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
American Motors Corporation (AMC; commonly referred to as American Motors) was an American automobile manufacturing company formed by the merger of Nash-Kelvinator Corporation and Hudson Motor Car Company on May 1, 1954. At the time, it was the ...
. In 1973, Clarke 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, from 1974 to 1979, he worked with
Marshall Cavendish Publications
Marshall Cavendish is a subsidiary company of Times Publishing Group, the printing and publishing subsidiary of Singapore-based conglomerate Fraser and Neave (which in turn currently owned by ThaiBev, the beverage company in Thailand), and at pre ...
. Beginning around 1998–1999, Clarke lived in
Austin, Texas, for five years. He moved to
West Des Moines, Iowa, in 2003, where he worked for a time on the music e-zines ''BluesWax'' and ''FolkWax''. He then moved to
Allentown, Pennsylvania
Allentown (Pennsylvania Dutch language, Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Allenschteddel'', ''Allenschtadt'', or ''Ellsdaun'') is a city in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. The city has a population of 125,845 as of the 2020 United ...
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 his website (donaldclarkemusicbox.com). Clarke's 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
Da Capo Press is an American publishing company with headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts. It is now an imprint of Hachette Books.
History
Founded in 1964 as a publisher of music books, as a division of Plenum Publishers, it had additional of ...
in 2000 under the title ''Billie Holiday: Wishing On The Moon''.
Selected work
Books
* ; (hardback), (paperback).
* ;
* .
* ; ; ; .
Articles
* (2nd ed; 2002); ; .
References
External links
* Schwartz, Steve (2000
(''The rise and Fall of Popular Music'')* Schwartz, Steve (2001
''All or Nothing at All: A Life of Frank Sinatra)
1940 births
Living people
American music critics
University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni
Writers about music
American expatriates in the United Kingdom
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