Sheldon Taylor's Souls of Black Notes

                                                                "But if you can still hold onto what is yourself, that part of me that makes me Roberta and does not make me Chaka or Anita ... I'm going to hold on to that no matter what, and I'm going to nourish and cherish and nurture that and strengthen that."   Roberta Flack’s confident occupation of her creative space, captured in a 1989 Washington Post (“Roberta Flack; Charting Her Own Course") interview among the pantheon of Black female vocalists, evokes the title of one of her classic albums: quiet fire. There’s no one like her: traces of Minnie Riperton’s ethereal poetry live on in Jill Scott’s airy word-speak. Aretha’s litanies of longing are precursors of sorts to Mary J. Blige’s own heartache homilies. A young Evelyn King’s pairing with producers T. Life and...

                                                                                           While the Budweiser Super Fest was cementing itself as a preeminent summer tour package, the music business was rebounding from an industry recession. In December '84 Billboard   ( "The Challenge of Change In The Record Industry" ) tracked its return to solvency, citing the shedding of 70s financial excess, renewed consumer spending and emerging technology as reasons for the fiscal turnaround.  The emerging music video medium was also an industry change agent. While short-sighted label ambition, budgetary con...