al., Guralnick’s primary focus is on the three M’s: Macon, Georgia, home of James Brown and Otis Redding Memphis, where Stax-Volt and a host of lesser-known labels laid down stacks of classic fatback tracks and Muscle Shoals, the northeast Alabama studio hot-spot that spawned four of the hottest rhythm sections in the history of pop.īubbling with anecdotes (Traveling down a Texas highway, Joe Tex points out the sharecropper’s shack where he claims to have been conceived during a lunch break) and bristling with inside dope (Atlantic Records producer/executive Jerry Wexler reportedly asking for one-third writer’s credit on the song “Sweet Inspiration” by the Sweet Inspirations because he’d thought up the group’s name), “Sweet Soul Music” concludes with an exhaustive discography that’s almost worth the cover price in itself.Īs to why soul music still retains its appeal long after its mid-’60s heyday, Guralnick offers, “At its core, soul music is extremely visceral. While tracing the pioneering efforts of such pre-soul savants as Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, et.
When Rufus Thomas told me that playing frat parties at Ole Miss was to play before ‘the greatest audiences in the world,’ he was completely serious!” It’s ironic, but these bastions of white privilege provided an avenue for black musicians that gave a great many white Southerners their first, in-person glimpse of black music. “The other thing that shocked me was the importance of the Southern fraternity circuit. I was surprised to find how much of a creative contribution was made by white Southerners-writers, musicians and producers such as Dan Penn, Rick Hall and Chips Moman-who, in helping to create this new sound, were able to throw off the old, traditional attitudes and forge a new identity for themselves as well. “For example, I’d always taken the view that the development of soul music went hand-in-hand with the Civil Rights Movement as an expression of black pride in one’s heritage. I interviewed 125 people, many of them two or three times, because I kept uncovering fresh information. “Originally, I thought the book would take me three years to write-it wound up taking five.
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