|
 The
Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, the Music, the 70s in San Francisco
by Joshua Gamson
Order this Book
A journey back through the music, madness, and
unparalleled freedom of an era of change-the '70s-as told through
the life of ultra-fabulous superstar Sylvester
Imagine a pied piper singing in a dazzling falsetto, wearing
glittering sequins, and leading the young people of the nation to
San Francisco and on to liberation where nothing was straight-laced
or old-fashioned. And everyone, finally, was welcome-to come as
themselves. This is not a fairy tale. This was real, mighty real,
and disco sensation Sylvester was the piper. Joshua Gamson-a
Yale-trained pop culture expert-uses him, a boy who would be
fabulous, to lead us through the story of the '70s when a new era of
change liberated us from conformity and boredom. Gamson captures the
exuberant life, feeling, energy, and fun of a generation's
wonderful, magical waking up-from the parties to the dancing and
music.
The story begins with a little black boy who started with nothing
but a really big voice. We follow him from the Gospel chorus to the
glory days in the Castro where a generation shook off its shame as
Sylvester sang and began his rise as part of a now-notorious
theatrical troup called the Cockettes. Celebrity, sociology, and
music history mingle and merge around this endlessly entertaining
story of a singer who embodied the freedom, spirit, and flamboyance
of a golden moment in American culture.
Review:
"In the world of that most disparaged of musical genres — disco —
the subject of this biography commanded respect. 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. The richness of this material (Sylvester's background singers
Martha Wash and Izora Rhodes Armstead, who later became the Weather
Girls, are particularly amusing and insightful raconteurs) reveals
all the shadings of Sylvester's diva persona: he was fierce but
generous, caustic but caring, temperamental but talented. Gamson's
pulsating use of song lyrics, sounds and descriptions also creates a
tangible history of San Francisco as it changed from a joyous oasis
of liberation to the epicenter of the AIDS pandemic. Seventeen years
after his death, this gay icon gets the celebratory biography he
deserves. Photos. Agent, Ira Silverberg. (Mar.)" Publishers Weekly
(Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
About the author
Joshua Gamson is a professor of sociology at the University of San
Francisco. He is the author of Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows
and Sexual Nonconformity and Claims to Fame: Celebrity in
Contemporary America. He formerly taught at Yale. He lives in
Oakland, California.
|
