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Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul |  | Author: Craig Werner
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Seller: nettextstore
Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 842694
Media: Paperback
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 1400081556
Dewey Decimal Number: 781.6440922
EAN: 9781400081554
ASIN: 1400081556
Publication Date: March 22, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | Hardcover - Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul | | • | Kindle Edition - Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of Americ an Soul | | • | Hardcover - Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul | | • | Hardcover - Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
In Higher Ground, one of our most insightful music writers brilliantly reinterprets the lives of three pop geniuses and the soul revolution they launched.
Soul music is one of America's greatest cultural achievements, and Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, and Curtis Mayfield are three of its most inspired practitioners. In midcentury America it was soul music--particularly the dazzling stream of recordings made by these three stars--that helped bring the gospel vision of the black church into the mainstream, energizing the era’s social movements and defining a new American gospel where the sacred and the secular met. What made this gospel all the more amazing was that its most influential articulators were the sons and daughters of sharecroppers, storefront preachers, and single parents in the projects, whose genius gave voice to a new vision of American possibility.
Higher Ground seamlessly weaves the specific and intensely personal narratives of Stevie, Aretha, and Curtis’s lives into the historical fabric of their times. The three shared many similarities: They were all children of the great migration and of the black church. But the gospel impulse manifested itself in different ways within the dramas of their individual lives and musical creations. In Stevie Wonder’s case, it was a literally color-blind universal sense of spirituality that expressed itself in his life and music as an urge toward transcendence, particularly in the mid-seventies when albums like Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life radically revised what a pop album could be. For Aretha Franklin, the traditional gospel vision of a beloved community anchored in the strength of women comforted her through a life littered with tragedy and found expression in propulsive pop songs like "Respect" as well as in her legendary gospel albums. And for Curtis Mayfield, the gospel notion of conscious living inspired him to create songs that served the purposes of the Civil Rights movement and the radical Black Power movement alike, from the gritty street drama of Superfly to the transcendent call of "People Get Ready."
Werner doesn't just provide a narrative of three fascinating lives; he ties them together with a provocative thesis about American history and culture that compels us to reconsider both the music and the times. And aside from the personalities and the history, he writes beautifully about music itself, the nuts and bolts of its creation and performance, in a way that brings a new awareness and understanding to the most familiar music, forcing readers to listen to songs they've heard a thousand times with fresh ears. In Higher Ground, Werner illuminates the lives of three unparalleled American artists, reminding us why their music mattered then and still resonates with us today.
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Not a classic, but necessary exposure to the message April 30, 2007
souldrummer (Washington, DC United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book doesn't fit neatly into any genre boxes. It's not a dedicated biography. It's not a musical history. It's not really cultural theory. It's a fusion between a joint biography of Wonder, Franklin, and Mayfield with a connection to the cultural history that fuels their work. I learned some things along the way, but I found this book to fall short of other recent reads in popular music such as "I Never Loved a Man" focusing on Aretha Franklin's first album and "Shout: The Beatles and Their Generation".
This book is very ambitious. It covers the lives of three subjects and 40 years of social history in about 290 pages. Consequently, it's more a series of events that support the author's central ideal: black music is most vital when it speaks in a gospel voice to community themes.
The work on Mayfield is very helpful and was most beneficial to me. Mayfield has traditionally been underrated. This book skillfully connects Mayfield to Cabrini-Green and traditions of black entrepreneurship. Mayfield sacrificed some of the chart success of Motown to remain independent and this book provides some quality interview excerpts from Mayfield and gives key highlights from his career. Let's hope there's a Black Studies student out there who will read this and be led to give Mayfield the full scale critical biography he deserves.
It's hard to do justice to Stevie in the space allowed. Werner is a big believer that Songs in the Key of Life is the peak of Stevie's powers. I'd like more support for this viewpoint with closer reading of Stevie's lyrics. Werner's a big fan of Conversation Peace for recent Stevie and dismisses Jungle Fever. I gained some key episodes on Stevie's life, though, and having just read about the Beatles, I gained a great deal from Werner's discussion about how Stevie gained artistic strength from rock music and artists like Jeff Beck.
Aretha resists analysis because she has not been as an open an interview subject as Stevie and Mayfield. Still, this book does communicate how powerful a symbol of womanist advocacy Aretha has become and how she has struggled to be true to her gospel roots while succeeding in a pop environment that often opposes those roots.
This book is not as thorough a history as other things that I've read, but it does offer one man's interpretation of some key figures and, especially in the case of Curtis Mayfield, bring attention to some underrated work. I recommend this for those deeply interested in these artists and those exploring a range of options for revitalizing soul music.
4 stars
---SD
 Ken Burns, This Should Be Your Next Documentary February 23, 2007
Tom O'Leary (Los Angeles, California)
I bought this book because LA Times writer Ann Powers referenced it in her article on Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin and the movie Dreamgirls. I can see why Ann thought so highly of this work. Craig Werner has written the most insightful and the deepest book we are ever likely to get concerning the simultaneous influence of soul greats Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and Curtis Mayfield. This book is the bomb!
As a lifelong Aretha-file, I was astonished by the author's multi-dimensional portrait of Aretha and her musical journey. There is more information here about Aretha than I have ever found anywhere---including in Aretha's very disappointing autobiography.
The portraits of musical genuises Stevie Wonder and Curtis Mayfield are as deep and as indelible as the one of Aretha. These three artists very simply changed the face of American music. Not just soul music, but American music.
We can see---sometimes in frightening ways---the influence of these great musical sensations on American Idol every year. Not that any singer/songwriters of the last 20 years can touch these geniuses.
God Bless Aretha, Steve and Curtis! And God speed Craig Werner on to his next great book!
this book sings like Aretha March 13, 2004
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Werner, whose masterpiece, A CHANGE IS GONNA COME: RACE, MUSIC AND THE SOUL OF AMERICA, is widely considered a classic, strikes again with an equally profound book that is an even better read. The narrative speedskates on three fascinating and nicely braided portraits of artists who reshaped American music in the image of the best black dreams of freedom. Not only do we get three great life stories; we also get a complex cultural history of how the black freedom movement transformed American culture, infusing the "gospel vision" into all manner of music. And on top of that, Werner has written a fine short history of the movement "up South" in Detroit and Chicago, two urban crucibles that reveal, in distinct ways, the tragedy of America's failure to respond to the African American call for R-e-s-p-e-c-t and to the call of its own best inner visions. This book sings like Aretha.
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