LISTENER GUIDE TO SOUL-FOLK
Folk music of the 1960s and 1970s was a genre that was always shifting and expanding, yet somehow never found room for so many. In the sounds of soul-folk, Black artists like Terry Callier and Linda Lewis began to reclaim their space in the genre, and use it to bring their own traditions to light— the jazz, the blues, the field hollers, the spirituals— and creating something wholly new, wholly theirs, wholly ours.
This book traces the growing imprints of soul-folk and how it made its way from folk tradition to subgenre. Along the way, it explores the musicians, albums, and histories that made the genre what it is.
The selections that follow are both songs/artists mentioned in the book, as well as examples of the music’s history and trajectory. You can find a playlist here. And you can read the introduction from Soul-Folk here, and you can get your copy here.
Part I “The Unknown Black Bards”
“O black and unknown bards of long ago,
How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?”—James Weldon Johnson
Suggested listening
“Be There”- UNKLE, Ian Brown
”Dancing Girl”- Terry Callier
”900 Miles”- Terry Callier
”Crooked Shanks”- Newport Gardner, composer
”The Whistling Coon” George W. Johnson
”Down de Lover’s Lane”- Will Marion Cook, composer, performed by Paul Robeson
”Mirandy”- James Reese Europe, composer, vocals Noble Sissle
”Crazy Blues”- Mamie Smith
”My Time Ain’t Long”- Virginia Female Jubilee Singers
”Strut Miss Lizzie”- Norfolk Jazz Quartet
”Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody” - Aretha Franklin
”Dixie Flyer Blues”- Deford Bailey
”Oh Yes”- Wheat Street Female Quartet
”Bury Me High”- Josh White
”Oh Freedom” - Congregation of Brown Chapel
”Woke up This Morning with My Mind Stayed on Freedom” - Congregation of Brown Chapel
”Movin’ it On”- Odetta
”Hit or Miss”- Odetta
”I Got Shoes” Clara Ward Singers
”All God’s Children Got Soul”- William Bell
”Get Your Rights, Jack” - CORE Freedom Singers
”Calypso Freedom” - Willie Peacock
Part II The Family Tree
“[S]oul—the idea, the look, the sound—might best be described by cultural critic Emily Lordi in her book The Meaning of Soul, as the many “ways of being black together in a perilous age.” The artists who were creating soul-folk music were in community with one another, and in community with their Black listeners, finding their way to each other in their—and our—perilous age.
Soul-folk is a distinct genre, but it also includes all of the parts that came before it coming out in a new shape. The words and emotion and history and people that came before giving way to everything that came after. The echoes of Newport Gardner can be heard in the assured tone of Terry Callier. Odetta is mama once again, this time to Bill Withers and Linda Lewis. There’s a song by Queen Latifah—just go with me here—called “Mama Gave Birth to Soul Children,” and to borrow that sentiment, lots of mamas gave birth to soul-folk. “And if you’re wondering why I got kids so big/They weren’t born from the body, they were born from the soul.”
This is the family tree.”
– from the Soul-Folk chapter “Melding Sounds”
Suggested Listening
”We’ve Got to Get Ourselves Together” — Staple Singers
”Mama Gave Birth to Soul Children” - Queen Latifah and De La Soul
”100 Pounds of Clay” - Eugene McDaniels
”Compared to What” - written by Eugene McDaniels, performed by Roberta Flack
”Love Letter to America” - Eugene McDaniels
”Freedom Death Dance” - Eugene McDaniels
”You” - Bill Withers
”Harlem/Cold Baloney” - Bill Withers
”I Don’t Want You on My Mind” - Bill Withers
”Just Think About It” - Cleveland Francis
”Hot Sun” - Cleveland Francis
”My Lonesome Night” - Willie Wright
”I’m So Happy Now” - Willie Wright
”In the Beauty of the Night” - Willie Wright
”Black Betty” - Don Crawford
”My Daddy Gave Me Wings of Wax” - Don Crawford
”Silent Scream” - Don Crawford
”The Shadow of Your Smile” - Jon Lucien
”War Song” - Jon Lucien
”Listen Love” - Jon Lucien
"My Love and I”- Barbara & Ernie
”Play with Fire” - Barbara & Ernie
”You Turned My Bitter into Sweet” - Linda Lewis
”The Same Song” - Linda Lewis
”Hampestead Way” - Linda Lewis
”Maybe Tomorrow” - Labi Siffre
”A Number of Words” - Labi Siffre
”When I’m on My Own You Are on My Mind”- Labi Siffre
”Tennessee Voodoo” - Booker T.
”Lie to Me” - Booker T.
”Alley-Wind Song” - Terry Callier
”Trance on Sedgewick Street” - Terry Callier
Part III Music’s Long Memory
“This is soul-folk. This is the genre that, for so long, refused to be understood, refused to be named. In many ways, even with all of these words, all of this time, I feel uneasy giving it a name, uneasy pinning a label on it, identifying it, calling it out. There’s something really beautiful about the way it pushes back against that. It adds a period where, sometimes, there’s a question mark. But I don’t question that these artists, each 120in their own way, were fighting back against the looming erasure.
They fought back with sound. They pulled from the traditions that made them—the jazz, the blues, the field hollers, the spirituals—pulled it all into something new. That’s what soul-folk is. It’s hard to explain but easy to feel. Right now as history is being made in real time, in a world where we still have to ask if Black lives matter and where we have to demand that they do, soul-folk is likely finding another foothold, because that’s what folk music does—it reflects its time and sings it back to you.”
—from the Soul-Folk chapter, “Where Do We Go From Here”
Suggested Listening
”Wonder Child” - Richie Havens
”Everybody Has the Right to Love” - Eric Mercury
”I Am Free” - Leon Bibb
”Lucky Me” - Lou Bond
”The Creator Has a Master Plan” - Louis Armstrong and Leon Thomas
”I Think I’ll Call it Morning” - Gill Scott-Heron
”Montreal Main (The Buddha in the Palm)“ - Beverly Glenn-Copeland
”Who Will Survive America” - Amiri Baraka
”Real Real” - Nina Simone
”Meet Me at the River” - Miriam Makeba
”Blackberries” - Bonnie White
”Freedom is a Constant Struggle” - Leyla McCalla f. Joy Clark, Lilli Lewis, Sabine McCalla, Sula Spirit & Cassie Watson Francillon
”Good Thing” - Joy Clark
”Piece of Mine” - Lili Lewis and Gina Forsyth
”Home Again” - Michael Kiwanuka
”Final Days” - Michael Kiwanuka
”Everlasting” - Gray Reverend
”Poison Arrow” - Allison Russell
”Soapbox” - Amythyst Kiah
”Thoughts”- Danielle Ponder
”Swear to Gawd” - Sunny War f. David Rawlings and Chris Pierce
”You’ve Got the Power” - Charles Bevel