Through it all, the ebullience of Mavis Staples and her music shine through.
A biography that will send readers back to the music of Mavis and the Staple Singers with deepened appreciation and a renewed spirit of discovery.
Chicago Tribune music critic Kot (Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music, 2009, etc.) mines one of that city’s greatest musical treasures, showing how the Staple Singers developed from one of the leading acts in gospel (when the voice of the preteen Mavis, “a pocket-sized dynamo,” was so husky that those who heard her on record thought she was a man), through their ascent to the top of the charts as pop/soul crossover sensations, and up to the career revival that Mavis Staples has recently enjoyed as a solo artist. As the title suggests, the book is more than a biography of Mavis, capturing the competitive, cutthroat nature of the gospel business, the pivotal influence of the civil rights movement and the complexities of patriarch Roebuck “Pops” Staples. He shaped the group’s sound, selected its repertoire and protected the family’s financial interests with a gun that unscrupulous promoters would learn to fear. His tremolo guitar and his family’s rural-style harmonies have exerted a profound influence on such rock heavyweights as The Band and Creedence Clearwater Revival. As the group moved its music from the church to the charts, it faced a backlash from the gospel community and ultimately saw Pops’ signature guitar supplanted in the studio by session musicians. The book is particularly revelatory on the transition that saw the Staple Singers recording in Muscle Shoals, sessions highlighted by the hit that gives the biography its title. Yet it ultimately treats the recent solo releases of Mavis Staples—produced by Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, the subject of an earlier book by Kot—almost as a tacked-on afterthought in comparison with the more thorough treatment given albums that made little impression upon release and have long been forgotten.
Through it all, the ebullience of Mavis Staples and her music shine through.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4516-4785-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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