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....