Soul Covers

Michael Awkward is Gayl A. Jones Collegiate Professor of Afro-American Literature and Culture at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Scenes of Instruction: A Memoir, also published by Duke University Press; Negotiating Difference: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Positionality; and Inspiriting Influences: Tradition, Revision, and Afro-American Women’s Novels.

• Acknowledgments ixPreface: "How the Parts Relate to the Whole" xiiiIntroduction: "I Live in the Lyrics": On Truth, Intent, Image, Identity, and Song Covers 1"She's the Next One": Aretha Franklin's Unforgettable: A Tribute to Dinah Washington and the Black Women's Vocal Legacy 25"Something like Wholeness": Al Green's Call Me and the Struggle for Thematic Integrity 81"Miss Snow, Are You Black?": Second Childhood and the Cultural Politics of Musical Style in the Post-Civil Rights Era 137Coda: "Going Home" 201Notes 213Bibliography 225Index 235

“Michael Awkward’s Soul Covers signals the beginning of a new era in the critical engagement with African American music of the 1960s and 1970s. Moving beyond the historical overviews and critical biographies that have defined the field, he provides three crucial albums with the kinds of close reading usually reserved for canonical literary texts. His choices are unusual and inspired, offering pathways into a richer understanding of Aretha Franklin, Al Green, and the greatly underappreciated Phoebe Snow. Awkward captures the complex music of the era in writing that, like its subjects, has real soul.”-Craig Werner, author of A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America “With Soul Covers, Michael Awkward weds his devotion to close reading to his appreciation of rhythm and blues and soul music, creating a book that stands out as unique among the scholarship and criticism on black popular music.”-Mark Anthony Neal, author of Songs in the Key of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation "Soul Covers is an intriguing book. Awkward's research and interpretative abilities are above reproach, and his enthusiasm for R&B is matched only by his propensity for insightful comment. Moreover, Awkward should be applauded for shedding light on cover songs, a neglected, yet vitally important, feature of popular music in the twentieth century." - Jason Reid (NeoAmericanist) “Awkward’s analyses are insightful, exciting even. What helps here is the fact that he goes beyond rehearsing tired tenets of the black musical tradition (that often get repackaged and represented as ‘‘new understandings’’). He also rightfully abandons the convention of reviewing too many familiar folks within the legacies of jazz and the blues. . . . All this makes Awkward’s new book worthwhile personal reading and valuable for studying and teaching professionally.” - Vershawn Ashanti Young (Souls)