on but a pair of men's boxer shorts." (Sept.)