Craig Werner – författare

A Change is Gonna Come chronicles more than forty years of black music: from the hopeful, angry refrains of the Freedom movement to the slick pop of Motown; from Woodstock and the 'Summer of Love' to Vietnam and the race riots; from disco inferno to the Million Man March. This is an insightful and riveting study which looks at the place black music occupies in social history, its battle for the desegregation of popular music and its contribution to social change outside the recording studio

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.

Any future biographical work on Richard Wright will find this bibliography a necessity; academic or public libraries supporting a program of black culture will find it invaluable; and it belongs in any library supporting American literature studies. Richard Wright has truly been well served. ChoiceThe most comprehensive bibliography ever compiled for an American writer, this book contains 13,117 annotated items pertaining to Richard Wright. It includes almost all published mentions of the author or his work in every language in which those mentions appear. Sources listed include books, articles, reviews, notes, news items, publishers' catalogs, promotional materials, book jackets, dissertations and theses, encyclopedias, biographical dictionaries, handbooks and study guides, library reports, best seller charts, the Index Translationum, playbills and advertisements, editorials, radio transcripts, and published letters and interviews. The bibliography is arranged chronologically by year. Each entry includes bibliographical information, an annotation by the authors, and information about all reprintings, partial or full. The index is unusually complete and contains the titles of Wright's works, real and fictional characters in the works, entries relating to significant places and events in the author's life, important literary terminology, and much additional information.

Any future biographical work on Richard Wright will find this bibliography a necessity; academic or public libraries supporting a program of black culture will find it invaluable; and it belongs in any library supporting American literature studies. Richard Wright has truly been well served. ChoiceThe most comprehensive bibliography ever compiled for an American writer, this book contains 13,117 annotated items pertaining to Richard Wright. It includes almost all published mentions of the author or his work in every language in which those mentions appear. Sources listed include books, articles, reviews, notes, news items, publishers' catalogs, promotional materials, book jackets, dissertations and theses, encyclopedias, biographical dictionaries, handbooks and study guides, library reports, best seller charts, the Index Translationum, playbills and advertisements, editorials, radio transcripts, and published letters and interviews. The bibliography is arranged chronologically by year. Each entry includes bibliographical information, an annotation by the authors, and information about all reprintings, partial or full. The index is unusually complete and contains the titles of Wright's works, real and fictional characters in the works, entries relating to significant places and events in the author's life, important literary terminology, and much additional information.

For a Kentucky rifleman who spent his tour trudging through Vietnam's Central Highlands, it was Nancy Sinatra's ""These Boots Are Made for Walkin'."" For a ""tunnel rat"" who blew smoke into the Viet Cong's underground tunnels, it was Jimi Hendrix's ""Purple Haze."" For a black marine distraught over the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., it was Aretha Franklin's ""Chain of Fools."" And for countless other Vietnam vets, it was ""I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die,"" ""Who'll Stop the Rain,"" or the song that gives this book its title.In We Gotta Get Out of This Place, Doug Bradley and Craig Werner place popular music at the heart of the American experience in Vietnam. They explore how and why U.S. troops turned to music as a way of connecting to each other and the World back home and of coping with the complexities of the war they had been sent to fight. They also demonstrate that music was important for every group of Vietnam veterans -- black and white, Latino and Native American, men and women, officers and ""grunts"" -- whose personal reflections drive the book's narrative. Many of the voices are those of ordinary soldiers, airmen, seamen, and marines. But there are also ""solo"" pieces by veterans whose writings have shaped our understanding of the war -- Karl Marlantes, Alfredo Vea, Yusef Komunyakaa, Bill Ehrhart, Arthur Flowers -- as well as songwriters and performers whose music influenced soldiers' lives, including Eric Burdon, James Brown, Bruce Springsteen, Country Joe McDonald, and John Fogerty. Together their testimony taps into memories -- individual and cultural -- that capture a central if often overlooked component of the American war in Vietnam.

For a Kentucky rifleman who spent his tour trudging through Vietnam's Central Highlands, it was Nancy Sinatra's ""These Boots Are Made for Walkin'."" For a ""tunnel rat"" who blew smoke into the Viet Cong's underground tunnels, it was Jimi Hendrix's ""Purple Haze."" For a black marine distraught over the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., it was Aretha Franklin's ""Chain of Fools."" And for countless other Vietnam vets, it was ""I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die,"" ""Who'll Stop the Rain,"" or the song that gives this book its title.In We Gotta Get Out of This Place, Doug Bradley and Craig Werner place popular music at the heart of the American experience in Vietnam. They explore how and why U.S. troops turned to music as a way of connecting to each other and the World back home and of coping with the complexities of the war they had been sent to fight. They also demonstrate that music was important for every group of Vietnam veterans -- black and white, Latino and Native American, men and women, officers and ""grunts"" -- whose personal reflections drive the book's narrative. Many of the voices are those of ordinary soldiers, airmen, seamen, and marines. But there are also ""solo"" pieces by veterans whose writings have shaped our understanding of the war -- Karl Marlantes, Alfredo Vea, Yusef Komunyakaa, Bill Ehrhart, Arthur Flowers -- as well as songwriters and performers whose music influenced soldiers' lives, including Eric Burdon, James Brown, Bruce Springsteen, Country Joe McDonald, and John Fogerty. Together their testimony taps into memories -- individual and cultural -- that capture a central if often overlooked component of the American war in Vietnam.