ST. LOUIS _ St. Louis' music history is officially coffee-table-ready.
The new "St. Louis Sound: An Illustrated Timeline" tells the story of the local music scene, with nods to the big names who have helped shape the city's soundtrack.
Chuck Berry, Miles Davis, Ike and Tina Turner, Nelly, Uncle Tupelo, Bob Kuban, Albert King, Story of the Year, Chingy, Oliver Nelson, Little Milton, Mama's Pride, Pokey LaFarge, Pavlov's Dog, Marquise Knox, Jack Grelle and more are included in the book.
Steve Pick, who wrote the book with Amanda E. Doyle, calls it "a love letter to the music that has happened in St. Louis over my lifetime and before. It's a chronicle of all the different strains of music from this city. There's so much stuff that came out of here, you can't imagine."
Pick and Doyle started working on the book in 2016 after getting the green light from St. Louis-based Reedy Press.
Pick, a KDHX host and database operator at Euclid Records, brought a vast knowledge of St. Louis music to the project. He's also the co-founder of Jet Lag magazine (1980-92), a former writer for the Post-Dispatch and the Riverfront Times, and played guitar in local bands.
Doyle's specialty is history. She's written books including "100 Things to Do in St. Louis Before You Die," "Missouri Almanac 2018-2019" and "Standing Up for Civil Rights in St. Louis."
The combination of their knowledge made the project come together.
"We were careful to make sure we had a book you could read, instead of just being a generic Wikipedia-style approach," Pick says. "Every entry is entertaining."
A big chunk of the book was written in the first eight months of work. Figuring out what should be included was easy for the pair.
"I had a hundred ideas more or less the first day," Pick says. "I've been so immersed in music for so long. I've gone to 2,000 concerts in St. Louis. So it was pretty easy to start coming up with names. I'd wake up in the middle of the night _ 'Oh my God, I need that one.'"
He knew his starting point would be rock 'n' roll pioneer Chuck Berry. "Everything is built around him in a lot of ways," he says. "And Miles Davis had to be there."
And Fontella Bass was an obvious choice. "'Rescue Me' is one of the greatest songs in music history," Pick says. "I was incredibly honored to interview her in the '80s."
The book also includes newer acts such as the Urge and Gravity Kills.
The biggest hurdle was tracking down photos, which added two years to the project. Images came from many sources, thanks mostly to Doyle and Reedy Press. And Pick reached out to a lot of bands.
In addition to musicians, the book also spotlights disc jockeys, radio stations, clubs, venues, magazines and record stores.
As with any project of this size, there are omissions, intentional and accidental. Pick says the biggest miss was "Tipsy" rapper J-Kwon.
"As soon as the book published, Amanda's husband said to her, 'Did you put J-Kwon in there?,'" Pick recalls. "And the same day, I heard the song on the radio."
And he didn't realize until it was too late that the male members of the Fifth Dimension are from St. Louis.
