Heart & Soul: A Celebration of Black Music Style in America 1930-1975 - Hardcover

Bob Merlis; Davin Seay

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9781556705380: Heart & Soul: A Celebration of Black Music Style in America 1930-1975

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1556705387 ISBN 13: 9781556705380

Publisher: Stewart Tabori & Chang, 1997

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This special Limited Edition (only 175 copies) comes in a cloth slip case numbered and signed by the authors, including the legendary Etta James.

From the decline of the Big Band sound to the emergence of Black Pride, Sly, Superfly and the Funk, Heart & Soul celebrates the nearly half-century of vibrant, flamboyant and extrvagant flowering in African American culture that enriched the entire world. Though the roots of black style can be said to extend back to the spirituals and minstrel shows of the 1800s, or even further, to the signifying rituals of the African homeland, there was without question, a golden age of black style that exploded between 1930 and 1875.

It was an age of pencil-thin mustaches and pompadours, of zoot suits and drapes, jumpsuits and jive; a time when piano pounders and duckwalkers battered down the color barrier and barrel-chested bluesmen made strong men weep and women go weak in the knees. Fropm Cab Calloway to Blind Lemon Jefferson to Ray Charles; from gospel to psychedelia; from the Platters, the Four Tops and Otis Redding to the Delfonics, Al Green and Bootsy, it was an era of audacious showmen (an women), outrageous charlatans and contagiously exciting artists.

Here is a musical history told in legends, facts, and rumors every bit as colorful as the images that illustrate the book. The story is filled with characters such as O.V. Wright, a singer deemed "too ugly to tour"; Frnakie Lymon, who received a hot dog as full payment for some of the greatest R&B songs of all time; LaVern Baker, a.k.a. "Little Miss Sharecropper"; Bille Holiday shooting dice with the boys on the bus; Solomon Burke, R&B immortal and Doctor of Mortuary Sciences; soul ghoul Screamin' Jay Hawkins locked in his coffin by the Drifters; and many otehr talented and unique entertainers.

Illustrated with more than 400 original photographs, publicity shots, posters, programs, advertisements, program covers, magazine covers, album covers and sleeves, sheet music, and record labels in full color, this is a story of hot music and high style, of people who made history by being themselves and mad ethe world a richer, wilder and definitely cooler place for the rest of us.

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About the Author:

Bob Merlis, a graduate of Columbia University, was a senior executive at Warner Brothers Records for thirty years and is a board member of the Blues Foundation and a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Nominating Committee. A contibuting editor to the Catalog of Cool and its sequel, Too Cool, he writes for Automobile Magazine, Details and other magazines and was guest curator for the Petersen Automotive Museum's Cars and Guitars of Rock 'n Roll exhibition.

Davin Seay is a journalist and author who has worked in the music business for thirty years. His previous books include The Wanderer: Dion's Story; Take Me To The River, the biography of Al Green and The Doggfather in collaboration with rap superstar Snoop Dog.

Etta James, legendary vocalist and songwriter, began her musical carrer as a gospel prodigy at ae six. Ten yars later, she was a nationally known R&B star, renowned for such hits as Tell Mama and for working closely with artists such as Sam Cooke and Little Richard. A survivor in the truest sense of the word, Etta James overcame heroin addiction and took her career to new heights during the 1990s. She is the author of an autobiography, Rage to Survive.

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