There are also great stories in here about Atlantic Records and (specifically) Jerry Wexler who came south to first hire Stax musicians in Memphis and then Muscle Shoals musicians in Alabama. And how soul was popular at the very same time Motown was popular but that Motown was aimed a white audience, soul a black audience. I find it interesting how many people in the book so much seemed to want to be either Otis Redding or Sam Cooke and how much James Brown – the hardest working man in show business – was very much his own man. And how Stax got caught up in its own shit and went bankrupt. And then how it all came crashing down one fateful night in April of 1968 when Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis and the trust was gone. (STewartAXton = Stax.) So, how they got started, how they took an old movie theater in highly segregated Memphis and made it (however temporarily) into an integrated haven, how Booker T and the MG’s created a “sound” starting with “Green Onions.”Īnd you will find that contrary to what you might think, Stax’s heyday was pretty much only a few brief years in the late 50’s and into the late ’60s. I’ve already read (and written) quite a bit about Aretha, Otis and Cooke (“The King of Soul”) but I had not yet written about Stax.Īs noted there are two entire chapters on Stax and you will know all the ups and downs of brother and sister founders Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton. Yep, the soul gang is all here from Otis to Aretha, James Brown to Al Green. Prologue to Soul: Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and the Business of Music.Just to give you an idea of what’s in this most comprehensive of books here are some chapter titles I am no expert on soul music but after reading this book I sure felt like it.

and the MG’s but also the offshoot bands the members were in, what small bands they came from, what they had for lunch, etc. He will tell you not only about, say, Booker T. The good news about Gurlanick as a writer is also the bad news if you are not into detail. I took it home and pretty much gobbled it up. I happened to be at a permanently standing flea market in Newburyport MA (by coincidence I believe this is Guralnick’s home turf) when I found a used copy of Sweet Soul Music. (He’s a Massachusetts guy so it was easy.) I met Gurlanick on that book tour and he signed my book. He also wrote a book about Sam Phillips which I reviewed several years back. He wrote the two-volume series on Elvis Presley’s early life that I read a while back. Peter Guralnick is arguably the most important, best writer we have on American roots and soul music.

Sweet soul music peter guralnick