Heart & Soul
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A very unusual book which I am delighted to have in my collection. Like many publications which include the term 'soul' in their title it is not exclusively about soul, but all black styles including jazz, Blues, R&B, gospel, Doo Wop and Funk. Two things which immediately struck me about this book are the simplicity of the text, which I would guess has a reading age of about twelve and the superficial treatment of the content which can be best described as snapshots, particularly when discussing artists and their work. These two factors lead me to suspect it is not aimed at an adult audience at all, but probably older children or teenagers. Certainly the excellent colour and illustrations give it a comic book feel. Whether the youth of today are interested in the music of old fogies is another question, but it is so beautifully packaged that it unquestionably deserves to find a market. In all honesty there is little in the pages of this book which the soul aficionado will not know already. It might be of interest as an introductory tome for those people discovering Black music for the first time. So if I thought the content was superficial why am I 'delighted to have it in my collection'. Well there are three reasons. Firstly the authors, despite the superficiality of their coverage, write with such enthusiasm that this is transmuted to the reader. The fact that they love black music never comes into question. Secondly the themes they adopt are unusual. The nine chapters cover the origins of black music, teenage heroes, male artists, women artists, wild performers, the art associated with soul music such as record labels and sleeves, famous black clubs, smooth performers, and soul in the cinema. Many of these themes have had little consideration in other soul books. Thirdly and most importantly the wealth of memorabilia in its pages, scans of record sleeves, posters, sheet music all in glorious colour. Most unusual are the bubble gum trading cards of R&B artists which I have never seen before. I could spend hours browsing through this book just looking at the pictures without reading a single word. Did I say I learned nothing from its pages, well strictly speaking this is not true. The book claims that Arthur Connelly is now a cross dresser living in Belgium. Living in Belgium? Urggh how could he? |
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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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