Rhythm & Blues

Trouble Man: The Life and Death of Marvin Gaye

Marvin Gaye was a twentieth-century icon, one of our greatest pop singers.He made his name with the Motown sound of the sixties, but went on to become a musical revolutionary with the release of What's Going On -- an album that tuoched on war, ecology, racism, violence, and poverty. It perfactly capured the spirit of the times and changed people's perceptions of what soul music could achieve.

Behind the songs, however, Gaye's was a troubled life: drug dependency, tortured personal relationships, and ongoing financal and legal difficulties led inexorably to the final fatel meeting with his father. Since his tragic death, his stature has increased rather than diminished. His musical legacy has endured that his popularity and influnce will endure and continue to win new generations of fans.

Trouble Man, based on exhausive and exclusive new research, is the definitive story of the turbulent life and violent death of an American icon. Steve Turner probes beyond the undying magic of songs like"I Heard It Through the Grapevine," "What's Going On," and "Sexual Healing" to trace the jagged contours of Gaye's life and examine the man behind the legend. Turner's detailed exploration of Gaye's childhood and his relationship with his family, his religious upbringing, and his meteoric professional success and ultimate descent into drug abuse and financial instability offers a new look at a beloved American musician.

The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu

To unearth the true origins and meanings of blues terms like "alcorub," "mojo," and "killing floor," author Debra DeSalvo poured over lyrics, dug through obscure academic sources, and interviewed many blues artists. The result is a witty, ribald, and unparalleled dictionary of blues terminology, packed with anecdotes from DeSalvo's interviews with such legends as Little Milton, Robben Ford, Henry Gray, John Hammond, Robert Jr. Lockwood, Bob Margolin, Bonnie Raitt, Smiley Ricks, Hubert Sumlin, and Jimmie Vaughan. The Language of the Blues also includes photos - some previously unpublished—of more than twenty artists, and an insightful foreword by Dr. John.

Aretha From These Roots

Unlike the soul-baring performances that have drawn listeners to her for four decades, Aretha Franklin is a bit cagey when it comes to discussing her personal life in her autobiography, From These Roots. The famously press-shy Aretha is a free-speaking anecdote spinner and a blunt sharer of opinions of coworkers and fellow artists. (Don't get her started on Natalie Cole.) But some areas remain blurry; for instance, her troubled first marriage to a temperamental music-business figure named Ted White is covered in only a tiny handful of pages. Other happier memories of lovers and of her late father, the famed minister Rev. C.L. Franklin, find her in a more expansive mood. Most consistently indelible in this telling, though, is her musical story. Born in 1942, she grew up around some of the century's greatest singers--Clara Ward, Dinah Washington, and Sam Cooke were all family friends. A voice that many consider the world's finest, a strikingly individual touch on piano, and an eclectic ear for material combined to make her a notable artist who moved quickly from the gospel circuit to Columbia Records and moderate success in a variety of contexts, from show tunes to a gritty tribute to Washington. Her reminiscences of those days, and of the conquests that followed when she moved to the forefront of the soul revolution after signing to Atlantic, are obviously still fresh for her. A formidable presence even in her 20s, Aretha continues to be a daunting figure. While From These Roots isn't as splashy a triumph as her 1967 Atlantic debut or her house-rocking at the 1998 Grammys with a rendition of Puccini's "Nessun dorma," the book does make for an irresistible reflection on a singular woman and her art. --Rickey Wright

The bluesy voice of narrator Ann Duquesnay lends an authentic quality to this inspirational and revealing biography on Aretha Franklin. Duquesnay's lyrical narration relates well with the events of the singer's life and colors each moment with a lively nod toward Franklin's immense talent. "When my piano teacher came to the house, I would hide behind the coats in the back of the closet because I thought her exercises far too elementary. I wanted to skip to the intermediate material. I wanted to run before I could walk." Tracing Franklin's life from a child singing in church choirs through hard times as an unwed teenage mother to her dramatic rise to superstardom, Duquesnay gives voice to the lifetime of family, music, and faith that gave the world the Queen of Soul. (Running time: 6 hours, 4 cassettes) --George Laney

Her soulful, soaring voice has earned her mythic status. Now, in her own moving words, the woman behind the myth is revealed. The result is a captivating self-portrait of one of this century's most fascinating artists, an Aretha Franklin as real as the songs she sings.

For the first time anywhere, Aretha tells her story--the glorious triumphs as well as the heartbreaking pain. With refreshing candor, Aretha tells it like it is, the way she sees it, the way she lived it.

A child prodigy of the golden age of gospel, the daughter of a world-famous preacher, Aretha was the anointed successor to Mahalia Jackson and Clara Ward. But her father had a broader vision and helped Aretha enter the field of pop and jazz. By age eighteen, she was under contract to Columbia Records. Six years later, after only a few minor hits, she switched to Atlantic, where she shook the musical world to its roots. Her song "Respect" became the anthem of an epoch, a touchstone for African Americans, for women, for all people struggling to be free. Aretha became the Queen of Soul, the genre's finest interpreter since Ray Charles.

In Aretha: From These Roots, the singer gets up-close and personal. In rich detail, she paints a vivid picture of a Detroit long gone: the storefront churches, the basement parties, the explosive R&B shows. She documents her life as a single teenage mother, working to balance home life with career, coping with two challenging marriages and, later, romantic relationships that were the source of both tremendous joy and unforeseen heartache.

Along the way, we meet the characters who lit up her life: her charismatic father, the Reverend C. L. Franklin, "the man with the million-dollar voice"; Sam Cooke, the man of her dreams; her singing sisters, Erma and Carolyn, and her manager-brother, Cecil; her famous colleagues--Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, Luther Vandross, and Luciano Pavarotti--as well as some famous rivals.

Aretha emerges as a triumphant woman of rare wit, willing to share with us her passion for great music, great food, and great love affairs. Her book does more than illuminate some of the most exciting songs ever sung; it lets you into the heart and mind of the mesmerizing woman who sang them.

Lost Delta Found: Rediscovering the Fisk University-Library of Congress Coahoma County Study, 1941-1942

Book contains 160 song transcriptionsThis book brings to print for the first time the writings and research of three African American scholars from Fisk University who participated in a 1940s study of the culture and music in the Mississippi Delta. Until these long-lost documents surfaced recently, the perspective of white folklorist Alan Lomax represented all that was known of this important project and its findings.

The Billboard Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues

Urban Blues (Phoenix Books)

Motown: Music, Money, Sex, and Power

In 1959, twenty-nine-year-old Berry Gordy, who had already given up on his dream to be a champion boxer, borrowed eight hundred dollars from his family and started a record company. A run-down bungalow sandwiched between a funeral home and a beauty shop in a poor Detroit neighborhood served as his headquarters. The building’s entrance was adorned with a large sign that improbably boasted “Hitsville U.S.A.” The kitchen served as the control room, the garage became the two-track studio, the living room was reserved for bookkeeping, and sales were handled in the dining room. Soon word spread that any youngster with a streak of talent should visit the only record label that Detroit had seen in years. The company’s name was Motown.
Motown cuts through decades of unsubstantiated rumors and speculation to tell the true behind-the-scenes narrative of America’s most exciting musical dynasty. It follows the company and its amazing roster of stars from the tumultuous growth years in Detroit, to the drama and intrigue of Hollywood in the 1970s, to resurgence in 2002.
Set against the civil rights movement, the decay of America’s northern industrial cities, and the social upheaval of the 1960s, Motown is a tale of the incredible entrepreneurship of Berry Gordy. But it also features the moving stories of kids from Detroit’s inner-city projects who achieved remarkable success and then, in many cases, found themselves fighting the demons that so often come with stardom—drugs, jealousy, sexual indulgence, greed, and uncontrollable ambition.
Motown features an extraordinary cast of characters, including Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, and Stevie Wonder. They are presented as they lived and worked: a clan of friends, lovers, competitors, and sometimes vicious foes. Motown reveals how the hopes and dreams of each affected the lives of the others and illustrates why this singular story is a made-in-America Greek tragedy, the rise and fall of a supremely talented yet completely dysfunctional extended family.
Based on numerous original interviews and extensive documentation, Motown benefits particularly from the thousands of pages of files crammed into the basement of downtown Detroit’s Wayne County Courthouse. Those court records provide the unofficial—and hitherto largely untold—history of Motown and its stars, since almost every relationship between departing singers, songwriters, producers, and the label ended up in litigation.
From its peaks in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Motown controlled the pop charts and its stars were sought after even by the Beatles, through the inexorable slide caused by their failure to handle their stardom, Motown is a riveting and troubling look inside a music label that provided the unofficial soundtrack to an entire generation.

Is there any truth to the rumor that the Mafia grabbed control of Motown after Berry Gordy ran afoul of violent loan sharks? Which Motown star had a violent fight with Gordy on the day JFK was assassinated?

Here is the book that answers these and other questions about the Motown nobody knows:

• Which Motown diva was almost run down by a station wagon after a blowout with a rival?
• How did Hollywood and the film industry sink Motown's film business after the tremendous promise of Lady Sings the Blues?
• What famous star hid from Gordy that he was the father of her first child?
• What was the secret scheme one former executive says the company developed to steal millions of dollars in "suitcases of cash" from artists and songwriters?
• Was the death of the Temptations' Paul Williams by a single gunshot a suicide, as ruled by coroners, or a murder to silence him, as suspected by some colleagues?

Musichound R&B: The Essential Album Guide (Musichound Essential Album Guides)

The Life and Legend of Leadbelly

The Blues Makers (Da Capo Paperback)