Product Description:  Being the child of a global superstar is never easy. Being the daughter of the Godfather of Soul—that’s a category unto itself. Like every little girl, Yamma Brown wanted her father’s attention, but fame, drugs, jail, and the complicated women in James Brown’s life set the stage for an uncommon childhood...read more

To his many fans, he was known simply as "Mr. Excitement," a singer whose music and stage presence influenced generations of performers, from Elvis Presley to Michael Jackson. Jackie Wilson: Lonely Teardrops looks at the life and career of this deeply troubled artist. Published briefly in a limited edition in the United Kingdom, this Routledge edition makes available this definitive biography for Wilson's legions of fans. Also includes two 8-page photo inserts.

Product Description: Best known for his 1970 polemic "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," Gil Scott-Heron was a musical icon who defied characterization. He tantalized audiences with his charismatic stage presence, and his biting, observant lyrics in such singles as "The Bottle" and "Johannesburg" provide a time capsule for a decade marked by turbulence, uncertainty, and racism...read more

Product Description: With more than ninety million records sold and eight Grammy Awards throughout its forty-year history, Earth, Wind & Fire has staked its claim as one of the most successful, influential, and beloved acts in music history. Now, for the first time, its dynamic lead singer, Philip Bailey, chronicles the group's meteoric rise to stardom and his own professional and spiritual journey...read more

With more than ninety million records sold and eight Grammy Awards throughout its forty-year history, Earth, Wind & Fire has staked its claim as one of the most successful, influential, and beloved acts in music history. Now, for the first time, its dynamic lead singer, Philip Bailey, chronicles the group's meteoric rise to stardom and his own professional and spiritual journey. Never before had a musical act crossed multiple styles and genres with a quixotic blend of astrology, Universalism, and Egyptology as Earth, Wind & Fire (EWF) did when it exploded into the public's conscience during the 1970s. The group's shows became sensory experiences, with their dramatic staging, shimmering costumes, elaborate choreography, baffling magic tricks, and a thumping backbeat. At the center of the group was its charismatic founder, Maurice White, and Bailey, with his soaring multioctave range and distinctive falsetto. After being signed by recording titan Clive Davis, EWF went on to produce a remarkable series of platinum and gold albums and to headline stadiums around the world. Bailey hit the wall due to fame, fortune, and the excesses of global success. The constant touring and performing took its toll on him publicly and privately. While White and Bailey's relentless work ethic shot the band into the stratosphere, it also exhausted and emotionally gutted the group. In 1983, White abruptly dismantled the band, leaving Bailey and the rest of the members to fend for themselves. Shining Star is the true story of what happens when real life exceeds your dreams and when the power and pain of building a legacy bring both joy and faith-testing challenges.

Product Description: He inspires awe with his colorful costumes and helps ordinary people find a Voice. With vocals so effective (in fact, they're almost otherworldly), he turned a four-letter word into a global phenomenon. Without a doubt, CeeLo Green is a superhero of soul-and every superhero has an origin story...read more

Product Description: Midnight Train From Georgia: A Pip’s Journey is a trip down memory lane, especially for those pop music aficionados from the late fifties and extending well into the seventies. Gladys Knight and the Pips made musical history practical for the duration of their singing careers, appearing on all kinds of shows, including the Ed Sullivan show, and the Howard Theater in Washington D...read more

Product Description: Traces the life of Aretha Franklin, from deserted child and teenage mother to Grammy winner and inductee in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Foregrounding the funk style "invented" by legendary musician James Brown, this study concerns itself with how the experience of time in popular music is reflective of broader social, political or, more simply, existential, conditions. In short, how James Brown's funk might be understood as the musical expression of a particular negotiation of time by a "minor" culture, (where this notion of a "minor" culture is derived from the work of the philosophers Deleuze and Guattari). That funk would emerge in the mid-1960s, at the very apex of the civil-rights movement, was surely no coincidence, and the book details how Brown's music would render musical the broader existential changes taking place within the African-American community at a crucial political time. This journey through funk's mode of constitution is informed by the philosophical concerns of Gilles Deleuze's Cinema books, which provide a set of conceptual tools that illustrate how Brown's music would impel popular music's compositional shift from a teleological depiction of movement through time (the "movement-image") to funk's more direct experience of the temporal (the "time-image"). The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, and the "post-soul" climate that transpired, are used as supporting evidence of how funk's relative temporal indeterminacy begins to take precedence over the more teleological "soul" narratives which preceded them. Based on this evidence, it is argued that Brown's music demonstrates a most compelling example of how popular music's temporal mode of constitution might reflect, aesthetically, the broader political and existential circumstances of its emergence, and how this affective relationship to composition made Brown one of the greatest musical innovators of the twentieth century.

Aretha Franklin: The Queen of Soul documents the beloved singing star’s rocky personal life and internationally acclaimed show business career. An in-depth and frank examination of Aretha, this definitive biography traces her career from her beginnings as a twelve-year-old member of a church choir in the early 1950s, recording her first album at the age of fourteen, a major recording contract at eighteen, and stardom in her twenties, right up through her headline-grabbing 2010 health scare, to her triumphant return: singing to her cheering Detroit hometown fans in summer 2011. This New York Times bestselling author’s detailed research includes interviews with the most important people in Aretha’s life, including record producers Jerry Wexler, Clyde Otis, and Clive Davis, her first husband, several of Franklin’s singing star contemporaries, and a rare one-on-one session with Aretha herself. Bego’s portrayal of the singing sensation is done with clarity and neutrality. A no-holds-barred look at her roller coaster life, it takes her from two teenage pregnancies and an abusive first marriage, to drinking problems, battles with her weight, the murder of her father, and tabloid wars. This critically acclaimed, freshly updated biography will give readers a clear understanding of what makes Aretha Franklin the “Queen of Soul.”

The definitive account of one of soul's greatest figures by one of the the great music writers of our time.

Product Description: The untold story of the night a divide nation turned to James Brown—and he delivered hope and calm in the form of an immortal concert Since James Brown's death in December 2006, the Godfather of Soul has received many stirring tributes...read more