James Brown's Live at the Apollo [Paperback]

In this remarkable book, Douglas Wolk brings to life an October evening in 1962, at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem  an evening at the height of Cold War tensions. In great detail, Wolk pieces together what took place (and what was recorded) that night, and illustrates beautifully the enduring power of one of James Brown's  and popular music's  defining moments: Live at the Apollo.

Douglas Wolk writes about music. His work appears regularly in The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Salon, Slate, Rolling Stone, The Nation, and many other publications. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

...he advances, word by word, through the centerpiece of the disk, Lost Someone, he tracks the cries emitted from the audience by a mysterious little old lady, and then he speaks very well about the knees, the microphones, and the capes of James Brown the tragedian. Written in clear and precise language, the book is ideal while listening to the recording in, for example, the Deluxe edition brought out last year with notably improved sound. Soul Bag 178

...slim, elegant volume. Observer (Music Monthly)

Wolk breaks down the show minute by minute, song by song, to get at what made it such a transformative event. Washington Post 2/13/05

...exemplary analysis of James Brown's legendary LP... MOJO

The highlight is Douglas Wolk's examination of James Brown's Live at the Apollo, which reads like a hypertext book. He moves moment-by-moment through the recording of the album, stopping every few paragraphs to elaborate, explain or digress. In the process, he opens up not only the particulars of Brown's live shows at the time, but how the Apollo show fits into Brown's legendary career, how Brown and his material fit into the history of R&B, and how the album fits into American culture, being recorded on the eve of the Cuban Missle Crisis. Alex Rawls,Gambit Weekly (New Orleans) 10/26/04

...slim, elegant vl#.