Sullivan may not capture the fiery soul of the best James Brown performance, but he shines a light on an important instance...
A music journalist looks at one of the soul legend’s key performances—as well as his overall legacy.
By the late ’60s, notes Boston Globe contributor Sullivan, Brown was “Soul Brother Number One to black America.” On April 5, 1968, one day after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Brown played what would become a landmark show at the Boston Garden. But the show almost didn’t occur. As the city’s traditionally black neighborhoods hovered on the verge of chaos—a fate that befell many cities around the country following King’s death—Garden officials and Mayor Kevin White decided to cancel the concert. However, after much negotiating with city counsilor Tom Atkins, activist Paul Parks and others, they agreed that “the concert would have a healing effect on the city”—especially since they decided to televise the event live. After an argument over the fee for his appearance, the Godfather of Soul took the stage, pleading peace and turning in an electric, if somewhat ragged, performance. Because most of the audience who couldn’t make it to the show chose to watch at home, Boston’s streets remained mercifully free of violence. With serviceable prose, Sullivan ably navigates the many conflicting allegiances surrounding the event, taking time to chronicle Brown’s rise to fame and the concurrent increase in civil-rights agitation and its reflection in the music of the time. He charts Brown’s burgeoning relationship with Al Sharpton and other civil-rights leaders, and examines the backlash the entertainer endured when he supported Richard Nixon. (During a 1973 performance at The Apollo, one banner read, “James Brown, Nixon’s Clown.”) Throughout the narrative, Sullivan provides intermittently insightful commentary on Brown’s music, duly recognizing that “his crucial innovation was to hear each instrument in his orchestra as another form of percussion.” Continuing in that vein, the author closes by citing musicians whose sound was most directly influenced by Brown, including Afrika Bambaataa, Run-DMC, Marley Marl and Big Daddy Kane.
Sullivan may not capture the fiery soul of the best James Brown performance, but he shines a light on an important instance of music affecting real change.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-592-40390-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Gotham Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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