Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1002873 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Synopsis
A celebration of the vibrant, flamboyant and extravagant flowering of African-American culture that exploded between 1930 and 1975. From Cab Calloway to Ray Charles, the Four Tops and the Delfonics, it chronicles this music history in legends, facts and rumours. There are over 400 photographs, publicity shots, posters, programmes, advertisements, album sleeves and more.

Customer Reviews

Covers of colour

A wrap-up of black music mixing all styles with the use of record covers to visually hold it all together. The breezy text is very generalised and really no more than naming performers, their hits and odd bits of showbiz gossip. I found it rather annoying that black music styles were mixed together, Charlie Parker, James Brown, Lonnie Johnson, Sonny Terry and Hadda Brooks are some of the record covers on pages ninety-four and five, the only common element is that they are all black, their music though, is completely different in style. Jazz is probably the only black music, in the past, to develop eye catching covers and the book ignores anything from record companies like Blue Note, Riverside, Atlantic or Verve.

The last chapter, 'Soul for sale', includes several movie posters of black musicians appearing in pop music movies but it also deals with the marketing of black musicians as role models in advertising, mostly for cigarettes, alcohol and hair products and though it rather strays from the book's main focus it is a subject that would make an interesting visual book about this area of black life.

Most of the four hundred illustrations in the book are covers and as expected none are of any design merit but put them all together in a book and they superficially become interesting. A similar thing occurs in 'A Separate Cinema' (ISBN 0374523606) probably the only book to concentrate on black cast movie posters. None of them will win any design awards yet they all have an exuberant colourful style when so many are presented together.

'Heart & Soul' is worth getting if you are interested in black visual culture and to bring it right up to date have a look at 'The Book of Hip Hop Cover Art' (ISBN 1840009195) by Andrew Emery. In this book some of the covers really are a treat to look at.