American soul music of the 1960s is one of the most creative and influential musical forms of the twentieth century. With its merging of gospel, R&B, country, and blues, soul music succeeded in crossing over from African American culture into the general pop culture. Soul became the byword for the styles, attitudes, and dreams of an entire era.

Female performers were responsible for some of the most enduring and powerful contributions to the genre. All too frequently overlooked by the star-making critics, seven of these women are profiled in this book -Maxine Brown, Ruby Johnson, Denise LaSalle, Bettye LaVette, Barbara Mason, Carla Thomas, and Timi Yuro.

Getting started during the heyday of soul, each of these talented women had recording contracts and gave live performances to appreciative audiences. Their careers can be tracked through the popularity of soul during the 1960s and its decline in the 1970s. With humor, candor, pride, and honest recognition that their careers did not surge into the mainstream and gain superstardom, they recount individual stories of how they struggled for success.

Their oral histories as told to David Freeland address compelling issues, including racism and sexism within the music industry. They discuss their grueling hardships on the road, their conflicts with male managers, and the cutthroat competition in the recording business. As each singer examines her career with the author, she reveals the dreams, hopes, and desires on which she has built her professional life. All seven face up to the career swings, from the highs of releasing the first hit to the frustrating lows when the momentum stops.

Although the obstacles to stardom are heartbreaking, these singers are committed to their art. With determination and style these seven have pressed onward with club appearances and recordings. They survive through their savvy mix of talent, hubris, and honesty about their lives and their music.

David Freeland is an oral historian and artistic adviser of a performance series at Columbia University's Miller Theatre. He has been a guest lecturer at Columbia's School for Social Work.

For over 200 years in African-American churches throughout the country, gospel and spiritual music have offered solace and been a source of celebration, leaving a mark not only on the Christian world, but on popular music as well. Ev'ry Time I Feel the Spirit contains the lyrics and music of 101 of the most widely known and cherished of these pieces, ranging from heartring spirituals sung during slave times (Steal Away; Swing Low, Sweet Chariot) to songs of unity from the civil rights movement and contemporary times (We Shall Overcome, I'll Fly Away). The book also presents a biography of each composer and the history of the evolution of each song, examining the role it played in enabling African-Americans to develop the strength to carry on in the face of adversity. An important historical document as well as an inspirational gift, the book captures the rich connections between song and experience as no other volume does.

This awesome RandB fake book features melody lines, lyrics and chords for 375 classics, including 125 songs added to the 2nd edition: After the Love Has Gone * Ain't No Mountain High Enough * Baby Love * Best of My Love * Dancing in the Street * Do You Know Where You're Going To? * Everybody Plays the Fool, Sometime * Fire * The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face * For Once in My Life * Get Ready * Get Up (I Feel Like Being) A Sex Machine * Green Onions * Heatwave * Here and Now * Hero * I Can Love You Like That * I Got You (I Feel Good) * I Heard It Through the Grapevine * I Second That Emotion * I'll Be There * I'll Make Love to You * Iko Iko * In the Midnight Hour * In the Still of the Nite (I'll Remember) * Just Once * Kansas City * Let's Get It On * The Loco-Motion * Love's Theme * Mercy, Mercy (The Ecology) * My Guy * (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman * On Broadway * One Sweet Day * Papa Was a Rolling Stone * Reach Out, I'll Be There * Respect * Save the Best for Last * September * Sexual Healing * Theme from "Shaft" * Shop Around * (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay * Still * Tears of a Clown * Tell It Like It Is * The Tracks of My Tears * Up on the Roof * Walk on By * What's Going On * and many more. Two indexes feature songs listed alphabetically by title and by artist. For all "C" instruments.

In this remarkable book, Douglas Wolk recreates the evening of October 24th 1962, at Harlem's Apollo Theatre, an evening at the epicentre of Cold War tensions. An evening when James Brown took the stage to be faced by 1500 screaming fans - fans who thought they might well be dead within a week. Wolk reconstructs, in great detail, what took place (and was recorded) inside the Apollo that night: one of the tightest, most legendary performances ever put down on tape. 33 1/3 is a series of short books about critically acclaimed and much-loved albums of the last 40 years. Focusing on one album rather than an artist's entire output, the books dispense with the standard biographical background that fans know already, and cut to the heart of the music on each album. The authors provide fresh, original perspectives, often through their access to and relationships with the key figures involved in the recording of these albums. By turns obsessive, passionate, creative, and informed, the books in this series demonstrate many different ways of writing about music. (A task that can be, as Elvis Costello famously observed, as tricky as dancing about architecture.) What binds this series together, and what brings it to life, is that all of the authors - musicians, scholars, and writers - are deeply in love with the album they have chosen. Previous titles in this now well-established series have beaten sales expectations and received excellent review coverage - the third batch is sure to continue this success. More titles follow in the spring of 2005.

When recalling the roots of soul music, most people are likely to name Memphis, Detroit, New Orleans, Muscle Shoals, or Macon. But Florida also has a rich soul music history?an important cultural legacy that has often gone unrecognized. Florida Soul celebrates great artists of the Sunshine State who produced some of the most electric, emotive soul music America has ever heard. This book tells the story of Ray Charles's musical upbringing in Florida, where he wrote his first songs and made his first recordings. It highlights the careers of Pensacola singers James and Bobby Purify and their producer, Papa Don Schroeder. Florida Soul reveals how Hank Ballard created his international hit song ""The Twist"" after seeing the dance in Tampa and profiles Gainesville singer Linda Lyndell (""What a Man""). Miami's Overtown and Liberty City neighborhoods produced Sam Moore of the legendary duo Sam and Dave, Willie Clarke and Johnny Pearsall of Deep City Records, and singer Helene Smith. Miami was also the longtime headquarters of Henry Stone, whose influential company T.K. Productions put out hits by Timmy Thomas, Latimore, Betty Wright, and KC and the Sunshine Band. Stone's artists and distribution deals influenced charts and radio airplay across the world. Born in the era of segregation with origins in gospel, rhythm and blues, and jazz and reaching maturity during the civil rights movement, soul music is still enjoyed today, still very much a part of our collective culture. John Capouya draws on extensive interviews with surviving musicians to re-create the excitement and honor the achievements of soul's golden age, establishing Florida as one of the great soul music capitals of the United States.

Formed by five young black men from Chicago, The Flamingos rose to prominence as one of the top vocal acts of the 1950s rock and roll explosion. They appeared in motion pictures and turned out a string of hit records that have remained popular for more than a half-century. Providing a wealth of never-before-told stories of the influential quintet and their experiences in a white-dominated industry, this book details the back-room record deals, life on the road, the creative process, meticulous recording sessions and live performances, based on interviews with original members and those who worked with them.

In the sound of the 1960s and 1970s, nothing symbolized the rift between black and white America better than the seemingly divided genres of country and soul. Yet the music emerged from the same songwriters, musicians, and producers in the recording studios of Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee, and Muscle Shoals, Alabama--what Charles L. Hughes calls the ""country-soul triangle."" In legendary studios like Stax and FAME, integrated groups of musicians like Booker T. and the MGs and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section produced music that both challenged and reconfirmed racial divisions in the United States. Working with artists from Aretha Franklin to Willie Nelson, these musicians became crucial contributors to the era's popular music and internationally recognized symbols of American racial politics in the turbulent years of civil rights protests, Black Power, and white backlash. Hughes offers a provocative reinterpretation of this key moment in American popular music and challenges the conventional wisdom about the racial politics of southern studios and the music that emerged from them. Drawing on interviews and rarely used archives, Hughes brings to life the daily world of session musicians, producers, and songwriters at the heart of the country and soul scenes. In doing so, he shows how the country-soul triangle gave birth to new ways of thinking about music, race, labor, and the South in this pivotal period.

In this exciting, original and inspiring book, 75 of the world's most iconic musicians reveal - many for the first time - their thoughts on creating music. Psychologist Jenny Boyd has probed the minds and souls of these artists and has delved into the drive to create, the importance of nurturing creativity, the role of unconscious influences and the effects of chemicals and drugs on the creative process. Music legend who contributed exclusive interviews include: Eric Clapton George Harrison Julian Lennon Jackson Browne David Crosby Stephen Stills Graham Nash Don Henley Hank Marvin Keith Richards Ravi Shankar Ringo Starr Steve Winwood Mick Fleetwood Stevie Nicks Joni Mitchell

"Mek Some Noise," Timothy RommenOCOs ethnographic study of Trinidadian gospel music, engages the multiple musical styles circulating in the nationOCOs Full Gospel community and illustrates the carefully negotiated and contested spaces that they occupy in relationship to questions of identity. By exploring gospelypso, jamoo (JehovahOCOs music), gospel dancehall, and North American gospel music, along with the discourses that surround performances in these styles, he illustrates the extent to which value, meaning, and appropriateness are continually circumscribed and reinterpreted in the process of coming to terms with what it looks and sounds like to be a Full Gospel believer in Trinidad. The local, regional, and transnational implications of these musical styles, moreover, are read in relationship to their impact on belief (and vice versa), revealing the particularly nuanced poetics of conviction that drive both apologists and detractors of these styles. Rommen sets his investigation against a concisely drawn, richly historical narrative and introduces a theoretical approach which he calls the ethics of styleOCoa model that privileges the convictions embedded in this context and that emphasizes their role in shaping the terms upon which identity is continually being constructed in Trinidad. The result is an extended meditation on the convictions that lie behind the creation and reception of style in Full Gospel Trinidad."Copub: Center for Black Music Research ""

Re-release of the first book ever published in America about the legendary Motown Record Company, with a new foreword by legendary music journalist Greil Marcus! In January 1959 Berry Gordy borrowed $800 from his family and founded the Detroit-based record company that in less than a decade was to become the largest black-owned business in the United States. It also became one of the most productive and influential producers of popular music anywhere in the world, mainly by combining the best features of black and white American popular music. Even a short list of the recording and performing talent that Gordy recruited, trained and produced for his company is awesome: Diana Ross, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye and Mary Wells. The Story of Motown is the story of Berry Gordy's triumph over powerful, established financial interests, entrenched popular taste, bigotry and racism. By inventing a sound that appealed to whites as well as blacks, and that was immediately identifiable to an entire generation of listeners, Gordy demonstrated his genius as a producer; by breaking the exploitive practice of "cover" records, he helped black artists control their own music and share in the proceeds of hits; and by the sheer force of his will, courage, and intelligence, he demonstrated that a black man from the urban ghetto could aspire to and conquer the heights of traditional American business, including the movie business. Unfortunately, while doing all of this, he also found new ways to exploit his talented artists and eventually lost many of them to companies that paid them more. The Story of Motown is the story of the rise and fall of one of the most important cultural touchstones in American history

In Crossing Bar Lines: The Politics and Practices of Black Musical Space James Gordon Williams reframes the nature and purpose of jazz improvisation to illuminate the cultural work being done by five creative musicians between 2005 and 2019. The political thought of five African American improvisers-trumpeters Terence Blanchard and Ambrose Akinmusire, drummers Billy Higgins and Terri Lyne Carrington, and pianist Andrew Hill-is documented through insightful, multilayered case studies that make explicit how these musicians articulate their positionality in broader society. Informed by Black feminist thought, these case studies unite around the theory of Black musical space that comes from the lived experiences of African Americans as they improvise through daily life. The central argument builds upon the idea of space-making and the geographic imagination in Black Geographies theory. Williams considers how these musicians interface with contemporary social movements like Black Lives Matter, build alternative institutional models that challenge gender imbalance in improvisation culture, and practice improvisation as joyful affirmation of Black value and mobility. Both Terence Blanchard and Ambrose Akinmusire innovate musical strategies to address systemic violence. Billy Higgins's performance is discussed through the framework of breath to understand his politics of inclusive space. Terri Lyne Carrington confronts patriarchy in jazz culture through her Social Science music project. The work of Andrew Hill is examined through the context of his street theory, revealing his political stance on performance and pedagogy. All readers will be elevated by this innovative and timely book that speaks to issues that continue to shape the lives of African Americans today.

It's been over ten years since Big was killed. I grieved for him for a very long time. And then, as time passed, the icy wall of grief surrounding my heart began to thaw and I began to heal. I remarried, had more children, and continued to record and release more music. I continued to live my life. And while I can never discount the time I spent with Big, I've never felt the need to live in the past.

But sometimes, I still find myself thinking about Big being rushed the hospital, and I break down in tears.

It's not just because we hung up on each other during what would be our last telephone conversation. And it's not because I am raising our son, a young man who has never known his father.

It's partly all of those things. But mainly it's because he wasn't ready to go. His debut album was called Ready to Die. But in the end, he wasn't. Big never got a chance to tell his story. It's been left to others to tell it for him. In making the decision to tell my own story, it means that I've become one of those who can give insight to who Big really was. But I can only speak on what he meant to me.

Yet I also want people to understand that although he was a large part of my life, my story doesn't actually begin or end with Big's death. My journey has been complicated on many levels. And since I am always linked to Big, there are a lot of misconceptions about who I really am.

I hope that in reading my words, there is inspiration to be found. Perhaps you can duplicate my success or achieve where I have failed. Maybe you can skip over the mistakes I've made. Use my life as an example-of what to do and in some cases, what not to do.

It's not easy putting your life out therefor the masses. But I've decided I'll tell my own story. For Big. For my children. And for myself.

The book's mission is to document the legends of the Memphis soul music business. Photographer Thom Gilbert set up a photo studio at Royal Studios in Memphis, home of the famed Hi Records that launched the careers of Al Green, Ann Peebles, and dozens of others. The studio's "green room" was filled with soul music royalty: Bobby "Blue" Bland in his signature nautical cap, several of the Hodges brothers who make up the incomparable Hi Rhythm Section were on hand, Stax Records musicians Bobby Manuel, Lester Snell were there actually working on a recording, but pausing to have their portraits taken. Gilbert has captured images of what seems like every living person related to Memphis soul music. From Rev. Jesse Jackson, who recorded spoken word albums on Stax s Respect Records label, to Sam Moore of the indelible soul duo Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Steve Cropper, B.B. King, Bobby Rush, and many others, including the lesser known but equally vital session players, writers, engineers, publicists who contributed to what is now world renowned as The Memphis Sound.

Nelson George and Alan Leeds have assembled the first comprehensive collection of writings about the late, great Godfather of Soul, creating a fascinating mosaic of the man and the musician. Known as the hardest-working man in show business, James Brown embodied rhythm and blues, funk and soul, and sensuality. His musical innovations in such indelible grooves as "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine," "I Got You (I Feel Good)," and "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," transformed American music. To appreciate Brown's immeasurable influence, to chronicle his professional and personal triumphs and struggles, and to capture his essence, writers from four decades weigh in on the legendary Soul Brother Number One. What emerges is a tribute to a trailblazer--one that no dedicated fan or music history buff will want to be without.

He was the Wicked Wilson Pickett, the legendary soul man whose forty-plus hits included "In the Midnight Hour," "634-5789," "Land of 1000 Dances," "Mustang Sally," and "Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You." Remarkably handsome and with the charisma to match, Wilson Pickett was considered by many to be the greatest, the most visceral and sensual of the classic 1960s soul singers, and as a man who turned screaming into an art form, the most forceful of them all. He was the living embodiment of soul. More than that, Wilson Pickett's journey reads like a guide to popular black American music in the late 20th century. From the gospel-rich cotton fields of Alabama to the pre-Motown metropolis of Detroit, and throughout his career at Atlantic Records-he was the first artist on that label to record at Stax in Memphis, Fame in Muscle Shoals, and Sigma in Philadelphia, and rehabilitated an exiled Bobby Womack and introduced Duane Allman along the way-Wilson Pickett led the shifts in Rhythm and Blues and soul music. Pickett's downfall, precipitated by the move towards softer soul and then disco in the 1970s, proved equally dramatic, leading to a heavy alcohol and drug addiction, a reputation for violence and gun use, a no-show for his induction into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, and two jail terms later in the decade. Nonetheless, the "Wicked" Pickett climbed out of these depths to end his career with a Grammy-nominated album before his death in 2006. For this first-ever accounting of Wilson Pickett's life, bestselling biographer Tony Fletcher interviewed members of the singer's family, friends and partners, along with dozens of his studio and touring musicians. Offering equal attention to Pickett's personal and professional life, with detailed insight into his legendary studio sessions and his combative road style, In the Midnight Hour: The Life and Soul of Wilson Pickett is the essential telling of an epic life.