Blues Song for a Fighter

Sonny Liston"" -- these words pictured menace and boxing ring beatings in Americans' minds in the 1960s.

Was the ""Big Ugly Bear,"" as a youthful Muhammad Ali called him, as mean and antisocial as he seemed? Or was he a man -- hampered by illiteracy -- misunderstood?

""Blues Song for a Fighter"" reveals the real Sonny Liston: witty, hopeful, vengeful, loving children and his wife, determined, humorous, yet -- when drunk -- lascivious, crude, and violent.

J.J. Parker, author of the acclaimed ""Tink Wilson,"" has penned a stage play version of Liston's tempestuous, ill-fated existence ... a vital sunbeam whose starting and ending points no one ever knew.

Though a former thug paroled from prison ( he did time for armed robbery), Sonny never was paroled from his fate: to uneasily ride a personal Night Train to (and from) nowhere, to be divorced from, yet part of, the human race.

This book offers a three-act play depicting the drama of Sonny Liston's life, the ""blues song for a fighter"" that he correctly predicted some day would be written, read, and understood.

Settle into your ringside seat ... the bell for Round One is about to clang....