Soul Covers

“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

“[R]efreshing and informative.” - Clarence V. Reynolds, Black Issues Book Review

“[V]aluable insights into these three albums encourage listeners to pick them up and listen to them again in light of [Awkward’s] examination of them; just what all good music books should do.” - Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Foreword Reviews

“A unique book about three remarkable performers and the music they created, this work is recommended for academic libraries and for public libraries with special music collections.” - Melissa Aho, Multicultural Review

“Awkward has set the coverology ball rolling, it will be interesting to watch its course.” - Kurt Gottschalk, Signal to Noise

“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

“Awkward’s considerations of authenticity (what it means, how it’s generated, and how it’s policed) should figure in critical discussion of race and music for some time to come. And, not least, Soul Covers should deepen our appreciation of what ‘cover songs’ are and do.” - Michael Coyle, Journal of Popular Music Studies

“The author first focuses on Franklin, looking at her career in general but in particular at her vital album Unforgettable: A Tribute to Dinah Washington (1964). He gives equal attention to Green’s Call Me (1973), offering not only a close reading of the album’s songs but also looking more broadly at the singer’s complex life. Most fascinating is the chapter on the less-well-known Snow. . . . Recommended.” - R. D. Cohen, Choice

“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