Texas journalist Phinney's first book traces the history of race relations as seen through commingling musical crossovers and a parade of personalities: from Al Jolson to Louis Jordan, Billie Holiday to Bonnie Raitt, Zip Coon to Pat Boone. This comprehensive coverage spans all genres, including blues, country, gospel, jazz, R&B, ragtime, rock and rap. With blackface minstrelsy, "whites opened a portal to their own hidden creative impulses," and Phinney explores this theme as he covers "white men in transparent blackface" (Eminem), "multi-culti chanteuses" (Mariah Carey) and "sepia Sinatras" (Johnny Mathis). Anecdotes abound, and many music history milestones punctuate Phinney's probing critical commentary. Analyzing Nat King Cole's singing style and how it made him "one of the first modern artists to 'cross over' from black to white popularity," Phinney recounts how Cole, only months before the premiere of his 1956–1957 NBC television show, was assaulted onstage in Birmingham, Ala., by five white men. Phinney writes with verve and vitality, articulately charting hundreds of black and white intersections in this definitive roadmap to racial rhythms. 45 b&w photos.
(Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Jim Crow to Eminem, white culture has been transformed
by black music. To be so influenced by the boundless
imagination of a race brought to America in chains sets
up a fascinating irony, and
Souled American, an ambitious
and comprehensive look at race relations as seen through
the prism of music, examines that irony fearlessly—with
illuminating results. Tracing a direct line from plantation field
hollers to gangsta rap, author Kevin Phinney explains how
blacks and whites exist in a constant tug-of-war as they
create, re-create, and claim each phase of popular music.
Meticulously researched, the book includes dozens of exclusive
celebrity interviews that reveal the day-to-day struggles
and triumphs of sharing the limelight. Unique, intriguing,
Souled American should be required reading for every
American interested in music, in history,
or in healing our country’s troubled
race relations.
• Combines social history and pop culture
to reveal how jazz, blues, soul, country,
and hip-hop have developed
• Includes interviews with Ray Charles,
Willie Nelson, B. B. King, David Byrne,
Sly Stone, Donna Summer, Bonnie Raitt,
and dozens more
• Confronts questions of race and finds
meaningful answers
• Ideal for Black History Month
