“Mr. Dynamite, “Soul Brother No. 1,” “The Godfather of Soul,” deadbeat dad, convicted spousal abuser… James Brown was all those things and so much more. Yet it can’t be denied his music impacted a generation of fans and influenced a grip of musicians who came after him—from David Bowie, Janelle Monae to Usher just to name three. In the tradition then of previous Down & Out Books anthologies such as Murder-A-Go-Go’s: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of the Go-Go’s and Trouble in the Heartland: Crime Fiction Based on the Songs of Bruce Springsteen, this all-original set of fourteen stories follows in that stead. The idea expressed to the writers was not literal interpretations of any given song by Mr. Brown. Rather to use that title or lyric and the ofttimes edginess behind such efforts as “King Heroin” and “The Payback,” or the fun in “Make it Funky,” as a prompt, a starting point for the story the contributor wanted to tell. Covers the Godfather of Soul did of others’ songs could have also been tapped. While the majority of stories in the collection are prose, there is a comics style one and more than one of the text versions have an illustration or two to accompany the story. The collection includes stories by six-time Bram Stoker Award winner Lisa Morton; Anthony, Barry and Macavity Awards winner James Ziskin; Jim Fusilli, former Rock & Pop critic for the Wall Street Journal; and HBO Max Doom Patrol staff writer and comics creator Ezra Claytan Daniels. Other contributors include Shamus Award winner Gar Anthony Haywood; Mysti Berry, five-time Derringer and Golden Derringer Award winner John M. Floyd; Lise McClendon, writer of the Bennett Sisters mysteries; cultural critic and short story writer Michael Gonzales; novelist and former Miami Vice showrunner and writer-producer on Hill Street Blues Robert Ward; Fabrice Sapolsky, comics creator of FairSquare Comics’ Intertwined and Marvel Comics’ Spider-Man Noir; filmmaker and pioneer of Hip Hop horror Jeff Carroll; crime fiction novelist and Dark Yonder editor Katy Munger; and hardboiled novelist and co-producer on Snowfall, Gary Phillips.

Celebrates funk music using biographies of such musicians as James Brown and George Clinton, and provides descriptions of the genre, historical perspectives, and the story behind the "death of funk" following the introduction of disco.

Alice Echols reveals the ways in which disco transformed popular music, propelling it into new sonic territory and influencing rap, techno, and trance. She probes the complex relationship between disco and the era's major movements: gay liberation, feminism, and African American rights. You won't say "disco sucks" as disco thumps back to life in this pulsating look at the culture and politics that gave rise to the music.

(Piano/Vocal/Guitar Songbook). Get funkafied with piano/vocal/arrangements of 17 songs from the soundtrack to the 2014 biopic on legendary R&B star James Brown. Includes: Caldonia (What Makes Your Big Head So Hard?) * Cold Sweat, Pt. 1 * Get up (I Feel like Being) a Sex Machine * Get up Offa That Thing * I Got You (I Feel Good) * It's a Man's Man's Man's World * Night Train * Papa's Got a Brand New Bag * Please, Please, Please * Soul Power * Try Me * and more.

Theory in popular music has historically tended to approach musical processes of rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, and form as abstractions, without very directly engaging the intimate connection between the performer and instrument in popular music performance. Embodied Expression in Popular Music illuminates under-researched aspects of music theory in popular music studies by situating musical analysis in a context of embodied movement in vocal and instrumental performance. Author Timothy Koozin offers a performance-based analytical methodology that progresses from basic idiomatic gestures, to gestural combinations and interactions with large-scale design, to broader interpretive strategies that engage with theories of embodiment, the musical topic, and narrative. The book examines artistic practices in popular song that draw from a vast range of stylistic sources, including rock, blues, folk, soul, funk, fusion, and hip-hop, as well as European classical and African American gospel musical traditions. Exploring the interrelationships in how we create, hear, and understand music through the body, Koozin demonstrates how a focus on body-instrument interaction can illuminate musical structures while leveling implied hierarchies of cultural value. He provides detailed analysis of artists' creative strategies in singing and playing their instruments, probing how musicians represent subjectivities of gender, race, and social class in shaping songs and whole albums. Tracing connections from foundational blues, gospel, and rock musicians to current rap artists, he clarifies how inferences of musical topic and narrative are part of a larger creative process in strategically positioning musical gestures. By engaging with songs by female artists and artists of color, Koozin also challenges the methodological framing of traditional theory scholarship. As a contribution to work on embodiment and meaning in music, this study of popular song explores how the situated and engaged body is active in listening, performing, and the formation of musical cultures, as it provides a means by which we understand our own bodies in relation to the world.

The story of music in the United States of America is a long and colorful one. With so many different nationalities blending together to form a single nation they’ve all added their own musical traditions to the mix, and the results have been remarkable. Probably the biggest single contribution has come from the African-American community. Rhythms developed from traditional African music have evolved into several new genres and influenced many more. From jazz to the blues, from hip-hop to hard rock, almost everything in popular music has its roots in the churches and music clubs of the American South. One of the most talented and determined performers of the 20th century, without a doubt, was James Brown. Born into appalling poverty in the rural south, the man who’d later be known as Soul Brother #1 showed musical ability at an early age. Unfortunately it looked like it would be squandered when he turned to a life of street crime, ending up sentenced to a lengthy prison term at the age of sixteen. A chance meeting and a willingness to work hard earned him a second chance – and he made the most of it.