'Sweet Soul Music' by Peter Guralnick

My friend Stephanie pointed out that I'm starting to sound like I hate everything (again). Well, here's a book that I love deeply and gives me hope for the future by digging into the past:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316332739/qid=1094135241/sr=ka-1/ref=pd_ka_1/002-5086043-3654411

I started re-reading Peter Guralnick's definitive text on Southern soul music because I was recently shocked by how few friends of mine even know what "Stax/Volt" means. It's odd to me that many Americans only have Motown as their point of reference for "soul music" since the music of Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin and their contemporaries has always rang more true to me. Guralnick provides a concise and entertaining blueprint for the rise of soul music and is able fairly well to come to terms with an endpoint. The book was written in the early '80's, but since it describes a limited time capsule anyway, very little of it seems dated(except maybe for terms like "Afro-American").

The music of Stax is the centerpiece of the book, but Guralnick does not discount the contributions of Ray Charles, James Brown, Sam Cooke, Solomon Burke or the Muscle Shoals artists who quickly rivaled their Memphis counterparts. It's a fascinating portrait of the music industry and even the nation during the 1960's. Stax has often been presented as a bold utopia of racial harmony (Booker T. and the MG's was made up of two black members and two white members), but Guralnick quickly uncovers that rather than a civil rights movement, the story of soul music was blacks and whites coming together to play music, sell records and make money.

If that ain't the American dream, I don't know what is.