Lonely Avenue The Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus [Paperback]

One of the most original, influential, and commercially successful American songwriters, Doc Pomus (1927-1991) was a role model for several generations of composers, renowned for his mastery of virtually every popular style, and for the numerous hits he wrote during rock 'n' roll's first decade. But despite his successes, few knew that this writer of jukebox hits led one of the most dramatic lives of his time. Spanning the extremes between extravagant wealth and desperate poverty, suburban family life and the depths of New York's underworld, enduring love and persistent loneliness, and touching on more than a half-century of American popular music,Lonely Avenuereveals with novelistic flair the whole of Doc's experience-one of the great untold American stories.

Alex Halberstadt's writing has appeared in theNew York Times,Washington Post,GQ,Los Angeles Times,Salon, theOxford American, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Praise forLonely Avenue

Boston Globe, 10/26/14
“How one great artist converts feelings—love, jealousy, worry, willfulness—into a great song, resonates through Alex Halberstadt'sLonely Avenue.”

Stereophile, May 2016
“A vivid, multidimensional, flesh-and-blood portrait…A lively chronicle of a singular musical figure who was as tough as he was tender.”