Soul Covers

Informationen zum Autor Michael Awkward is Gayl A. Jones Collegiate Professor of Afro-American Literature and Culture at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Scenes of Instruction: A Memoir, also published by Duke University Press; Negotiating Difference: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Positionality; and Inspiriting Influences: Tradition, Revision, and Afro-American Women's Novels. Klappentext "Michael Awkward's "Soul Covers" signals the beginning of a new era in the critical engagement with African American music of the 1960s and 1970s. Moving beyond the historical overviews and critical biographies that have defined the field, he provides three crucial albums with the kinds of close reading usually reserved for canonical literary texts. His choices are unusual and inspired, offering pathways into a richer understanding of Aretha Franklin, Al Green, and the greatly underappreciated Phoebe Snow. Awkward captures the complex music of the era in writing that, like its subjects, has real soul."--Craig Werner, author of "A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America" Zusammenfassung Cultural and literary study of the construction of racial and artistic identity in soul cover albums of three popular artists--Aretha Franklin! Al Green! and Phoebe Snow. Inhaltsverzeichnis Acknowledgments ix Preface: "How the Parts Relate to the Whole" xiii Introduction: "I Live in the Lyrics": On Truth, Intent, Image, Identity, and Song Covers 1 "She's the Next One": Aretha Franklin's Unforgettable: A Tribute to Dinah Washington and the Black Women's Vocal Legacy 25 "Something like Wholeness": Al Green's Call Me and the Struggle for Thematic Integrity 81 "Miss Snow, Are You Black?": Second Childhood and the Cultural Politics of Musical Style in the Post-Civil Rights Era 137 Coda: "Going Home" 201 Notes 213 Bibliography 225 Index 235

Texte du rabat

"Michael Awkward's "Soul Covers" signals the beginning of a new era in the critical engagement with African American music of the 1960s and 1970s. Moving beyond the historical overviews and critical biographies that have defined the field, he provides three crucial albums with the kinds of close reading usually reserved for canonical literary texts. His choices are unusual and inspired, offering pathways into a richer understanding of Aretha Franklin, Al Green, and the greatly underappreciated Phoebe Snow. Awkward captures the complex music of the era in writing that, like its subjects, has real soul."--Craig Werner, author of "A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America"

Résumé
Cultural and literary study of the construction of racial and artistic identity in soul cover albums of three popular artists--Aretha Franklin, Al Green, and Phoebe Snow.

Contenu

Acknowledgments ix
Preface: "How the Parts Relate to the Whole" xiii
Introduction: "I Live in the Lyrics": On Truth, Intent, Image, Identity, and Song Covers 1
"She's the Next One": Aretha Franklin's Unforgettable: A Tribute to Dinah Washington and the Black Women's Vocal Legacy 25
"Something like Wholeness": Al Green's Call Me and the Struggle for Thematic Integrity 81
"Miss Snow, Are You Black?": Second Childhood and the Cultural Politics of Musical Style in the Post-Civil Rights Era 137
Coda: "Going Home" 201
Notes 213
Bibliography 225
Index 235