The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, the Music, the Seventies in San Francisco
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.13 (650 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0312425694 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 336 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-05-19 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
By conventional standards, Sylvester James was an outsider—he was an out, gay, African-American who dressed in drag and sang with a thundering falsetto—but he found mainstream success in the late 1970s and early '80s with three Top 40 hits, Dance (Disco Heat), You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) and I Who Have Nothing, and an international #1 sensation (Do Ya Wanna Funk). At times, Gamson's (Freaks Talk Back) extensively researched volume is a vibrant and moving oral biography, with firsthand conversations with virtually everyone who knew or worked with Sylvester, from his youth in South Central L.A. through his successful music career, to his death from AIDS in 1988 at 41. From Publisher
This was real, mighty real, and disco-sensation Sylvester was the piper.Yale-trained sociologist Joshua Gamson uses Sylvester's life to lead us through the story of the 1970s, when a generation took off its shame. And everyone, finally, was welcome--to come as themselves. Celebrity, sociology, and music history mingle in this endlessly entertaining story of a singer who embodied the freedom, spirit, and flamboyance of a golden moment in American culture.. This is not a fairy tale. Imagine a pied piper singing in falsetto, wearing sequins, and leading the young people of the nation to San Francisco and on to a liberation where nothing was straight-laced or old-fashioned
HE WHO FUNKS BEHIND THE ROWS!! said Fantastic Book!--Would Make A Great Movie!!. I enjoyed this book so much that I read it twice,then a year later, read it again!!---FANTASTIC!!It captures the times, the people, places and things thatmade Sylvester, San Francisco, that music and that erasuch a golden & magical time!I love the stories of the young Sylvester growing up inSouth Central L.A. in the 50's and 60's, FLAMI. Mighty, mighty real Magic happens where reality and fantasy overlap. It's a space that dance music star Sylvester effortlessly occupied during the outrageous and flamboyant club scene of the mid-70s to early 80s, when those lines were happily blurred on a nightly basis.Gamson does an excellent job of showing Sylvester's `six-degrees of separation' influenc. One of the great Disco, stars Rosalind Ross I am pleased to once again take this opportunity too tell the world, how wonderful Sylvester was. We attended the same church, in Oakland California and I met and spoke with him on more than one occasion, I own all of his music and a few pictures of him and Me together. I always thought he was a grand diva; he was before Rupaul, and Syl