Jonathan Bernstein is a research editor at Rolling Stone. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, GQ, Pitchfork, and the Village Voice. He lives in Brooklyn.
A Points South essay from the Spring 2019 issue
Listen to the first two notes Raphael plays on his solo on Nelson’s “Georgia on My Mind” and it’s impossible not to hear Mickey singing the word “Georgia” through the instrument, the second syllable bending upward, just the way Willie sings it. Raphael’s harmonica grounds the song in its call-and-response gospel impulse: one voice means little without the other’s ghostly affirmation.
“They were brothers in music,” Ursula Covay said. “They wrote together, hung out together, traveled together, fought together, loved together, and made deals together.” That’s the word most of the children of the Soul Clan use today to describe their fathers’ bond. Brothers.
A conversation with Guy Clark biographer Tamara Saviano.
“Guy was telling me for at least a year and a half before he died that he would not be here when the book came out.”
Dave Prater played a quietly essential role in Sam & Dave, and it takes only a slightly closer listen to their discography to hear the vital contributions of the duo’s soft-spoken half.
From the beginning of Sam & Dave’s career, Sam’s otherworldly high tenor overshadowed Dave’s low harmony, and for a variety of reasons—some personal, some practical, some musical—the history of the duo has been rewritten in the nearly thirty years since Prater’s death so as to diminish Dave’s contributions.
Peter Guralnick on his new book, the nature of biography, and the endless complexities of Sam Phillips.