Aaron Neville relates his life story like he sings a song; he makes it very sincere and personal. The Grammy-winning vocalist’s autobiography is completely in his voice, in his own words. Music continually harmonizes beneath his history of growing up as a Black youngster in the 1950s and ’60s in segregated New Orleans filled with “can nots” and “do nots” with blatant police harassment and brutality as the rule.

A heroin addict for decades, a robber and a thief, Neville readily admits, over and over again, that he was no angel, though as he says, he did have three angels watching over him—his mother, “Mommee,” his late wife Joel whom he married when both were teenagers, and his current wife, photographer Sarah A. Friedman.

Considering his many, many wrongful deeds that landed him in jail numerous times (he remembers once using the baloney sandwich that was offered as a pillow), Aaron miraculously escaped two serious, long-term penitentiary sentences. He was shown leniency, in part, because he was a family man with a wife and children. True enough as music and family reigned supreme in his heart even when he was at his very worst. Sometimes the best he could do was not to shoot up at home.

A little-known fact that Aaron reveals is that just nine months after he and Joel were married and two months after their first son was born, he landed in jail for car theft. That’s where the money to support his habit often came from. Angry, Joel left to live with her parents and changed their son’s given name from Aaron to Ivan. Wow, who knew?

Little touches like Aaron explaining New Orleans and its Black neighborhood’s colloquialisms invite an inside look at different ways folks here observed the scene and still do. Throughout, he says, “We call it…” referring to familiar Crescent City terms like lagniappe or “Where you at?” or perhaps some street talk in the ’hood. Aaron recalls that his uncle, George “Big Chief Jolly” Landry, described a certain piano style as “funky knuckles.” It was Jolly, the chief of the Wild Tchoupitoulas Mardi Gras Indian gang, who encouraged his nephews Aaron, Art, Charles and Cyril to form a band that became the renowned Neville Brothers.

One by one, Aaron introduces the members of his musically-rich family, some of whom were plagued by addiction, though like him, they eventually recovered. We know that Aaron’s story has a happy ending. Drug-free and having enjoyed the successful career he always dreamed of, Aaron, 82, now sings with the birds at his and Sarah’s farm in New York state with his beloved dog, Apache, which was once his nickname, by his side.

Tell It Like It Is: My Story is an easy read with its big print and Aaron’s warmth, spirituality, and passion for music (particularly doo-wop) soaring on every page. Yet it is also a difficult, tear-worthy tale of hardships, many of which were self-inflicted while many came down because he was a young, Black kid just trying to get by. In the end, that he lived through it all and prospered is extraordinary. He gives credit to his three angels and climbing the stairs on his knees to offer prayers to and ask the help from St. Jude. Aaron Neville Tell It 

Aaron Neville Tell It