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WORK TITLE: Lament from Epirus
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1971?
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE: VA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2018002537
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2018002537
HEADING: King, Christopher C.
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670 __ |a Lament from Epirus, 2018: |b t.p. (Christopher C. King) ecip data (Grammy-winning producer, musicologist, and prominent 78 rpm record collector; has written for the Paris Review and the Oxford American; lives in Virginia
PERSONAL
Male.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, producer, sound engineer, and musicologist. Long Gone Sound Productions, VA, owner.
AVOCATIONS:Collecting 78 r.p.m. records.
AWARDS:Grammy Award for sound design, 2002, for work on Revenant’s box set Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton.
WRITINGS
Contributor to magazines, including the Paris Review and Oxford American.
SIDELIGHTS
Christopher C. King is a writer, musicologist, and producer based in Virginia. He is well known as a collector of 78 r.p.m. records, the type of early musical recording played on gramophones. In 2002 he received a Grammy Award for his work in the music industry.
In Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe’s Oldest Surviving Folk Music, King describes his deep love and appreciation of the music originating from Epirus, a geographic region overlapping northwestern Greece and southern Albania. The unique Greek folk music “combines droning backgrounds with almost atonal violin and clarinet noodlings,” noted a Publishers Weekly writer. While those who are aficionados of the music are almost rapturously dedicated to it, others find it difficult to listen to at best. For King, it is this conflicting attitude toward the music, as well as its dramatic difference from other Greek folk sounds, that make it “a paragon of localism and authenticity comparable only to Mississippi Delta blues,” observed the Publishers Weekly contributor.
King himself is an unabashed, even obsessive fan of the music of Epirus. He makes this clear in his book, describing the emotional impact the music had on him when he first heard it and his determination to find out more about it. The first Epirote music he heard was played by immigrants who had come to America and were recorded on 78 r.p.m. records in the 1920s. This experience left him “as dumbstruck by what he heard as by the country blues he venerated,” noted Ray Olson in a Booklist review. This initial exposure prompted him into a search for more recordings. He also wanted to find out as much as he could about the musicians who had created the music, what the culture of Epirus was like when the music was produced, and what kind of music the region was producing in modern times.
Lament from Epirus chronicles King’s search and what he found, including more 78s as well as living relatives and friends of the musicians who had made the music that affected him so severely. He also found where they lived, the culture in which they lived and worked, and the fact that Epirote music still existed in much the same form as the recordings from the 1920s.
The book is “equal parts travelogue, ethnomusicology, history lesson and wry self-deprecation,” commented Dave Cantor, writing in Downbeat. A writer in Kirkus Reviews called it a “fascinating journey led by a passionate guide.” Olson concluded, “This is a trip never to be forgotten.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 1, 2018, Ray Olson, review of Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe’s Oldest Surviving Folk Music, p. 44.
Downbeat, May, 2018, Dave Cantor, review of Lament from Epirus.
Financial Times, July 20, 2018, Alex Zoumbas, review of Lament From Epirus.
Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2018, review of Lament from Epirus.
National Herald, July 15, 2018, Eleni Sakellis, “Author and Musicologist Christopher King Talks to TNH about the Music of Epirus.”
Publishers Weekly, January 22, 2018, review of Lament from Epirus, p. 72.
ONLINE
Vinyl Asides, http://www.vinylasides.com/ (September 9, 2014), “Episode 8: Christopher King,” profile of author.
Windy City Greek, https://www.windycitygreek.com/ (May 29, 2018), Maria A. Karamitsos, review of Lament From Epirus.
W.W. Norton & Company website, http://www.wwnorton.com/ (October 24, 2018), biography of Christopher C. King.
Christopher C. King, a Grammy-winning producer, musicologist, and prominent 78 RPM record-collector, has written for The Paris Review and the Oxford American. Profiles of him have appeared in the New York Times Magazine and Washington Post. He lives in Virginia.
Αuthor and Μusicologist Christopher King Talks to TNH about the Music of Epirus
By Eleni Sakellis July 15, 2018
Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe’s Oldest Surviving Folk Music by Christopher C. King. Photo: Amazon
NEW YORK – Lament From Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe’s Oldest Folk Music by Christopher King was published in May 2018. The author and musicologist spoke with The National Herald about the book, his love of the music of Epirus, and his upcoming work.
Over the last seven years, King has been researching Greek folk music with particular emphasis on the music of Epirus. When asked about the writing process, he told TNH that Lament from Epirus took about two and a half years of drafting and travel plus the prior years of research. About his fascination with Epirus and its music, he said he has been visiting three times a year around panegyri time, in November, and the spring, spending about 6-8 months there, adding that he felt like he was back home from his first trip.
King so loves the region, and Zagori in particular, he told TNH that he plans to move there permanently, noting that it is not the “typical Greece,” and is a “completely different experience” than other regions of the country. The mountains and dramatic landscapes, the music, and the people have made a powerful impression on King and many lucky enough to visit. He noted the purity, purpose, and meaning of the music and how each village has its own particular song or songs making it a unique, living music tradition.
When asked about upcoming projects, King told TNH that he is currently working on a book on murder ballads as a “reservoir of memory,” entitled Dead Wax: Music, Memory and Murder, adding that one chapter is on the famous Greek song H Kakourga Pethera.
King also made a recent proposal to the municipality of Zagori in a letter to Mayor Vassilios Spyrou to create and operate an Epirotic Music Archive in Kato Pedina, housed in a building donated by Kostas Fotetsiou to the municipality. He intends to include, among other things, his unique collection of 78 rpm records, almost all the recordings of Epirotic demotic (folk) songs he holds today.
In his letter to the mayor, he noted, “There are museums of Greek demotic and laika music in Athens, as well as archives of the Epirotic culture in Ioannina. However, there is no archive of Epirotic music in Greece. Today, the world’s most complete archive of Epirotic music I have in mind, is in a small studio located in Faber, Virginia, at my home in the United States. I propose to transfer this material from the U.S. to Epirus and to create a powerful and attractive archive of this cultural element.”
He also lists specific collections he intends to make available for the proposed archive. These are:
– Epirus demotic songs in 78 rpm records, representing the world’s largest, most complete, and highest quality collection, with only 5-6 records missing out of all those ever recorded by Epirus musicians on 78 rpm records.
– Demotic songs of Greece, Albania and Turkey on 78 rpm.
– Epirus, Greek, Albanian and Turkish folk songs on 33 rpm.
– His own professional recordings made in Epirus.
– Historically important musical instruments from Epirus and other regions of Greece.
– Important postcards from Epirus and Southern Albania.
– Collection of books and manuscripts relating to Epirus and especially Epirus music in Greek and English.
He explains that the Epirotic Music Archive will not be a museum. Visitors will be able to listen to music performed over a hundred years ago and then, listen to the same piece of music recorded recently, and experience what remains the same and what has changed. Students, musicians, scientists, and researchers will be able to utilize the archive as well.
The musicologist describes in detail how the Archive will operate, what his own contribution to it will be, its management, and how it will generate revenue.
King proposed operating in the concession building, a listening room, as well as a library with the collection of books and texts on the music of Epirus in five different languages.
A small shop with books, CDs, LPs, and DVDs of historical and modern Epirotic music for sale was also proposed. “Linking this archive to cultural tourism is, in my opinion, indispensable. This will also generate revenue to ensure the sustainability of the Archive,” King wrote in his letter-proposal.
The ANA-MPA reported that at the last meeting of the City Council, when the mayor first informed them of the proposal, the response was very positive and will be pursued and implemented after considering some issues regarding the use of the building in Kato Pedina.
Lament From Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe’s Oldest Folk Music by Christopher King is available online.
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Print Marked Items
Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into
Europe's Oldest Surviving Folk Music
Ray Olson
Booklist.
114.15 (Apr. 1, 2018): p44.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
* Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe's Oldest Surviving Folk Music. By Christopher C. King.
May 2018. 272p. illus. Norton, $29.95 (9780393248999). 781.62.
Obsession makes for good books. As a 78 rpm record collector, King was already a fanatic, especially about
the earliest blues and country music. Then he discovered the village music of Epirus, the northwestern
region of Greece, recorded in America by immigrants in the 1920s. He was as dumbstruck by what he heard
as by the country blues he venerated. He had to find more 78s of the stuff, of course, and as much as he
could about the musicians, their cultures, and what Epirote music was like now. "I was being swept away
and I didn't--couldn't--resist." His rapture propels and frequently erupts into the prose of his report on his
multifaceted quest. He found the 78s; living relatives and friends of the recorded musicians; the villages in
which their talents had been prized; the food and drink and celebrations that fueled and inspired them; and,
most important and surprising, that their music and traditions persist, adapted to modernity but not as
something preserved and custodially "revived." King, who's compiled several CD anthologies of Epirote
music, remains ardent to the point of mania throughout, so infusing us with his passion that even passages
on music theory and the crafting of ancient instruments enthrall. This is a trip never to be forgotten.--Ray
Olson
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Olson, Ray. "Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe's Oldest Surviving Folk Music." Booklist, 1
Apr. 2018, p. 44. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534956831/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=689087f4. Accessed 24 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A534956831
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King, Christopher C.: LAMENT FROM
EPIRUS
Kirkus Reviews.
(Mar. 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
King, Christopher C. LAMENT FROM EPIRUS Norton (Adult Nonfiction) $29.95 5, 29 ISBN: 978-0-393-
24899-9
Emotionally wrenching music from northwestern Greece evokes questions about the meaning of music
itself.
King, a Grammy-winning producer, describes himself as an "obsessed" collector of 78 rpm phonograph
records, counting among his treasures American folk music and Delta blues recorded in the 1920s and '30s.
In his exuberant literary debut, he recounts his discovery of music far different from any that he had heard
before, music so intense and transformative that it set him on a quest to find its cultural roots and to
decipher "a larger enigma: why we make music." In 2009, the author was vacationing in Istanbul when he
noticed a dusty collection of records on a shop shelf. Buying a few, he carefully transported the fragile discs
home and, with great anticipation, played them. The sound, he writes, was startling: "a dissonant
instrumental played with an uncontrolled abandon"; a clarinet "sounded as if it were in the throes of death--
bent, contorted, and skirting along the margins of control." The music came from Epirus, a remote region in
northwestern Greece that had "steadfastly resisted assimilation" for thousands of years. After acquiring
hundreds more records, King made several trips to the mountain villages of Epirus to investigate the
"musical biosphere" from which the viscerally shattering sounds emerged. He locates one origin of the
music in "laments and funeral dirges," which evolved from metrical poetry into instrumental pieces: "a
calculated wailing through an instrument such as the clarinet or the violin" that represented "collective
remembrance" rather than the commemoration of one individual. In Epirus' sheepherding villages, the
shepherd's flute, he believes, was the foundation of all the music that ensued. Participating in festivals,
learning traditional dances, drinking the "psychotropic grape distillate" tsipouro, interviewing musicians,
collectors, and scholars, King concludes that the "preeminent purpose" of music in Epirus was "therapeutic
and curative to the individual and the village." Music, he writes, "was a tool for survival."
A fascinating journey led by a passionate guide.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"King, Christopher C.: LAMENT FROM EPIRUS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528959765/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=fed7a749.
Accessed 24 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A528959765
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Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into
Europe's Oldest Surviving Folk Music
Publishers Weekly.
265.4 (Jan. 22, 2018): p72.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe's Oldest Surviving Folk Music
Christopher C. King. Norton, $29.95 (272p)
ISBN 978-0-393-24899-9
An obscure European musical tradition rebukes the sterility of modern culture according to this bombastic
appreciation-cum-jeremiad. King, a musicologist and record collector, travels to Epirus, a region straddling
northwestern Greece and southern Albania, to savor its unique folk music, which combines droning
backgrounds with almost atonal violin and clarinet noodlings, in a style that aficionados concede can feel
like "ear torture" to the unaccustomed. The music's nonconformity is a virtue, King contends, making it a
paragon of localism and authenticity comparable only to Mississippi Delta blues for its rootedness in its
terroir and defiance of bland commercial aesthetics. Kirig soaks up the Epirotic folkways, dancing at
sometimes-raunchy village festivals and quaffing anise-flavored moonshine. He relates stories of Ottoman
atrocities and legends of the area's musicians, meanwhile arguing that folk music performs a crucial social
"healing" function. King's evocations of Epirus and Epirotic music--its haunting forlornness, "the heavy
despair of the clarinet and the sad avian mimicry of the violin"--are vivid and engaging. Unfortunately, his
sour attacks on all other music--from classical ("lofty but groundless") to big band ("vacuous, mediocre and
sucking") to pop ("vacuous tripe" shading to "sinister noise")--can make his praise of folk culture feel like
snobbery. Nevertheless, folk music historians and enthusiasts will find much of interest in this wellresearched
book. Photos. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe's Oldest Surviving Folk Music." Publishers Weekly, 22 Jan.
2018, p. 72. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525839813/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=deef4efb. Accessed 24 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525839813
REVIEW: ‘Lament from Epirus’ by Christopher C. King
Posted By Maria A. Karamitsos on May 29, 2018
Grammy-winning producer and avid record collector Christopher C. King shares his discovery of the music and heart of Epirus, in a new book released today.
Producer, Collector, and Author Christopher C. King
Two years ago, we introduced readers to Christopher C. King, the Grammy-winning producer and passionate collector of old 78 rpm albums, with the release of his “Why the Mountains are Black: Primeval Greek Village Music: 1907-1960”, a collection of music from Epirus.
Chris hails from rural Virginia, where he was exposed to ‘American’ mountain music. The raw sounds of that music are catalogued deep in his soul, and echo in his mind. Later, he learned to play violin and accordion, which offered him the opportunity to experience the music in a whole new way. This aroused his curiosity about folk music – not just the sounds themselves, but the way people react with and experience the music.
It’s no wonder that he gravitated to old music, particularly that which was recorded on 78 rpm. His affinity and growing curiosity led him to begin collecting old records. Over the years, he became exposed to many types of ethnic music, including Polish and Ukrainian, resulting in his growing interest – and collection. He started a company called Long Gone Sound and for more than 20 years, has produced collections on CD of old 78 records. In 2002, he won a Grammy for Best Historical Album, Sound Engineer for Charley Patton “Screamin’ & Hollerin”.
Christopher C King gets played into
Christopher C. King gets “played into”, as part of the musical experience in Epirus. IMAGE: JIM POTTS
The music of Epirus
As the story goes, on a trip to Istanbul, he went strolling in the marketplace. In a stand, he discovered a stack of old 78s. Chris had studied Ancient Greek in college – a choice that helped facilitate his later curiosity for his find. He could read some of the writing and bought them. He said upon listening to them, he became ‘fixated’ and ‘obsessed’. The music spoke to him, reaching deep into his soul. It reminded him of the music of his youth. He had to learn more.
Related: “Why the Mountains Are Black” Celebrates Greek Mountain Music
He traveled to Epiros and set out to learn all he could about the music: its history, its essence. Since then, Chris has acquired the largest collection of old Epirotic music and has entrenched himself in the hearts of Epirots, so much that they’ve named him an honorary citizen of Vitsa, Epirus.
‘Why the Mountains Are Black’ is Chris’ 5th collection of Epirotic music, released on Jack White’s Third Man Records. A new collection of the recordings of Kitsos Harisiadis, is also out today.
Writing ‘Lament’
While each collection’s liner notes included stories of Chris’ research and connection with the music, he had never considered writing a book. Then one day he was contacted by an editor at W.W. Norton & Company, his publisher.
“He contacted me out of the blue and asked if I’d thought about it. I liked writing, I liked stories, and of course the subject. But I never had an aspiration to become a writer.”
Lament from Epirus took him on a 2-1/2 year journey to bring to life a full account of his travels to Epirus, his research, and his interactions with the locals. This odyssey – which led him to another “home” – was filled with surprises. Chris elaborated.
“Everything was unexpected. It seemed as if every day researching and interviewing, I stumbled across some discovery that mattered a lot to me but left me floundering. What shocked me the most was that as an American from the South – who has absolutely no connection to the Greek music of Epirus – when I allowed myself to see the world through the eyes of particular villagers, during the panegyria, I was able to respond or react to the music not different than the Greeks, by accepting premises they’ve accepted in their lives. Music is medicinal, healing, cathartic – and not notes. I was privy to that because I opened myself to the way they saw it.”
Chris added that he is now a firm believer in the “miracle-endowing properties” of tsipouro, and that it “helps your dancing, too!” He ends the book with most profound words:
“You may see what I have seen, or perhaps the music will shape parts of you differently, since we carry disparate maps of experience and history. What I have described persists until you dance the musicians out of the village with all of your friends who have now become your family. When you wake up the next day, you feel as if you’ve been made whole.”
Lament from Epirus by Christopher C. King
Lament from Epirus hits the stores today.
Review of Lament from Epirus
In Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe’s Oldest Surviving Folk Music, Christopher C. King has lovingly compiled the history of Epirotic music, revealing the soul of Epirus. He brings to the masses the sounds of Epirus, from the mirologoi, to xenitia, and more. His connection to it allows him to get to its very core – that music is more than sound. The music is history, a connection to the past; it’s life – love and loss, pain and joy; it’s medicinal; it’s eternal. He shows that music isn’t just for listening, it’s for experiencing, through dance, through communal experiences. Chris’ eloquent words open the world of Epirus to us, and he explores the music in a way that only a true aficionado can. As a musician, he also interprets the music through its odd meter and scale and compares it to the music of his youth. He transcends all the layers to reveal the beauty within. Ultimately, through this journey to the music he experiences Greek philoxenia, and in his kinship with the Epirots, discovers the very heart of the Greek experience. Lament from Epirus has something for everyone – Greeks, non-Greeks, musicians, historians, and aficionados of music. This book will make you look at this old, “heavy” music in a whole new way.
Lament from Epirus hits the stores today. Be sure to pick up a copy.
Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe’s Oldest Surviving Folk Music
By: Christopher C. King
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (May 29, 2018)
ISBN-10: 0393248992
ISBN-13: 978-0393248999
Read more book reviews here
About Latest Posts
Maria A. Karamitsos
Maria A. Karamitsos
Founder & Editor at WindyCity Greek
For 10 years, Maria served as the Associate Editor and Senior Writer for The Greek Star newspaper. Her work has been published in GreekCircle magazine, The National Herald, GreekReporter, Harlots Sauce Radio, Women.Who.Write, Neo magazine, KPHTH magazine, and more. Maria has contributed to three books: Greektown Chicago: Its History, Its Recipes; The Chicago Area Ethnic Handbook; and the inaugural Voices of Hellenism Literary Journal.
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Lament From Epirus by Christopher C King — Roma holiday
A passionate record collector embarks on a Greek musical odyssey in this captivating travelogue
Alexis Zoumbas
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Ed Ward JULY 20, 2018 Print this page2
The kid’s grandfather told him to clear out the tarpaper shack, the last former tenant house on the farm, so he could burn it down before clearing the land. Inside was a ruined gramophone — the ceiling above had long given way — and a metal box containing about 20 old 78rpm records. One of them was “Dark Was the Night,” a guitar solo with some barely audible humming by the black evangelist Blind Willie Johnson.
If you have never heard this performance, I urge you to do so as soon as you can. It’s not like any other piece of music ever recorded. It was etched into the gold record put on the Voyager spacecraft and launched into the void in 1977 to explain our presence in the universe.
You can see why the kid, Christopher C King, grew up to be a folk music fanatic and 78 record collector of some renown — and why his search for an experience like the one he’d had as a boy led him to a remote area of Greece, the subject of this remarkable book. His journey began in Istanbul. As he and his wife were exploring the city, they found a street selling nothing but gramophones and records. He bought a few and brought them home to Virginia. Several were by one Kitsos Harisiadis and were strikingly different from the more familiar Greek pop: more emotional, more plaintive.
The kind of dogged research for which 78 collectors are notorious revealed that Harisiadis was from Epirus, in northwestern Greece on the Albanian border, remote as it could be. Records from the region were rare, but King found two brothers who were as passionate about rural Greek music as he was about rural American music. Soon, boxes of 78s were flying to Virginia from Athens. One day, a larger box arrived from the brothers. In it were two 12-inch 78s by one Alexis Zoumbas (below), described by the brother who’d sent it as “deep.” King cleaned them and put the first one on: “Lament From Epirus.” After playing it, he felt devastated. “I needed a smoke.” He’d found something as moving as Blind Willie Johnson.
The majority of this book is the tale of King stumbling around Epirus in search of this music, obsessed by it and by the story of Zoumbas, who’d recorded in New York in 1926, where he’d fled, possibly pursued by a murder rap. He died there, too, ostensibly at the hand of a jealous woman. He was long gone, but the music, with all its haunting power, remained.
But Roma music plays an important role in Epirotic culture, deeply embedded in life and ritual. Epirus is marginal enough that neither tourism nor mass media have penetrated the area to drive out this music and its performance. It’s not a spoiler to say that King found what he was looking for, and he tells the story well.
I do question some of his musical analysis, especially as he discusses the modes/scales the musicians use, some of which would seem to derive from Indian raga. A quibble, perhaps, but maybe also a key to what allows the Roma to function as the oppressed “Other” while also moving the Epirotic soul, much as African approaches to European music became irresistible to the Americans who’d once enslaved them. A more serious problem: with the importance that geography plays in this tale, would it have killed the publisher to supply a map?
Now go find “Lament From Epirus” — it’s on CD and YouTube thanks to King — and listen to it. That, in the end, was what drew me to the book: I needed to know what this allegedly pre-Homeric stuff sounded like and how it survived. King tells us, and I’m glad he did.
Lament From Epirus: An Odyssey Into Europe’s Oldest Surviving Folk Music, Christopher C King, WW Norton, RRP$29.95, 304 pages
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Christopher C. King
Lament From Epirus
(W.W. Norton)
By Dave Cantor | Published May 2018
Christopher C. King has figured out how to make some of his fixations work in his favor.
From collecting scores of forgotten 78 RPM records to sussing out the almost-lost histories of insular music enclaves, the Grammy-winning producer has dug not for the most obscure, but most meaningful music and stories sitting around with a veneer of dust settled atop it all.
Lament From Epirus, his first book, details King’s trips to a secluded northwestern region of Greece where he gets drunk on tsipouro, dances poorly and attempts to understand why folk music from that part of the world connects to his obsession with Southern roots music. It’s equal parts travelogue, ethnomusicology, history lesson and wry self-deprecation.
On his trips (documented not just in this new book but in a story by author and critic Amanda Petrusich), as in daily life, King’s work serves to lionize the utilitarian nature of music that seems perilously close to obsolesce and disappearance. He rails against the globalization of art, while omitting any discussion of our changing needs in an ever-new and confounding world. But it’s seriously tough to doubt his adoration of Epirotic music and players like violinist Alexis Zoumbas and clarinetist Grigoris Kapsalis with their laments and party tunes, all framed by King’s travels.
At the very worst, Lament From Epirus features a writer at odds with contemporary society who has no time for sub-genres of sub-genres or even the plaintive simplicity of a good garage-rock stomper. At his best, though, King’s a vivid writer and a champion of music that we’re all better for hearing.