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Living the Blues

About Living the Blues

Canned Heat’s wild ride through fame, excess, and survival

Fito de la Parra’s unfiltered memoir pulls you inside the rise and unraveling of Canned Heat, a band that lived as hard as it played. Living the Blues is a firsthand account of the music, the chaos, and the price of survival—from breakthrough tours and legendary recording sessions to addiction, arrests, broken friendships, and the constant pressure to keep the show going.

With vivid detail and dark humor, de la Parra recounts life on the road with Alan Wilson, Bob Hite, Henry Vestine, and a rotating cast of musicians, managers, groupies, and enablers. The result is a raw rock-and-roll history that captures the exhilaration of success and the damage left behind when excess takes over.

Readers drawn to classic music memoirs will find an inside story of:

  • the blues and boogie roots behind Canned Heat’s sound
  • legendary tours, studios, and backstage mayhem
  • drug-fueled chaos, legal trouble, and near-disaster
  • the resilience required to keep making music through it all

Living the Blues is more than a band biography—it’s a hard-earned, first-person look at the counterculture, the business of rock, and the cost of survival.

ISBN (ebook): 9781456603328 / ISBN (print): 9781456637880 /

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About Fito de la Parra

Fito de la Parra
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Adolfo "Fito" de la Parra started playing drums in 1958 in Mexico City where he played and recorded with some of the most famous groups of the era, Los Sparks, Los Sinners, Los Hooligans, Javier Batiz and Los TJ's. In December 1967, shortly after his move to the US he joined Canned Heat, which became America's premier Blues and Boogie band. Featured at countless music festivals including the legendary Woodstock. They also made several recordings, over fifty CD's by now including top ten hits "Going Up the Country", "On the Road Again" and "Let's Work Together". In the mid '80's he became a US citizen. In 1997 Fito finished the first edition of the book "Living the Blues", a gripping tale of Drugs, Death, Sex and Survival that has gotten rave reviews and now it has been translated to French, German, Spanish and Finn. Fito is still active with the Canned Heat performing an average of one hundred shows per year world wide. He has also produced several CD's and DVD's. Documentary "Rock 'n' Roll Made in Mexico" DVD, "Boogie with Canned Heat" DVD and "Fito's Drum Solos" DVD. Fito is an avid motorcyclist and and animal lover currently residing in Ventura County, CA.

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