A professor of history at Oklahoma State University and a former working musician, Douglas Miller specializes in twentieth-century Native American history. He is the author of Indians on the Move: Native American Mobility and Urbanization in the Twentieth Century. He lives in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee Nation. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States and is a recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s 2024 Frost Medal, Yale’s 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, and was recently honored with a National Humanities Medal. Harjo has released seven award-winning albums and is the inaugural Artist-in-Residence for the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she lives.
""For fans of Jesse Ed, this book has been a long time coming. It finally gives the iconic, almost mythological musician a voice and humanity that many of us have been curious about for years. Like Jim Thorpe before him, Jesse helped move the dial when it came to how the outside world has viewed Native people. From his early life in Oklahoma to touring as a young guitar player, to playing sessions in LA to his own solo career—he started a movement in Indigenous art that continues today—Jesse is one of the original threads."" -- Sterlin Harjo, filmmaker and creator of Reservation Dogs ""Jesse Ed Davis was a real musician’s musician, a subtle and sensitive player in service of whatever song he contributed to. While it might not require another musician or historian of Native American history to tell this story, we can be thankful that Douglas K. Miller is both, as he tells Davis's story with depth and context."" -- Bill Janovitz, author of Leon Russell: The Master of Space and Time’s Journey Through Rock & Roll History ""The fact that [Jesse] Ed came out of Oklahoma and went through all of these different amazing musicians, and proved himself over and over and over again, is a phenomenal story.... It’s his origins and his rise that are so phenomenal, and it’s his individual story."" -- Robbie Robertson ""Jesse was the genius of the red dirt Tulsa sound, the shuffle blues that supercharged rock music. Pondering the sad demise of his meteoric career, we resort to stereotypes of the ‘doomed midcentury Indian’ with narrowing horizons. But Douglas K. Miller dismantles the stereotype by narrating the complex, epic sweep of the Native Americans’ progress, and one musician’s triumphs within it. Jesse Ed Davis emerges as a tragic star, leading a diverse generation into a new century."" -- Daniel Mark Epstein, poet and author of The Ballad of Bob Dylan