In the mid 1970s, a young Dolly Parton did something that made almost no financial sense at the time. Elvis Presley, the biggest star in music, wanted to record one of her songs. All she had to do was hand over half the publishing rights, standard practice for anyone who wanted "the King" to sing their material. Dolly said no. She cried about it the same night, by her own account, certain she'd just turned down the biggest break of her career. Two decades later, that stubborn

Candy Darling died at 29, broke and largely uninsured, having spent most of her adult life unable to walk into certain bars without risking arrest for the dress she was wearing. She also spent those same years being photographed by Richard Avedon, cast by Tennessee Williams and mourned, when the end came, by Andy Warhol crying for the only time anyone ever saw. Two of Lou Reed's most enduring songs trace back to her specifically, and most people who know one have never heard

Huddie Ledbetter spent a combined fifteen or so years behind bars for a killing and a stabbing, and somewhere in between those two prison terms he became one of the most influential musicians America has ever produced. He wrote or preserved songs that would later define skiffle, shape the Beatles, and get covered by everyone from Nirvana to Led Zeppelin, and he did it while being marketed for years by the white folklorist who discovered him as, in his own words, a convict fir