A Touch of Classic Soul
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A first I was rather misled by the title of this book. For me the word 'Classic' has always meant the original, the first, the one on which all subsequent versions are based, and as such I was expecting it to be about mid-sixties soul, Ray Charles, Bobby Bland, Aretha Franklin, Sam Cook etc. so I was surprised to find it was about seventies music. On checking the dictionary I found the word 'Classic' to be defined as 'having a high quality that is recognised and unquestioned' and 'very typical' or 'famous through being long established'. As each of these statements would apply to 70's Soul I have to concede the point, nonetheless anyone else looking to buy this book should be careful that they are aware of its true content. As the book focus's heavily on the seventies one would expect a heavy bias towards the 'Philly' sound, and so it proves to be. Nonethe less there are enough other acts in there such as War, Isaac Hayes and Millie Jackson to give it a little more breadth. In total thirty five groups/artists are covered. A publication of this nature is always in danger of falling between two stools, it does not cover enough performers to be a reference work, yet does too many to give any in-depth analysis. The content therefore can be very brief and superficial. So it is with this offering, but by keeping personal stories to a minimum and focussing only on professional lives it does give an insight into the problems faced by all of them. Almost unanimously they found the emergence of 'disco' a very threatening and trying time. Marc Taylor has done a remarkable job in having tracked the artists down and interviewed them, so much of the information is 'straight from the horses mouth'. It is also very well written and logically constructed. It is these two features of it that prevent the reader from becoming bored. Each act seems to have at least one photograph included but these tend to be clustered in little groups rather than appearing with their text. All in all a very informative book which despite its curtness holds the readers interest throughout. Its main weakness is that it only concerns itself with the 'big' acts and therefore gives us information about groups on which we already know a lot. I hope the author considers writing a similar book about some 'lesser' artists. On the evidence of this it is a project on which he could excel. |
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Why Not visit the Authors other Website, 'The Alternative Blackpool Website' at http://www.localdial.com/users/jsyedu133/bpool This Site Last Updated 18/05/05
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