Higher Ground : Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall ofAmerican Soul

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Summary: American Soul
Review: If the only riff in this book were Craig Werner's illumination of Aretha's, James Carr's, and Clarence Carter's respective recordings of the soul-deep classic "The Dark End of the Street," and the rest of "Higher Ground" were the telephone book, Werner's work would still be worth your while.

As it is, "Higher Ground" is packed with passages like the insight on "The Dark End of the Street." In this elegantly-written cultural history, Werner ties the studio work of Aretha, Stevie Wonder, and Curtis Mayfield to the Civil Rights Movement on the streets. The Movement Werner presents is not the one we collectively remember. First of all, the battleground (Chicago and Detroit) in "Higher Ground" is a little higher on the map than we're used to seeing in Civil Rights histories. Second, Werner goes behind the televised Movement of speeches and nonviolent marches and discovers the "shadow marchers" who weren't exactly unarmed (Werner quotes one activist who protected the preachers of the Movement with his "nonviolent .38 police special"). Finally, he reminds us that Civil Rights workers listened to more than the SNCC Freedom Singers' spirituals. Soul music was, as a SNCC organizer put it, "on every movement turntable."

More than simply "music writing," "Higher Ground" is also Movement history at its grandest and most honest. The subtitle to the book invokes "American Soul," purposefully omitting "Music" from the end, suggesting just how wide a net Werner casts. Still, the soul of the book is the music, which Werner hears in all its masked meanings. So read "Higher Ground" cover to cover, then set it alongside Dave Marsh's "The Heart of Rock & Soul," next to your turntable. And when you spin Aretha's "Think," Stevie's "As," or Curtis's "People Get Ready," skip right to the corresponding passage in "Higher Ground" and meditate on what you haven't been hearing in the songs you've been listening to for years.

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Summary: Higher Ground : Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfi
Review: Werner (African American studies, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison; A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race, & the Soul of America) cogently traces the confluence of soul music, African American spirituality, and the Civil Rights Movement as they progressed, evolved, and reinforced one another through the Sixties and Seventies. As a microcosm, he focuses on the lives, careers, and art of three stylistically disparate giants of soul music: Aretha Franklin, whose background in the black church shone through her secular music; Stevie Wonder, who rose from a novelty act to prove himself a genius composer and amazing multi-instrumentalist; and the lesser-recognized but still-influential Curtis Mayfield, a composer, band leader, guitarist, vocalist, and poignant social commentator. One caveat: readers unfamiliar with the music of these artists will not grasp the message or meaning here. In attempting to describe representative songs, Werner's prose is surely evocative, but it is no substitute for the music itself-a drawback that could have easily been remedied by the inclusion of an audio CD. As Elvis Costello so veridically stated, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Nonetheless, this will make a worthy addition to both public and academic libraries

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Summary: this book sings like Aretha
Review: Werner, whose masterpiece, A CHANGE IS GONNA COME: RACE, MUSIC AND THE SOUL OF AMERICA, is widely considered a classic, strikes again with an equally profound book that is an even better read. The narrative speedskates on three fascinating and nicely braided portraits of artists who reshaped American music in the image of the best black dreams of freedom. Not only do we get three great life stories; we also get a complex cultural history of how the black freedom movement transformed American culture, infusing the "gospel vision" into all manner of music. And on top of that, Werner has written a fine short history of the movement "up South" in Detroit and Chicago, two urban crucibles that reveal, in distinct ways, the tragedy of America's failure to respond to the African American call for R-e-s-p-e-c-t and to the call of its own best inner visions. This book sings like Aretha.