 The
Soulful Divas: Personal Portraits of over a dozen divine divas from
Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, & Diana Ross, to Patti LaBelle, Whitney
Houston, & Janet Jackson by David Nathan
David
Nathan's life changed as an English teenager in the '60s. The
agent of that shift? Records by black American singers such as
Aretha
Franklin, Dionne
Warwick, and Nina
Simone. Soon he was the head of Simone's British fan club,
and in short order, became a journalist with growing access to
his heroines. Over the ensuing years, Amazon.com and Billboard
contributor Nathan has had Franklin bake him a peach cobbler,
stood under the thrown shade of everyone from Esther
Phillips to Anita
Baker, and even had Miss
Ross ask him to call her "Diana." The Soulful
Divas captures Nathan's obsession with his favorites, providing
two-layered narratives that meld career rundowns with interviews
and other personal meetings with his subjects. Most of the 14
single-artist chapters are successful portraits, with the exception
of Nathan's profile of Natalie
Cole, whose drug problems and career resurrection in the shadow
of her late father are little more than the stuff of a legend-in-her-own-mind.
A dearth of material weakens a closing chapter on young divas
Whitney
Houston, Janet
Jackson, and Toni
Braxton. But Nathan also provides many invaluable, eye-opening
moments, such as the story of a baseball-bat-wielding Phillips
threatening to smash up the offices of a record company slow to
pay royalties. Finally, he fills out the received wisdom on "X-rated"
Millie
Jackson, who says, "When I'm home, it's crossword puzzles,
television, and the kids." Kids who no doubt, like Nathan,
picked up their share of tips on life and love from Jackson and
her sisters. --Rickey Wright (Amazon.com)
|
