Soul Covers: Rhythm and Blues Remakes and the Struggle for Artistic Identity (Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Phoebe Snow)

Michael Awkward

Published by Duke University Press 2007

Soul Covers

Rhythm and Blues Remakes and the Struggle for Artistic Identity (Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Phoebe Snow)

Michael Awkward
Edited by: Charles McGovern and Ronald Radano

In the series Refiguring American Music

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822389491

Overview
Contents

About this book

Cultural and literary study of the construction of racial and artistic identity in soul cover albums of three popular artists--Aretha Franklin, Al Green, and Phoebe Snow.

Author / Editor information

Michael Awkward is Gayl A. Jones Collegiate Professor of Afro-American Literature and Culture at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Scenes of Instruction: A Memoir, also published by Duke University Press; Negotiating Difference: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Positionality; and Inspiriting Influences: Tradition, Revision, and Afro-American Women’s Novels.

Reviews

“Michael Awkward’s Soul Covers signals the beginning of a new era in the critical engagement with African American music of the 1960s and 1970s. Moving beyond the historical overviews and critical biographies that have defined the field, he provides three crucial albums with the kinds of close reading usually reserved for canonical literary texts. His choices are unusual and inspired, offering pathways into a richer understanding of Aretha Franklin, Al Green, and the greatly underappreciated Phoebe Snow. Awkward captures the complex music of the era in writing that, like its subjects, has real soul.”—Craig Werner, author of A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America

“With Soul Covers, Michael Awkward weds his devotion to close reading to his appreciation of rhythm and blues and soul music, creating a book that stands out as unique among the scholarship and criticism on black popular music.”—Mark Anthony Neal, author of Songs in the Key of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation

“Soul Covers is an intriguing book. Awkward’s research and interpretative abilities are above reproach, and his enthusiasm for R&B is matched only by his propensity for insightful comment. Moreover, Awkward should be applauded for shedding light on cover songs, a neglected, yet vitally important, feature of popular music in the twentieth century.”

-- Jason Reid NeoAmericanist

“Awkward’s analyses are insightful, exciting even. What helps here is the fact that he goes beyond rehearsing tired tenets of the black musical tradition (that often get repackaged and represented as ‘‘new understandings’’). He also rightfully abandons the convention of reviewing too many familiar folks within the legacies of jazz and the blues. . . . All this makes Awkward’s new book worthwhile personal reading and valuable for studying and teaching professionally.”

-- Vershawn Ashanti Young Souls

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Preface: “How the Parts Relate to the Whole” Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Introduction: “I Live in the Lyrics”: On Truth, Intent, Image, Identity, and Song Covers Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
“She’s the Next One” :Aretha Franklin’s Unforgettable: A Tribute to Dinah Washington and the Black Women’s Vocal Legacy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
“Something like Wholeness”: Al Green’s Call Me and the Struggle for Thematic Integrity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	81
“Miss Snow, Are You Black?”: Second Childhood and the Cultural Politics of Musical Style in the Post–Civil Rights Era Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
Coda: “Going Home” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Pages
- Main content: 275
Illustrations
- Other: 3 illustrations

eBook

Published: May 4, 2007
ISBN: 9780822389491