Nowhere To Run - Gerri Hirshey

The mark of a good music book is that it makes you want to listen to the music it’s about (obviously Motley Crue’s biog is the exception…embrace the book, avoid the music). Nowhere To Run is Gerri Hirshey’s account of the development of Soul up to the mid seventies.

It’s a terrific book that traces the story through interviews with most of the major players against a backdrop of racial politics and a changing music industry. It was first published in 1984 so she managed to get to artists like Michael Jackson and James Brown before they started to unravel.

This book (along with a steady stream of records and tips from passengers already aboard) was partly responsible for getting me aboard the soul train. As I was listening and learning about the music, this book gave me a peg to hang it on and brought the characters involved to life. The clattering, rolling writing style has a musical rhythm of it’s own and there are some fantastic quotes.

Wilson Pickett was a man who believed his own press, but I think this quote shows some of the truths and myths behind Soul music. “Me and a million other dudes said “later” to picking cotton. Moved north, learned to live in the city. Detroit, My Lord what a place…..Lean the lady up on one of them big Pontiacs – we in the 50’s now – be sweet and she slide right down the tailfin and into your arms. Lord bless and keep them automotive engineers. Give a country boy a reason to sing in that dirty old city,”

It was a business, (many of the artists and songwriters only want to talk about the hits in the interviews and Martha Reeves left Motown after asking awkward questions about her royalties) but it was also music built on a shared history of Black migration from the south to the industrial cities of the north, and then with labels like Stax, the music went South again.

Hirshey’s story moves between the City Soul sounds of Motown which was aspirational, sophisticated and shamelessly populist (black musicians selling to white teenagers) to the southern studios like Fame and Muscle Shoals where black and white musicians fused country and soul. Aretha Franklin was actually born in Memphis, moved to Detroit and then ironically, had to go back to Memphis to capture the sound that made her.

The time that the interviews took place meant that most of the artists had already had to adjust to harder times. Many had found themselves displaced by the Disco boom and the early 80’s didn’t look like it was going to be any easier.

The interviews with Martha Reeves and Isaac Hayes show bruised, reflective individuals just trying to get on with the business of getting by. Martha Reeves muses that she often found herself appearing on the bill with bands like The Cramps or Bad Brains. Now I think that sounds like a great show. As Clarence Carter prepares for a show on the nostalgia circuit he wonders aloud what songs to play, or whether just to laugh. The Clarence Carter trademark chuckle was a feature of many of his songs…ripe, fruity and lewd. It’s a laugh that may include scenes of a sexual nature.

The archetypal soul hustler though was Solomon Burke. His first session for Atlantic was recorded in the middle of a blizzard. Burke left early without hearing the results because, “I’ve got to go back to Philadelphia. I’m running a dump truck to pick up the snow. Pays 4 $ an hour.” When he played the Harlem Apollo he sold “Solomon Burke’s Magic Popcorn” in the aisles between his own shows. The owner was furious because there was already a popcorn concession. Burke decided that didn’t include Pork Chop Sandwiches, so he promptly set up a grill outside the venue and cooked and sold his own sandwiches between shows instead. The Bishop of Soul, cooking up fast food outside his own gig. The Solomon Burke chapter is fantastic. His quotes are as funny and outsized as the man himself. I’ve got a live album where he tells the audience “There’s 295 pounds of me…you can have any 5 pounds you like” and “All we need now is waterbed.” And he can sing.

The experience and effects of racism and segregation crop up frequently as many artists describe the tours of the south in the early 60’s. Solomon Burke tells a story of how Sam Cooke and himself were bundled out a restaurant by Police in Shreveport Louisiana and taken to the Fire Station, stripped, and forced at gunpoint to sing their hits, naked, to an audience of Police and Firemen.

To become fully soul qualified you also need to read Peter Guralnick’s book Sweet Soul Music. It’s a fine book, which really gets under the skin of Southern Soul and ties it all in to American music, racial, social and political history. Hirshey’s book is less academic but really does bring the whole era alive. It’s obviously written by someone who loves the music and that joy just leaps off the page. It’s a celebration of Soul Music and it’s artists and her enthusiasm is infectious. Go on, read the book, buy some records.