Soul Serenade: Rhythm, Blues & Coming of Age Through Vinyl

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A coming-of-age memoir about a young boy in rural Arkansas who searches for himself and his distant father through soul music Growing up in rural Arkansas, young Rashod Ollison turned to music to make sense of his life. The dysfunction, sadness, and steely resilience of his family and neighbors was reflected in the R&B songs that played on 45s in smoky rooms. Steeped in the sounds, the smells, the salty language of rural Arkansas in the 1980s, Soul Serenade is the memoir of a pop music critic whose love for soul music was fostered by his father, Raymond. Drafted into the Vietnam War as a teenager, Raymond returned a changed man, dead on the inside.

Reviews

An elegiac look at a childhood marked by violence, dysfunction, poverty, sorrowand plenty of good music.
Kirkus Reviews

Testifies to the powerful ways that music provides the soundtrack underneath the harmony and discord of his life...Ollisons moving memoir captures and colorfully reveals the ways that music can soothe the pain.
Publishers Weekly

Gifted memoirist Ollison uses the authentic language of home, profane and poetic, to vividly describe a childhood lived in a state of impermanence.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune

Ollison is to be highly commended for writing this, tough, disturbing, heartfelt, and music-filled book and for making his easily stereotyped family life and background movingly real...Readers will be turning to downloads, podcasts, CDsand recordsto play along to get full effect of this riveting and engaging book. They will also be anxious for Rashod Ollisons next set to drop.
Lambda Literary

In Soul Serenade Ollison lifts the curtain so readers can better understand poverty, constant attacks on the most personal aspects of the self, and the enormous effort it takes to rise above and be free.
The Virginian-Pilot

A beautiful memoir rendered with deep feeling and a finely tuned musicality.
David Ritz, author of Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin

Soul Serenade is a moving and beautifully written memoir. Music is ubiquitous throughout: a constant companion as a gifted young boy comes of age and finds his own creative and critical voice. Rashod Ollison has given us a compelling narrative that is sure to become a classic.
Farah Jasmine Griffin, author of If You Cant Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday

Author Bio

Rashod Ollison is an award-winning pop music critic and culture journalist. He has been a staff critic and feature writer for the Dallas Morning News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Journal News (Westchester, New York), Baltimore Sun, and Virginian-Pilot. He also wrote a music column for Jet magazine. A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, Ollison lives in Virginia Beach.