Sweet Soul Music

Sweet Soul Music by Peter Guralnick

Category: History of Rock & Roll Grade: B+

First a setup since this probably won't be the last music related book over the next couple of months. Carolyn and I helped underwrite a series of "lectures" in Marble Falls by Clifford Antone, the owner of Antone's Club in Austin. Clifford opened his first blues club more than 30 years ago and he' become an expert on the History of Rock & Roll, especially pre-Beatles. We've seen 3 of the 4 lectures so far - one on Sun Records (Elvis, Johnny Cash...), one on Stax and Muscle Shoals (Otis Redding, James Brown...) and one on Motown (Tempatations, Smokey Robinson, Four Tops...). The last one is this week and is on the Chicago scene (Muddy Waters...). They've been pretty incredible and have really piqued my interest in the stories of pop music of the last half century or so.

With learning more about this as the goal, Peter Guralnick was a natural one to turn to. He started writing on blues, soul and rock for the Boston Phoenix back in the 60s and is really one of the experts now. He wrote a definitive two-volume bio of Elvis that I may get to and a recently published one about Sam Cooke. Sweet Soul Music is a detailed story about roughly 20 years in the history of Memphis-based blues and soul. Most of the book is about the legendary record label - Stax - that, for a long time, was an incredible story of a multi-racial music company.

Guralnick is a terrific writer who interviewed hundreds of people for this book and his other writing. The stories he tells are great and he makes no attempt to sugar coat some of the dumb decision, bad personality conflicts, etc. of the times. What makes the book interesting is story after story about people who came from absolutely nothing to become both business and artistic successes. Any book that can make heroes out of hard-core gospel-based entertainers like James Brown and, at the same time, New York-born, Jewish guys live Jerry Wexler almost has to be interesting. As anybody who grew up with this kind of music knows, there's also a fair amount of tragedy with the deaths, at very young ages, of two of the biggest stars Stax created -- Sam Cooke and Otis Redding (by the way, my personal choice for the best soul singer of all time).

This was a fast, entertaining read, especially if you know and love the music Guralnick talks about. The only reason the book didn't get an A isn't the author's fault. This book was written twenty years ago and, because of that, sometimes feels dated. E.g. while Ray Charles gets plenty of respect in this book, Guralnick leaves him recording country songs and obviously doesn't see the massive super-stardom Ray achieved before he died.