Rhythm & Blues Books

Standing in the Shadows of Motown: The Life and Music of Legendary Bassist James Jamerson

Allan Slutsky, James Jamerson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 35 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

GREAT BOOK & 2 CD SET! FOR BASSIST ..AND MUSIC FANS! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

James Jamerson is one of the top bassist of all time and this book will give bassist some insight to his genius. I never learned to read music, but I was born with an exception ear! I remember a long time ago, going for a job in a pit orchestra. The musical director was not all that impressed with my playing on the first day, because I didn't read music and I kind of fumbled through the rehearsal. I went home that night and learned the entire show from a tape. On the next rehearsal, when we started to play the opening number, the conductor stopped in the middle of the song, looked at me and said...."Turn up the bass!" ..this made me very happy, as I always felt a little inferior not being able to read :-)

The book covers Jamerson's story and shows many of his classic bass lines for those of you who do read. It's no walk in the park, but it's time well spent and will take your playing to another level.

The book comes with 2 CDs full of Jamerson's bass lines and many top bassist playing their favorite Jamerson tunes. It's all very interesting for musicians and non musicians alike and well worth the price! I never knew how much this guy influenced my playing until I really sat down and listened to him! What a great talent!

Editorial Review:

Bassist James Jamerson was the embodiment of the Motown spirit and groove - the invisible entity whose playing inspired thousands. His tumultuous life and musical brilliance are explored in depth through hundreds of interviews, 49 transcribed musical scores, two hours of recorded all-star performances, and more than 50 rarely seen photos in this stellar tribute to behind-the-scenes Motown. Features a 120-minute CD!Allan Slutsky's 2002 documentary of the same name is the winner of the New York Film Critics "Best Documentary of the Year" award!

Rage To Survive: The Etta James Story

David Ritz, Etta James

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Rage de survivre 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

The title of this book, Rage to Survive, is very well chosen, hinting is at does to the French phrase "rage de vivre," rage to live.

I grew up with Motown, Aretha, and Otis Redding, but never heard of Etta James until I was over 50! The singer I know only thanks to YouTube, but what I heard there was so talented it's almost scary: soul and blues, sure, but also country and jazz. I suspect that her drug addiction in the late 50s and early 60s led the publicity industry to shun her. (It was only starting in 1968 that one could do drugs and not get the silent treatment.) I know that this is an "as told to" book, but how many soul musicians have bothered to write any kind of memoir? This book deserves to become a classic of its kind.

Amy Weinhaus sounds fresh and interesting only because Etta James is so little known. Weinhaus's career may be over, and she probably won't live to see 30. James is 71. If I am right, Weinhaus will never have a child. James performs with her sons. Etta, you are one tough momma...

Editorial Review:

Here is the story of perhaps the finest soul singer of the rock era--Etta James.

One of the great women of American music, equally at home singing blues and jazz, Etta regales us with tales of her chaotic childhood, the stars she has known, and her troubled trip to stardom in this mesmerizing autobiography.

Temptations, Updated

Otis Williams

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 67 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Temptations Updated Book 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I love the Temptations, and this is an outstanding book. It gives you all of the history that wasn't in the movie. It is a must have for all Temptations fans.

Moive 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I am in the process of reading the book and i like it so far but i love the moive sooooooo much i watch it like everyday its addicting! I'm probally the youngest temptations fan i'm 14 years old and love them ..... my favorites are eddie and david i think they are the best voices.





let me close by saying the tempts willl never die and i thinkt their the best group ever! noone can top them

Dynamic & Sensational 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is excellent. I think the 70's & the Temps were in the best era of all centuries!

The information fans of The Temptations wanted to know. Tfhanks Otis. 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Otis did a great job on this book. I appreciate and respect Otis for not really saying bad things about the group. I belive he could have told much more of their personal struggles and personal business, but he chose not to. I think it take a respectable man to write a book as well written as this one is about the Tempts and yet leave them their dignity intact. This show the love and respect Otis have for them. I tip my hat to him.

Thanks Otis for going back and including Melvin(blue)in your book. He was wonderful.

Editorial Review:

Williams, a founding member of the legendary Motown group the Temptations, tells the story of the group's formation and its years of musical success.

High Times Hard Times

Anita O'Day, George Eells

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Excellent read with some editing flaws 5 out of 5 stars.
17 of 19 people found this review helpful.

At 3 a.m. last night I finally read a last chapter,couldnt put it down before.Yes,Anita O'Day writting voice sounds very much like her singing self: ironic,witty,tough hip "swing chick" (her words) who didnt give a damn what others think.Her self-destructivness very much echoes another famous artist (in rock music) Marianne Faithfull,in fact this two women have much more in common than you think.Both survivors,both eventually come back and yes,both are still live preformers.Her opinion about other jazz singers are sometimes strange ("Like me,Ella never had a great voice"?) - but think that she was commercially oversahdowed by Fizgerald.As much as Anita's "Verve" albums are beautiful and timeless (I really think woman was a highest-class jazz improvisator,she grew up from Billie Holiday and made her own style) this book is sometimes painful to read.I believe there is a general curiousity about somebody's dirty linen,in this case it almost overshadow her art - at some points it reads like 50's detective story,with smokey jazz clubs,jazz musicians as a drug addicts and cops always around to "find" (read:set up) drugs in dressing room.With all beautiful music she made,its a pity that editor of the book find more interesting to emphasise her drug addiction,since her arrests,sanatoriums,jails and courts get more space than anything else.I dont think this was her intention,probably publisher wanted scandalous story,but if you dont know her music,this book can make you think that Anita O'Day was a famous junkie who had a music as a hobby.

Editorial Review:

"...in the tradition of the best jazz autobiographies...a fascinating travelogue through the jazz world, filled with vivid images of Gene Krupa, Stan Kenton, Roy Eldridge and Billie Holiday...Her prose is as hip as her music." -The New York Times Book Review

Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

John Lydon, Keith Zimmerman, Kent Zimmerman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 64 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Much has been written about the Sex Pistols. Much of it has either been sensationalism or journalistic psychobabble. The rest has been mere spite. This book is as close to the truth as one can get ... This means contradictions and insults have not been edited, and neither have the compliments, if any. I have no time for lies or fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die."

So writes author John Lydon, a.k.a. Johnny Rotten, in his introduction to the book Rotten, an oral history of punk: angry, honest, and crackling with energy. Seventies punk has been romanticized by the media and the up-and-coming punk bands of today, but the sneering, leering disaffection of that time has been lost. Now, Lydon candidly and at times, dare we say it, fondly looks back at himself, the Sex Pistols, and the "no future" attitude of the time. Rolling Stone calls Lydon a "pavement philosopher whose Dickensian roots blossom with Joycean color," and the San Francisco Chronicle calls Rotten an "invaluable [book] ... sheds welcome light on that short period of great music and spasmodic cultural change."

Bollocks you say? Read, sneer, and enjoy or die.

Can't Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters

Robert Gordon

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Well Documented Biography 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 5 people found this review helpful.

How can one document the life of someone who spent the first 30+ years of his life as a poor, peasant cotton farmer? It's not easy to get a good biography on such an individual, but blues fans and historians have for years been tracking down information on the life of Muddy Waters for decades, and in this book that information is compiled in a well written, informative biography.

This book explores Muddy's life on the plantation, his early interest in music, his love life, his family life, his desire to become a famous blues musician, his travels, his successes and his failures.

The author is blunt. Obviously an admirer of Muddy Waters, the author does not hide the more shameful behavior of the great musician. Coming out of this book, I admire Muddy Waters as a musician and band leader. As a friend, a father, a husband, a person he is a disappointment.

Editorial Review:

The epic, rollicking, up-and-down life of Muddy Waters, who went from Mississippi farmhand to musical legend, who invented electric blues and created the template for the rock-and-roll band and its wild lifestyle, is brought into sharp focus in this widely acclaimed biography. - A book praised equally for its stylishness, its richly entertaining narrative, and its impeccable scholarship. - As a filmmaker, Robert Gordon directed the PBS American Masters documentary Muddy Waters Can't Be Satisfied and the award-winning blues documentary All Day and All Night, featuring B. B. King and Rufus Thomas.

Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye

David Ritz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 49 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Map of a troubled mind 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

A great history of american popular music and a portrait of a man whose life
is hard to understand, but this book manages to drive you through a difficult and fascinating journey.

Good 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Divided Soul was a very fascinating book, though at times the author was editorializing a little much. I enjoyed the read.

It is obvious that Marvin was highly emotionally disturbed, yet gifted. I find myself disliking his weak willed mama as much as his vicious, lazy and disturbed father. Yeah, yeah I know making disparaging comments about somebody's mama is a no Mrs. Gaye is just as responsible for Marvin's death as the father. She did not protect her child. She allowed a nothing of a strange man to live off her and physically and mentally torture her child. A parent's job is to protect their child from those within the house and outside.

Must all extremely talented people be nut cases?! I can imagine being famous can cause some to go crazy to some degree. But what happens to a person who comes into the business already emotionally fragile.

I agree with some, I feel that he was tired of the struggle of living and he purposely provoked his father, knowing that death would ensue. This could have been avoided if his mama had kicked that lazy fool out of the house when he was a very young child. She was the was supporting the family. He was a leech, a parasite. So I feel that she too was emotionally disturbed to some degree.

Marvin's trauma followed him to the grave yard.

Good read.

Editorial Review:

Drawing from interviews conducted before Marvin Gaye's death, acclaimed music writer David Ritz has created a full-scale portrait of the brilliant but tormented artist. With a cast of characters that includes Diana Ross, Berry Gordy, Smokey Robinson, and Stevie Wonder, this intimate biography is a definitive and enduring look at the man who embodied the very essence of the word soul.

Searching for Robert Johnson: The Life and Legend of the "King of the Delta Blues Singers"

Peter Guralnick

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Blues fans have long held up Robert Johnson's small but potent body of work as a slender pillar on which much modern blues and rock rest, and the songs themselves remain astonishing paradigms of the blues' most primordial style, the country blues of the Mississippi Delta. Yet, for decades after his murder in 1938, details of Johnson's life and clues into the genesis of his music consisted of little more than the evocative themes and settings of the songs themselves.

This brief but absorbing meditation on Johnson's life and art, originally published in 1989 in anticipation of the first release of his complete recordings, benefits from the detective work of earlier blues scholars, most notably Mack McCormick, who began piercing the veil surrounding Johnson's life in the '60s. By the '80s, reminiscences from the bluesman's contemporaries, more solid evidence of his shadowy lineage, and even the belated discovery of photographs added more dimension to McCormick's "phantom" Johnson. Yet, possibly by his own design, Robert Johnson remained more outline than flesh, still explained more lucidly in the fevered nightmares and earthy imagery of his songs than by the scattered details of his life.

Guralnick succeeds in conveying the power of Johnson's music and delineating both its origins and, ultimately, singular genius. His debts to delta blues avatars Charley Patton and Tommy Johnson are solidified, yet, more crucially, Guralnick roots Johnson's artistic growth in the specific context of this rural corner of Mississippi, at this particular moment between the world wars. He also frankly addresses the potency of Johnson's myth and an early death that only glorifies the brief, bright arc of his work. No less crucial is Guralnick's ability to convey the dark beauty of the music itself, giving Searching for Robert Johnson a broader sweep as an essential blues primer. --Sam Sutherland

I Put A Spell On You: The Autobiography Of Nina Simone

Nina Simone

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Tortured Soul 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

It is true that this book is not well written and seems to have been put together on the quick without any professional editing. My guess is that it was written as a means to make a fast buck. That said, the autobiography is worth reading because it is the only real glimpse many of us will ever get into the psyche of Nina Simone. I read that she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in the 1960s and this was kept secret until well after her death. I don't know for a fact if she actually had bipolar disorder. However, it is evident from reading her life story as told by her that she did have emotional and psychiatric problems. She made rash and erratic decisions for her and her daughter and her life seemed to be filled with self imposed chaos. She was an angry person, was always running from some thing, and blamed anyone and anything but herself for her unhappiness and problems. Most surprising to me was how she was always looking for someone, usually a man, to save her. I had no idea before reading this book that Nina Simone struggled so much with low self esteem, fear, hate, and erratic behavior. Her music is so powerful and she comes off as such a strong and solid person. That is why this book is worth reading. Compared with her music and stage persona, the autobiography shows a different side or Nina Simone. With the two combined, the reader realizes just how complex and even tragic, Nina Simone the woman was. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to know a little more about Nina Simone. She is an imperfect human being and this is her account of her life

Editorial Review:

"Ms. Simone's vocal and piano style make her a culture unto herself." --New York Times

A gorgeous, inimitable singer and songwriter, Nina Simone (1933-2003) changed the face of both music and race relations in America. She struck a chord with bluesy jazz ballads like "Put a Little Sugar in My Bowl" and powerful protest songs such as "Mississippi Goddam" and "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black," the anthem of the American Civil Rights movement. Coinciding with the re-release of her famous Philips Recordings, here are the reflections of the "High Priestess of Soul" on her own life.

The mesmerizing autobiography of one of the most revered soul, jazz, and blues divas of our time-the late Nina Simone.

Brother Ray: Ray Charles' Own Story

Ray Charles, David Ritz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

America, the beautiful... 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Read Ray Charles' profane, outrageously self-revealing "as-told -to" autobiography, then spin his epochal gospel drenched version of "America." This is an exemplary lifestory, and proof of the pudding as to the "why" of American exceptionalism, which came in for much ridicule in the last election cycle. Brother Ray overcame a succession of childhood traumas, both staggering and sadly commonplace (poverty in the segregated south, absent father, witnessing the accidental drowning of his brother at age 5, blindess, devoted but sickly mother dying when he's still a kid, 20 years of heroin addiction...); he went on the road as a professional musician when he was 15 years old; young Quincy Jones, encountering Ray pre-fame in his late teens said he seemed 100 years old. By 25, he had single-handedly invented soul music, the fusion of rhythm and blues with gospel, scandalizing the faithful while roughening pop music with blues realism in a way no white rock and roller ever managed. By 29, he had, in Gary Giddins' words, jazz in one pocket (his ace 8-piece hard bop band, his sides with Milt Jackson, his great album of standards, "Genius") and R & B in the other pocket. He then confounded expectations by signing an unprecedented contract with a fledgling label,which gave him ownership of his masters and complete artistic control, and started cutting country sides, and selling gazillion copies. He crossed the same racial divide as Elvis, but from the other direction, a far more audacious move. In 1962, the titan of black music completely upended cultural hierarchies by singing the hell out of the music of the white southern working class; as he said, soul, country, its the same damn thing. He also said he would never be satisified with headlining the Apollo Theater, as all of his African American peers would be. Ray knew from an early age he could take over the world, and he did. Black, blind, orphaned, beyond poor, addicted, and he never seemed to have a moments doubt as to where he would end up. Proud and thorny, he could make Sinatra's boast of doing it his way, but he never had the assists of dangerous powerful people and Hollywood that Frank had -- Ray was alone, and wanted it that way. If he spent the last 35 years of his career coasting, with fitfully inspired moments on record, his live performances were always committed and stellar. This book is one of the best log cabin to mansion stories I've ever read, and it has the sting of truth. Not coincidentally, Ray is self-admittedly a selfish SOB of the first order, single minded in his pursuit of his art, to the detriment of scores of women and the childen he begot on them. But his book, like his singing, cuts though with the ring of truth and authenticity. As other reviewers here have noted, his co-author blanched about Ray's frankness when he read the proofs, and Ray instructed him, "Don't change a goddamn word."

Editorial Review:

Ray Charles (1930-2004) led one of the most extraordinary lives of any popular musician. In Brother Ray, he tells his story in an inimitable and unsparing voice, from the chronicle of his musical development to his heroin addiction to his tangled romantic life. Overcoming poverty, blindness, the loss of his parents, and the pervasive racism of the era, Ray Charles was acclaimed worldwide as a genius by the age of thirty-two. By combining the influences of gospel, jazz, blues, and country music, he invented, almost single-handedly, what became known as soul. And throughout a career spanning more than a half century, Ray Charles remained in complete control of his life and his music, allowing nobody to tell him what he could and couldn't do. As the Chicago Sun-Times put it, Brother Ray is "candid, explicit, sometimes embarrassing, often hilarious, always warm, touching, and deeply human-just like his music."