Donald Clarke (writer)

Donald Clarke (born 1940) is an American writer on music.

Clarke was born in 1940 and raised in Kenosha, Wisconsin, worked ten years in a car factory, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He lived in England from 1973 to 1998 before moving to Austin, Texas for five years. He moved to West Des Moines, Iowa in 2003, where he worked for a time on the music e-zines blueswax.com and folkwax.com. In June 2008 he launched a website at donaldclarkemusicbox.com. He moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania in 2009, and in 2014 to Colorado Springs.

He was the author/editor of the Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music (1989, 1998) which is now available free on his website. Clarke's other books include Wishing On The Moon: The Life and Times of Billie Holiday (1994), The Rise And Fall Of Popular Music (1995), and All Or Nothing At All: A Life Of Frank Sinatra (1997). The Billie Holiday biography was reprinted by Da Capo Press in 2000 under the title Billie Holiday: Wishing On The Moon.