Sheldon Taylor's Souls of Black Notes

                                                                                                                                                    "Understand while you dance"            --- Kenny Gamble: Message in the Music (1976) Circ...

Leave it to Morris Day to write the closest thing we'll ever get to a Prince memoir. On Time: A Princely Life of Funk peels back so many layers of the flashy front man from the legendary funk band The Time. Thankfully, Day bypasses the sober reflections atypical of other memoirs that are so unworthy of his larger -than- life personality. On Time has a bounce that keeps the reader's attention throughout. How do I know? I pulled it out of my mailbox around 1:00am and sat  in my car reading it cover-to cover until I finished nearly three hours later. On Time also details the history of the Minneapolis Sound and Day's complex relationship with his friend and ally. Collaborator and mentor. Bandmate and occasional adversary. Day even brings Prince along for the ride, masterfully re-creating their sharp tag-team banter recalling their Purple Rain days. It works too. Prince's spirit hovers over Day, pushing, prodding and interrupting. So much so that their sim...

                                                                                    In 1979, R&B music stood at the crossroads of a music industry deep in recession.   Only two years earlier, Warner-Elektra-Atlantic (WEA) grossed $394.5 million in sales. The label conglomerate’s watershed year was captured in Rolling Stone Magazine (“ Platinum Rising” ). WEA was responsible for one of every four albums sold in the marketplace. Of the Top Five albums released in 1977, WEA distributed four. They also placed eight more in the Top 20, commanding an impressive 24.7 market share.  Profits from huge-selling albums like Carole King’s Tapestry (1972), The Eagles’ Hotel California (1976), and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours (1977) spawned an e...