Sweet Soul Music

Peter Guralnick's writings on music and musicians are unique in the literature of American popular culture. His first three books, Feel Like Going Home, Lost Highway, and Sweet Soul Music-which together form a sort of trilogy that has achieved classic status-trace twentieth-century American popular music to its roots by bringing to life the people, the songs, and the performances that forever changed not only the American music scene but America itself.

Here, in a narrative that captures all the tumult and liberating energy of a nation in transition, is the story of the legendary performers-among them Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, James Brown, Solomon Burke, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and Al Green-who merged gospel and rhythm-and-blues to create sweet soul music.