Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom

by Peter Guralnick

Overview

A gripping narrative that captures the tumult and liberating energy of a nation in transition, Sweet Soul Music is an intimate portrait of the legendary performers--Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, James Brown, Solomon Burke, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and Al Green among them--who merged gospel and rhythm and blues to create Southern soul music. Through rare interviews and with unique insight, Peter Guralnick tells the definitive story of the songs that inspired a generation and forever changed the sound of American music.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316206754
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	12/20/2012
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	26 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Peter Guralnick has been called "a national resource" by Nat Hentoff for work that has argued passionately and persuasively for the vitality of this country's intertwined black and white musical traditions. His books include the prize-winning two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love. Of the first Bob Dylan wrote, "Elvis steps from the pages. You can feel him breathe. This book cancels out all others." Of the biography as a whole, the New York Times Book Review declared in a lead review, "It must be ranked among the most ambitious and crucial biographical undertakings yet devoted to a major American figure of the second half of the twentieth century." Other books include an acclaimed trilogy on American roots music, Sweet Soul Music, Lost Highway, and Feel Like Going Home; the biographical inquiry Searching for Robert Johnson; and the novel Nighthawk Blues. His most recent book, Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke, has been hailed by the San Fransisco Chronicle as "monumental, panoramic...an epic tale told against a backdrop of brilliant, shimmering music, intense personal melodrama, and vast social changes." He is currently working on a biography of Sam Phillips.

Editorial Reviews

"A definitive chronicle of one of the great creative periods in American pop history," said LJ's reviewer of this 1986 volume, which tracks the rise and fall of a collaboration of white and black musicians, songwriters, and singers from the 1950s to its peak and disintegration a decade later. (LJ 6/1/86) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal