The Blackwell guide to soul recordings - Robert Pruter

The first ever guide to soul recordings, this book - the latest in a popular and well-established series - is an essential purchase for anyone wishing to build up a comprehensive record collection. Each chapter of the Guide provides an essential list of fifteen releases, and a basic list of thirty. The essential releases are those from artists most likely to be recognized by the general public - singers such as James Brown, Aretha Franklin, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder - and they each get extended comments. The basic lists is designed to supplement this and cover some of the 'lesser' artists, and also the tangents and by-ways of the genre - Latin Soul, Low rider music and soul-blues. In its 405 entries, the Guide covers not only music from the golden era of soul - the early 1960s to the mid-1970s - but also the 1950s rhythm and blues that preceded it, and the disco, funk and African American styles which followed.;Eight of the leading British and American experts have contributed to the guide, each concentrating on a particular aspect of soul music - whether it be an account of the music produced in a certain region (such as New York, Chicago, the West Coast, the South or Europe), or one of the periods of the style's development.