5 comments about T.D. Jakes: America's New Preacher.

1. Before reading this book, I often dismissed T.D. Jakes (who I would mock as "T.D. Takes" and "T.D. Fakes") as a rank hustler who pimped the emotions and pocketbooks of desperate women and who exploited the Black family crisis for his personal gain.
   
   This unauthorized biography is neither a kiss-up volume or a bash session. It is a well-balanced view of how Thomas Dexter Jakes raised himself up from poverty in West Virginia coal country to become all but the heir apparent of Billy Graham in today's culture.
   
   The good and bad are shown here. The ghostwritten books, the skullduggery with other preachers, his ruthless treatment of tenats on his property are mixed with the good he has done to and for many people (including his family) and others who are searching for answers at a time when stable families are in far too short supply.
   
   So while it is not likely that I will spend any money on any of Jakes' books or campaigns, I have a smidgen of a bit more respect for what good he does while aware of his flaws, which is true of most human beings.
   
   It lays bare the facts and lets the reader decide.



2. This book takes a look at one of the strongest emerging religious leaders of this country. I was fortunate enough to have taken a couple of classes with Professor Shayne. The book was about Shayne's research of the life of Bishop T.D. Jakes. From a variety of angles, Shayne demonstrates how Jakes was able to comodify religion and become successful with it by integrating it with pop culture and by blurring the lines that once divided people of different denominations. I greatly recommend this book to anyone and everyone.



3. This is a fair book that deal with a complex subject and man. There will be some that think that any analysis of Bishop Jakes written by a secular writer will be slanted, but the author does a great job of presenting a balance picture. Dr. Lee is not a Jakes partisan , but he is not a hater. He explores how Bishop Jakes enter the national spotlight and what he has done to stay there. One thing that was missing from the book was a meaningful discussion on how people like Bishop Jakes and other "Super Pastors" are impacting religion and faith in this country and overseas. But this book is a good start



4. I am enjoying your book extremely and I love that it is on a subject that I
   would otherwise probably never look to learn about or that even really I would
   think, interest me. I never knew the breadth and extent of the vast
   televangelist market, and the work of ministers such as Jakes, not only as men
   of God but as businessmen. Although I personally am not religious, this
   "updating" of the religious industry is completely fascinating. I especially
   enjoyed(just as the cynic I am), all of the hypocrisies and oxymorons offered
   by men such as Jakes. He is not very different, in fact, from someone like
   Paris Hilton, who has made her success by marketing everything she can, and
   successfully I might add! Its interesting especially because you want to both
   love him and hate him all at the same time. ALthough many of his methods and
   lavish lifestyle are controversial, it is important to acknowledge not only his
   brilliance as a marketing machine and businessman, but in the end he does offer
   a certain hope and message which (though I may not agree with it per se) does
   in fact speak to hundreds of thousands.



5. Almost a decade ago a classic book called The Black Church in the African American Experience warned us about a fast growing Neo-Pentecostal movement threatening the traditional black church. It's about time someone picked up their mantle and let us know what Neo-Pentecostalism is all about!
   
   This book is the best work on the black church since Lincoln and Mamiya's classic study back in 1990. Lee picks up right where they left off and provides us with probably the most lucid explanation of how what he calls a "Neo-Pentecostal revolution" is a dominant force in contemporary American religion by using Jakes as its powerful general. The author argues that Jakes is part of a "faith industry" that turns spiritual gifts into "valuable commodities" (in other words, cash cows). Lee uses Jakes to diagnose and forecast the changing American religious landscape in it's hypercapitalist, postmodern form. This book is a must read (and easy read too) for religion scholars and average people (like me) who have been wondering for years why Jakes is so popular. I have a new respect for Jakes and yet Lee raises new concerns as well.

1 comments about Mastering Slavery: Memory, Family, and Identity in Women's Slave Narratives.

1. Mastering slavery is an excellent book. Jennifer Fleischner has written a truly interdisciplinary account of a subject that is too often simplified. The intensely complex relationships that existed in the plantation system are examined in this book through the lens of psychoanalysis and literary history, a unique treatment of the subject, as far as I can tell. Fleischner, a former professor of mine at SUNYA, brings to her writing the same rigor she demanded in her classroom, a space where scholarship still matters.

4 comments about One Love: Life with Bob Marley and the Wailers.

1. GREAT pictures of Peter Tosh and of course of Bob and the rest of the Wailers . I found the book to be a bit of an ego trip for the author to point himself out at every oportunity in the pictures that he was in haming up the shot as he always seem to be Bogarting .Some how Lee always looks even more disshevled than the rastas themselves. You cant become a rasta you have to be one from time begun and it is obvious the author got on board way down the line but kudos for getting onboard that train. Rare photos of Tosh for his debut solo album are the real prize here as are some rare shots of Bob . Worth buying just for cutting out pictures and framing them. Peace to Lee.



2. Although I found some rare pictures of BOB in this book, I was rather suprised to see a lot of other pictures "frozen" from live video foootage from "Rebel Music". As a result there are many pictures with very poor quality. It appears that he filled out the book with any thing he could find. I have not finished reading the book yet, but I am not that impressed with the pictures, and secondly Lee Jaffe only know BOB for a couple of years. Unfortunately we "die hard" Marley fans buy anything with Marley on it. I give the book a C rating.



3. finally lee JAHfee puts out a book on Bob. a great book. sometimes you can almost feel like you are there with Bob and lee and the others. his recollection is top notch. roger steffens question are just the ones i hoped he would ask lee. the photos are amazing. precise and to the point. the large coffee table format is nice too. now we just need lee's book on tosh and joe higgs.



4. "One Love" is great for two reasons: 1) the extremely rare pictures and 2) Lee Jaffe's chronicles of the Wailers personalities and experiences.

   This book is chock full of extremely rare Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, and Bob Marley photos, most of which have only been seen by those close to Lee Jaffe. As an example, if you are reading this review, you are most likely aware of Peter Tosh's Legalize It album cover...you know, the one where he is sitting in a ganja field with his pipe. Contained within the pages of this glorious book are several pictures from the Legalize It photo shoot by Jaffe, who had a trigger happy finger, and Jaffe's impeccable memory allows for detailed captions of the photos in the book.

   He also tells of his experiences with Bob Marley and crew, in response to Roger Steffens' probing questions. Jaffe has a lot to say and doesn't leave any details out. I bought the book for the pictures and was very satisfied with Jaffe's words. Through Jaffe we glean minute details about what life was like for the Wailers and crew prior to "bussing it" on the international music scene. He brings those experiences to life.

   As a bonus, this book is attractively laid out with vibrant color schemes that are not too busy.

3 comments about Four Lives in the Bebop Business.

1. This book is a great resource for someone looking for words to match the music of such greats as Ornette Coleman. Not only does it look at the lives and developments of these people as musicians, but also at the constant struggles such artists faced (still face?) in the music industry. I can't imagine there was any other book of its kind back when it was first published in 1966, but that aside, its still worth a read now that such important jazz figures are more widely appreciated. Spellman has a deep respect for the musicians he writes about. More than a respect, a reverence. This is particularly true of the section dedicated to Herbie Nichols. I picked this book up simply because I'm a huge Ornette Coleman fan, but I think my favorite parts of the book were the conversations with Cecil Taylor. His perspective on Stockhausen is priceless and pretty entertaining.



2. I enjoyed this book thoroughly. The four biographies were wonderful and deepened my understanding of the bebop era and what life is like for career musicians. I was at first drawn to this book because of the biography of Herbie Nichols; I own the complete works of Herbie Nichols on CD but until I read this book only knew that he was unappreciated during his lifetime. Now I really understand Mr. Nichols and my respect for him and ability to appreciate his music is much deeper. Same for Ornette Coleman, who until I read his biography here was to my mind merely an eccentric who had helped ruin the commercial viability of jazz. Thanks to this book I now understand how sincere and committed and courageous Ornette Coleman was. I bought this book on Amazon about a month ago and I do not understand why Amazon lists it, a month later, as "out of print". I urge anyone who wants to deepen his/her understanding of jazz music to read this wonderful book. People who want to learn jazz can no longer simply go to 52nd Street in NYC and learn from the masters directly. Books such as this book, videos, and CD's are the only way for the current and future generations to learn about the golden age of jazz. Thus, this book is *essential* for a sincere student of jazz. The book's high quality is worthy of the heavy responsibility it thus bears. By the way in the course of the four biographies it contains a lot of fascinating detailed insights about Theolonius Monk, Miles Davis and Charlie Parker.



3. Spellman, a lucid analyst of the avant garde jazz movement in the '60s (see his liner notes, for example, on the original release of Coltrane's "Ascension"), has contributed with this book four compelling portraits of musicians who gave and have given their lives to jazz.

   "Four Lives in the Bebop Business" profiles two altoists, Jackie McLean and Ornette Coleman; and two pianists, Cecil Taylor and Herbie Nichols. Spellman skillfully crafts the narratives, while wisely allowing his subjects to tell large chunks of their stories in their own words.

   It becomes clear as one reads the book that it took a lot of guts to be a jazz musician during the '50s and '60s (and still does). All four of the musicians faced major obstacles in pursuing their art.

   McLean, who enjoyed the greatest amount of commercial success of the four, especially early on, battled drug addiction. Taylor and Coleman faced open hostility because of their challenging, groundbreaking approaches to playing their instruments. Nichols (the only one of the four who is not still alive) was just plain ignored, despite his brilliantly original playing (check out the two-disk Blue Note compilation of his music), and spent much of his all-too-brief career playing in Greenwich Village dives.

   In spite of bad accommodations, poor pay, public indifference, critical hostility and difficulty finding gigs, these artists, the book makes clear, would never play anything other than jazz. In this sense, the book has an underlying inspirational message. Still, it remains for America to fully embrace its only true indigenous art form, something which to this day has not occurred.

   The book also offers insights from the musicians on the creative process and about the historic changes in jazz that occurred during the '60s, from the perspective of men who were on the front lines of the battles between critics, musicians, and the listening public.

   Required reading for the serious jazz listener.

No comments about The Road to Hell: The True Story of George Jackson, Stephen Bingham and the San Quentin Massacre.

5 comments about Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday.

1. No one with a true understanding of Billie Holiday would consider her a Blues Singer. As such to truly study Blues Legacies, it would be better if a Blues singer like Memphis Minnie, one of the greatest female instrumental blues singers, were included. Surely, Dinah Washington, justifiably named the Queen of the Blues, or Ruth Brown, (Miss or maybe now Ms Rhythm) would be more appropriate to a study of Black blues women.
   
   This hints that the generalizations in this book may be the result of pushing around reality rather than studying it. This is an all too frequent problem in the writing of academics who seem more concerned about creating their own little niche of analysis, than situating their work in the realities of life, culture, and art where the blues or Jazz, and Billie's real life live.
   
   Billie did not like to be called a Blues Singer. If we are concerned with the voices of Black women, then someone involved in this book should have at least had the respect to listen to Billie Holiday's voice on the matter. She considered herself a Jazz singer and later a cabaret singer.
   
   She recorded very few blues. The two blues she recorded again and again "Billie's Blues" and "Fine and Mellow" were only recorded because in two different recording sessions there was time to record additional songs, but no preparation or charts existed for any song, so an easy to play blues was selected. Billie recorded them and performed these two tunes often because she had the author's credit and publishing on them which made it easier and more profitable. This is despite the fact that the exact word sets had been sung and recorded by real blues singers before Billie had the brains to record AND copyright them. Listen to Helen Humes sing an exact version of Fine and Mellow with another name during the first Spirituals to Swing concert that took place BEFORE Billie recorded her version.
   
   A good contrast with Billie, though male, was her friend and often colleague Jimmie Rushing who served with her in the Basie Band. Despite his penchant for claiming he was a ballad singer as well--Rushing actually thought that when Billie left Basie that rather than hiring another singer, he alone could fill the gap--Rushing's recordings with Walter Page's Blue Devils in the 1920s, with Moten in the early 1930s, and with Basie in the 1930s and 1940s are masterpieces of the blues. Many of his renditions like Good Morning Blues have become standards for blusicians of all stripes. Lesser known but deserving more attention are his great blues recorded with KC musicians for John Hammond on Vanguard in the 1960s.
   
   Otherwise she recorded few blues, particularly in her most artistically developed period between 1934 and 1945. Indeed, Billie's lack of a blues repertoire and disinclination to perform blues cost her her position as female vocalist with the Count Basie Orchestra, a match made in heaven. While there were no doubt other factors involved, many Basieites especially Buck Clayton who was quite close to Billy have said Billie was replaced because she didn't perform enough blues to suit John Hammond who acted as de facto manager and AR man with the Basie band. Hammond replaced Billie Holiday with Helen Humes who had been recording blues for ten years before she joined Basie. Humes, of course, continued to record Blues with Basie, and then as an independent singer from then until her death keeping her magnificent jump blues alive for several generations of listeners. Clayton's complaint is a standard one leveled at white Jazz producers like Hammond and Norman Grantz that they wanted blues, not more harmonically developed music that Black Jazz musicians really wanted to play.
   
   The blues is a specific genre of African American musical, poetic, and cultural expression with its own distinct history, evolution, and practices. Simply collapsing every Black performer into the Blues makes the blues meaningless and demeans the work of the millions of women and men who have created the blues in the last 110-120 years.
   
   Another insult to Billie, is the tendency to see her as a "blues figure" because of her "tragic" life. This is the tendency to evaluate Billie as the public life disaster that she tended to milk in desperation in the last years of her life symbolized by the fake autobiography _Lady Sings the Blues_. This contrasts than the artistic consideration she deserved and received from other musicians and singers. She was a competent and practicing jazz artist, raised in the music business (her father complained he played guitar for every jazz artist in NYC in the 1930s and early 1940s but Billie. Her mother boarded musicians and catered musical parties). From a young age, Billie was considered as knowledgeable as the top instrumentalists of the music by those top instrumentalists.
   
   Those who rely on the "tragedy" to induct Billie into the Blues express a greater ignorance given that as her own drug addiction advanced, her music had less and less of a connection with the blues, climaxing in "The Lady in Satin" which is a vain attempt to take The Lady into non-Jazz pop. All of her original blues were recorded in her pre-heroin youth in the 1930s, not in the 1950s when Billie's self-made "tragedy" had begun to destroy her voice and musicial viability and then her life.
   
   It is quite bizarre for anyone to claim Billie's performance of Meeropol's song "Strange Fruit," has any relationship to blues music given her very straight reading of the tune, the unblueslike straight minor it is given, and the unjazzlike accompaniment. If one wants to see what a Blues Singer can do to this song, one needs to listen to the astounding version recorded by Josh White which is blusey and also more dramatic and satisfying than Holiday's more celebrated version. Holiday's performance of "Strange Fruit," tends to be elevated by folks for the justifiable political message the song provided and the controversy involved. However, an honest or even rational evaluation of the performance seems to be unavailable these days.
   
   This raises yet another ignorance, the outsider's view that "The Blues" is always sad or "tragic." The immense body of the most popular blusicians--that is blues artists that Black people listened to-- of the 1930s like Memphis Minnie, Tampa Red, and Leroy Carr served up a bunch of pretty happy, often double entendre, blues. Blues music was overwhelmingly dance music, with performers not playing the three minute blues contemporary white blues wannabe's deduce from recordings, but 10 to even 30 minute versions of their songs for dancers from Juke Joints to the big ballrooms. Unfortunately, people who have never studied the blues as a real genre, misplace it as the solo moaning of the "existential Negro," rather than the jumping music of a century of African American Saturday nights.
   
   
   As an African American performer of the blues and other Black traditional musics as well as a scholar of African American music tradition, this kind of non scientific, non-traditional, grab bag sloppiness about our music and our culture is a sign that even among our own, the outsider's false generalizations about the blues reign. You would think our own would know the score.



2. Davis work is a powerful re-reading of Blues women, and firmly places them in the center, rather than the margin, of Black oppositional and autonomous culture discourse. The book is mostly devoted to the work of Gertrude Rainey and Bessie Smith, but there are important sections devoted to Billie Holiday as well. In each case, the Davis argues for a more complete contextual understanding of Blues women music as introducing gender issues, breaking discursive taboos, and forging meaning within the context of an imagined community of Black women's lives.
   
   To begin with, Davis convincingly argues that Blues women were on the vanguard in breaking down taboos concerning domestic violence and male subjugation, as many Blues songs concerned these matters. Davis uses powerful works such as "Rough and Tumble Blues," "See See Rider Blues," and "Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair," to demonstrate that Blues women were willing to engage in oppositional, if allegorical, violence in the service of personal autonomy. Even man songs that seem to demonstrate acquiescence, even masochism, in the face of male abuse can be seen to have an ironic, subversive, or didactic quality that belies a simplistic surface reading.
   
   Davis also takes on the common notion that Blues music doesn't include social protest, an interpretation that has been pushed by white commentators, such as Samuel Charters, and black commentators, such as Albert Murray. Davis argues that Blues music inherits from Slave musical culture a coded approach to naming and resistance that demands more than a surface analysis of the lyrics, and takes into account the role of music as a lyrical interlocuter. Focusing on tunes such as "Backwater Blues" and "Washwoman's Blues," Davis almost always effectively demonstrates that coded protest is still protest, and that women's blues historically anticipated and grounded mass movements in the areas of civil rights and feminism, while remaining linked with West African hermeneutic structure of naming and interpretation, such as "nommo."
   
   In terms of Religious content, Davis forcefully recounts how women reconfigured a secular existential (or even "Devil's") music as prayer itself, magically and aesthetically conjured to exorcise emotions such as "the blues." At the same time, she harshly criticizes the Black church for adopting Christian dualisms concerning the moral status of body and spirit, which she sees as sexualized forms of racism and sexism--- since both blacks and women have been semiotically linked with earthiness and body as opposed to spirit by while male elites. Celebratory Sexuality, on the other hand, has always, according to Davis, been an oppositional aspect of black working-class consciousness. This extends beyond sexuality to an affirmation of Black folk religious life (such as Hoodoo) and crossing of class boundaries in the Blues, which Davis contends is a major reason Blues music was ignored and even distanced by Black elites during the Harlem Renaissance.
   
   Davis's discussion of Billie Holiday is short (two chapters) but powerful, in which she argues that Holiday subversively appropriated the saccharine Tin Pan Alley love song format she was given as Slaves would have appropriated the English language upon their arrival in the North Americas. Holiday worked little in the formal Blues, but was nontheless grounded in the Blues idiom, from which she drew inspiration, and a subversive presentation of white romantic life to Black audiences. In this vein, such songs as "Strange Fruit" fit more coherently, and the ironic (and yet utopian) edge in her voice professes to the truth of Black women's lives, even in ways that on the surface seem to be feministically regressive.
   
   There are isolated examples where Davis is less successful than at other times, but on the whole, her argumentation is strong and fearless, and her analogical and narrative analysis of the music along with lyrics adds, rather than detracts, from her argument.



3. I have to agree with the reviewer from Turkey who wrote positively about Davis' "Strange Fruit" chapter in Blues Legacies. I recently wrote a term paper on the song Strange Fruit in which I referred to both David Margolick's recent release about Strange Fruit and Davis' Blues Legacies. I was very impressed with Davis' depiction of Holiday as an individual and an entertainer. It seemed that she brought a more well-rounded and objective perspective on the singer into the world of Billie Holiday biographies. Her take on the song and on Holiday's connection to it are, shall we say, refreshing, in that it takes a novel approach to the singer -- one that attempts to remain impartial to the popular image of Holiday. This book is also an excellent reference for those studying feminism, jazz, Afro-Americana and/or the lives of the three women (Rainey, Holiday and Smith) showcased in Davis' Blues Legacies.



4. If you expect to read a traditional biography you may be dissappointed. The lives of the blues women and their political messages behind their songs are discussed in one another's light. This works very well as blues is a folk music which tells many things about the black experience and most singers are song writers themselves. The section about Billie Holiday and her song Strange Fruit is one of the rare approaches to Lady Day as an artist who gave a very important political messages about racism. In other biographies Billie Holiday is always portrayed as a victim rather than a person who had an important political message. I believe this very style of her portrayal could be discussed in a feminist context and that's what Angela Davies did in this book with her vast knowledge and experience in black politics and gender issues. Some people criticize the book for being overtly political. However, I see no other way of analyzing the blues without its political context. The transcriptions of the songs also gives a documentary value to this book. It has been a great reference for my research in this field. I wish I can get in touch with Angela Davies one day and discuss her about the research she has done while preparing this book.



5. Davis' title explains her project in clear terms at the outset. She is not engaged in a critique of modern women in popular music (as one reviewer anticipated). Nor is she profiling these women in biography format. Therefore, she does not need the permission of Rainey's relatives for this project. Her goal is to uncover the pre-feminist sentiments expressed in these women's music. In that regard, she needs only the barest biographical information (that women performers were not rooted to hearth and home, traveled, worked, and had marquee positions). Assuming this general information to be true of all these women, Davis then concentrates her primary energy on the legacy that blues lyrics leave for Black Feminism. Part of that legacy is found in the advice on romance, religion, and race that these women's songs shared (or share now) with black female listeners. I hope this gives readers an accurate idea of what to expect from this worthwhile book and encourages disappointed readers to re-encounter the book on its own terms.

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1 comments about How Shall We Tell Each Other of the Poet?: The Life and Writing of Muriel Rukeyser.

1. I should preface this by telling you that I am fanatically devoted to Muriel Rukeyser's work and so may present a somewhat extreme perspective. As a high-schooler, it is one of my deepest hopes that my generation will awaken to this amazing and underappreciated woman. As Muriel Rukeyser's poems are monuments, so is her life itself. She was a tremendous force for artistic vision and social conscience. As a reflection of such a life, this book could hardly go wrong, and it is indeed intensely thought-provoking and inspiring.

   I found the organization of the book to be effective on the whole. Rather than a single narrative, it is a collection of writings from a range of people including Adrienne Rich, and Muriel Rukeyser's son, William Rukeyser. It's divided into five parts: 1. Poetics and Vision; 2. Activism and Teaching; 3. The Body, Feminist Critique, and the Poet as Mother; 4. Poetry of Witness; 5. Remembering Muriel Rukeyser. For the most part the divisions seemed somewhat arbitrary, but of course dividing a life into such categories is a near impossible task. I enjoyed the mix of literary critique with personal stories. There were also a surprisingly large number of poems about/inspired by Muriel Rukeyser, and these were of mixed quality. On the whole, the book admittedly had it's hits and it's misses, but it was absolutely worth it for the hits. I would recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about Muriel Rukeyser (and that should, of course, be everyone).

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