All Music Guide to Soul: The Definitive Guide to R&B and Soul

Rating:
Summary: Incredible Reference Book
Review: I had never owned an All Music Guide and I have been told by fellow music collectors that there are terrific. Seeing that All Music had just recently published their new guide to R & B and Soul I decided to give it a try. I must say I was impressed by the extensive detail given to each entry in this book. You would not only learn the history of an artist or group, but in many cases you got an update as to what the artist was doing nowadays. This was impressive and distinguishes this book from others I have seen on the market. The book covers a wide array of genres including rhythm and blues, soul, funk, disco and one of my personal favorites doo wop. There is one major problem however. The print is so small that I got a headache trying to read it. Try as a might I just could not get past this major flaw. I wound up sending it back. Too bad. I suspect anyone over the age of 40 will encounter the same problem. It seems to me that it would have been much wiser to divide this into 2 volumes with print that you could actually read. I would have gladly paid the difference.

Rating:
Summary: Tons of useful information but print way too small
Review: I had never owned an All Music Guide and I have been told by fellow music collectors that there are terrific. Seeing that All Music had just recently published their new guide to R & B and Soul I decided to give it a try. I must say I was impressed by the extensive detail given to each entry in this book. You would not only learn the history of an artist or group, but in many cases you got an update as to what the artist was doing nowadays. This was impressive and distinguishes this book from others I have seen on the market. The book covers a wide array of genres including rhythm and blues, soul, funk, disco and one of my personal favorites doo wop. There is one major problem however. The print is so small that I got a headache trying to read it. Try as a might I just could not get past this major flaw. I wound up sending it back. Too bad. I suspect anyone over the age of 40 will encounter the same problem. It seems to me that it would have been much wiser to divide this into 2 volumes with print that you could actually read. I would have gladly paid the difference.

Rating:
Summary: Incredible Reference Book
Review: Most of the All Music Guides are good source books for exploring different genres of music. Along with the blue and jazz books, the soul book is one of the finest of these. It has been a tremendous help for my exploration of different soul artists of the past and for going beyond just the hits.