Amy Winehouse - Too Young to Die...too Old to Live

With never seen before photos and interviews, internationally acclaimed author, Jake Brown, will take you deep into Amy Winehouse's world of record deals, contracts, touring, bands, men, women, drugs and alcohol. Amy Jade Winehouse was born on September 14th, 1983 in the middle-class London suburb of Southgate to parents Mitch and Janice, who worked as a cab driver and pharmacist respectively. She died of alcohol poisoning on July 23, 2011, at the young age of twenty seven years old. Her album Back to Black subsequently became the UK's best selling album of the 21st century in 2012. Amy's introduction to her father's love for jazz would prove in time to be the pivotal stylistic influence in the course of shaping her broader musical roots as both a singer and songwriter. "I taught Amy to sing when she was a baby, like all parents sing to their children, I taught her how to sing...we loved singing together. We loved talking about music." Along with her father, the singer would additionally credit her brother Alex with helping put her in touch with her first exposure to playing, "my brother taught himself guitar, so I took an inspiration for teaching myself from him, and he showed me a couple of things." Though she began fiddling around on the guitar, Winehouse's true calling would come with a unique vocal gift that instantly caught the ear of everyone from the first time they ever heard it. Mitch said, "I remember her being nine and ten and just starting out and realized she had a very powerful voice." Not surprisingly, it was within her early explorations of her talent that Amy would find refuge, "I was singing mostly a lot of blues and jazz when I was young, a teenager. That's when you're really messed up about your life. "It's just mad, your life, you're up and down, like nobody's business". It was here during this early period in her evolution as an R&B singer that Amy would first make the all-important connection between the fundamental importance of feeling what she was singing on a personal level, so that she could then succeed in communicating that feeling in the embodiment of her physical vocal performance. An essential lesson she summed up with, "you have to live certain things, to be able to then sing about them" Among the many awards and recognitions Amy Winehouse earned in her short life and music career were an Iyor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song "Stronger Than Me", a BRIT Award nomination for Best Female Solo Artist. Amy's album "Back to Black" produced numerous nominations, including two BRIT Awards (Best Female Solo Artist and Best British Album), five Grammy Awards, four Ivor Novello Awards, four MTV Europe Music Awards, three MTV Video Music Awards, three World Music Awards, and was nominated for the Mercury Prize - Album of the Year and a MOBO Awards- Best UK Female. During her career, Amy Winehouse received 23 major awards from 60 nominations. In February 2012, Amy Winehouse was listed at number 26 on MTV's - VHI's 100 Greatest Women In Music. Chapters Include: Growing up in Southgate, Amy's Education in Rebellion, Frank- 2003, Hitting the Stage, The Ballad of Amy and Blake Pt. I, Back to Black - 2006, Coming to America, The Ballad of Amy and Blake Pt. II, The Wild Ride of Britain's Bonnie & Clyde and One Last Dance. Amy Winehouse: Too Young To Die... Too Old To Live, was written by Nashville-based, internationally acclaimed, music biographer, Jake Brown. Mr. Brown has written over thirty five published books, including: Lady Gaga: Born To Be Free; Lil Wayne: An Unauthorized Biography; Prince: In the Studio; and Dr. Dre: In the Studio.