One of the excellent writers about music is this guy, Nick Tosches. I've loved every thing of his I've read. He's got a novelist's eye and a poet's ear. I've heard his biography of Jerry Lee Lewis is his best, but I haven't read it. Here's a small moment at the end of a chapter from his book Country: the Biggest Music in America, about a rare photograph of Emmitt Miller he finds in the pages of a used book:

I asked the owner of the store where he had got the book, but he didn’t recall. I bought the photo for a nickel. That was in 1972. A year later it was blown out a ninth-floor window in Manhattan, off the kitchen table of someone I disliked. I watched after it, trying to follow it as it fell, but I didn’t see it touch the ground.