Upside Your Head!

"To a lively, generously illustrated account of black music in Los Angeles, its author adds a grievous counterpoint of outrage at the causes of so much racial disharmony within that city."—Stanley Dance, author of The World of Count Basie

"Upside Your Head! Serves as witness and testimonial to the endurance of black cultural imagination and community. Most of all the wisdom, passion, wit, anger, and insight which punctuates Otis' testimony gives the book a sense of urgency and relevance to present day social and cultural conditions."—Herman Gray, author of Producing Jazz

"Musician, painter, sculptor and preacher Otis is an angry and eloquent man who writes from the unique viewpoint of a white man who has been immersed in African American culture and music since childhood . . . this is a wake-up call for white America."—Publishers Weekly

"An educational, entertaining, and frequently thought-provoking book . . . it is a pleasure to see what Otis has done in the decades since he disappeared from the charts and to find that his writing has much of the same exuberance that he always showed in his music."—Boston Globe

"As his memoir demonstrates, Otis was an important (and largely unheralded) pioneer of rock 'n' roll . . . His wonderful evocations of L.A.'s rock 'n' roll world and the 80-odd pictures documenting it make the book required reading for anyone interested in rock's history."—Village Voice

"Music legend Otis's lifelong activism spans music, religion, politics, and business. This mix of music, culture, and race politics is a bold and risky attempt to rattle white America's conscience . . . Of interest to to music and social historians as well as lay readers."—Library Journal