By Peggy Andersen
The Associated Press

Annie Leibovitz is known for her portraits of celebrities. She started as a photographer at Rolling Stone, and her work also has appeared in Vanity Fair and Vogue.

For her new book, American Music (Random House; $75), she photographed people who have enriched American music, including Dolly Parton, R.L. Burnside, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Willie Foster, Ralph Stanley and B.B King.

Photographs from the book, which were taken in juke joints, clubs and musicians' homes, are on display at Seattle's Experience Music Project until Jan. 19. The exhibit will travel to London in February, and it will open Memorial Day weekend at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

Leibovitz says she'd like to call the book "volume one" because American music is endless. As a result, American Music is very personal, she says. "It was a chance to just go out and mess around."

How did you get started as a photographer?

I went to the San Francisco Art Institute as a painting major and took a night class in photography. I had a boyfriend who was a stringer for Time, and he said, 'Why don't you take your pictures to Rolling Stone?' And I took them by and they liked them. There were no musicians in the pictures - there were ladders in a field in a kibbutz in Israel, and a peace demonstration with Allen Ginsberg smoking a joint.

Were you always interested in portraits?

Portraits intimidated me. The idea of looking at another person - it's such an art. I was a shy person. ... The portraits really happened because I started to do the covers of Rolling Stone. When I started, remember, it was this little fold-up rag. So the subject would show up somewhere and say, 'What do you want me to do?' And you say, 'Sit over here.' ... I reluctantly had to give some direction. Then I thought, 'Well, gee - if they're going to sit in that chair they might as well sit in a bathtub full of milk.' I started to get more creative, more conceptual.

What's the story behind the photo of Dolly Parton?

She tends to really underestimate herself ... I was trying with this book to say, 'Dolly, I really want to shoot you stripped down.'... We talked about it and I met her in Nashville - she came to her offices wearing a baseball cap and she said, 'I'm not wearing a wig for you, Annie! She actually had hair. And I was shocked because I didn't know for sure if there was any hair under there. That (in the photo displayed) actually is a wig - there is a wig on top. She actually does have hair and it's fine. You know how it is when you're used to doing something to yourself for so long, that's what you do.

Has the equation changed as you've become a celebrity?

I think just by photographing well-known people and if you've been doing it long enough, you sort of get told this is what you are. ... Sometimes I'm shocked to find out there's interest in me in that way. I really just always thought of myself as a photographer.