Product Description: Describes the rise of soul and R&B music, beginning with its roots in the church gospel sound mixing with the rock and roll of the 1950s. Includes stories about early stars, such as Ray Charles and Sam Cooke, the Motown sound, and famous studios such as Stax and FAME...read more

Product Description: Soul music has specific sounds. Soul as it appears in the term 'Soul jazz' has a vastly different sound to soul as it appears in the term 'Nu Classic Soul' yet there are links between the two. The socio-cultural connotations of the two 'souls' are also vastly different as one would expect given the fact that they pertain to eras that are separated by some four decades...read more

Product Description: A singer calls out to the crowd. An electric bass thumps out a beat. Horns blare and strings swirl. These are the sounds of R & B. Rhythm and blues music evolved from all sorts of sounds: swinging jazz, gritty blues, and African American spiritual songs...read more

"Exceptionally illuminating and philosophically sophisticated."---Ted Cohen, Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago"In this audacious and long-awaited book, Joel Rudinow takes seriously a range of interrelated issues that most music theorizing is embarrassed to tackle. People often ask me about music and spirituality. With Soul Music, I can finally recommend a book that offers genuine philosophical insight into the topic."---Theodore Gracyk, Professor of Philosophy, Minnesota State University MoorheadThe idea is as strange as it is commonplace---that the "soul" in soul music is more than just a name, that somehow the music truly taps into something essential rooted in the spiritual notion of the soul itself. Or is it strange? From the civil rights movement and beyond, soul music has played a key, indisputable role in moments of national healing. Of course, American popular music has long been embroiled in controversies over its spiritual purity (or lack thereof). But why? However easy it might seem to dismiss these ideas and debates as quaint and merely symbolic, they persist.In Soul Music: Tracking the Spiritual Roots of Pop from Plato to Motown, Joel Rudinow, a philosopher of music, takes these peculiar notions and exposes them to serious scrutiny. How, Rudinow asks, does music truly work upon the soul, individually and collectively? And what does it mean to say that music can be spiritually therapeutic or toxic? This illuminating, meditative exploration leads from the metaphysical idea of the soul to the legend of Robert Johnson to the philosophies of Plato and Leo Strauss to the history of race and racism in American popular culture to current clinical practices of music therapy.Joel Rudinow teaches in the Philosophy and Humanities Departments at Santa Rosa Junior College and is the coauthor of Invitation to Critical Thinking and the coeditor of Ethics and Values in the Information Age.

Product Description: Appealing to a wide range of music lovers, this fascinating account explores an earlier era in soul music from a contemporary perspective. Highlighting previously underexposed and underappreciated performers and recordings, this invaluable reference rediscovers numerous ballads recorded by American soul singers during a 25-year postwar period...read more

Chronicles the phenomenal rise of Motown Records and profiles its famous personalities, including founder Berry Gordy, jr, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and Smokey Robinson

Product Description: Soul Covers is an engaging look at how three very different rhythm and blues performers—Aretha Franklin, Al Green, and Phoebe Snow—used cover songs to negotiate questions of artistic, racial, and personal authenticity. Through close readings of song lyrics and the performers’ statements about their lives and work, the literary critic Michael Awkward traces how Franklin, Green, and Snow crafted their own musical identities partly by taking up songs associated with artists such as Dinah Washington, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, George Gershwin, Billie Holiday, and the Supremes...read more

Product Description: Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music is a unique oral history. Here are the recollections of many of the giants of soul—Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, James Brown, Mary Wilson, Marvin Gaye, Screaming Jay Hawkins, and Wilson Pickett...read more

Discusses the story of the Marvelettes, describing how they got started, the struggles they faced both personally and professionally, and the eventual breakup of the group. (view table of contents)

Product Description: This is the book for lovers of Motown! Author and Motown historian Bill Dahl has expertly compiled this comprehensive guide to the musical combination of pop and gospel, known as Motown. This new compilation features an A-to-Z listing and biography of nearly every Motown group since its beginning in 1959...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Offers a collection of articles discussing the sucess of Motown Records and features interviews with its founder Berry Gordy, Jr. and Motown's artists, musicians, writers, and producers. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Goin' Back to Memphis is an engaging survey of Memphis music—including blues bandleader W. C. Handy, fiery ex-prostitute Memphis Minnie, Fiddling Abe Fortas, harmonica wizard Sonny Boy Williamson, and the King, Elvis Presley—and a revealing history of the town that defined blues, rhythm and blues, and rock ' n ' roll...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Chronicles the history of Soul Music from its origins in the rural South to its heydey as a multimillion dollar business (view table of contents)

Traces the history of the Memphis music scene in the words of the performers, record producers, and composers who created it (view table of contents)