Tastykakes Soul Songs & Shining Stars

Tastykakes, Soul Songs and Shining Stars is a rich and passionate record of a life-long obsession with soul music and Rhythm & Blues from music industry stalwart and legendary A&R man Joe McEwen. At various times in his lengthy career McEwen has worked with Elvis Costello, Paul Simon, K.D. Lang, Wilco, Nick Lowe, Built To Spill, Queen Latifah, the Frank Sinatra catalogue, and many others. Tastykakes, Soul Songs and Shining Stars is a labor of love, half a century in the making, for music industry veteran Joe McEwen. A Philadelphia native and legendary A&R executive for Columbia, Sire/Warner Brothers, Verve, and Concord Music Group, McEwen now gathers a lifetime’s worth of encounters, essays, and reveries into one radiant collection—a love letter to the rhythm-and-blues and soul music that shaped him. Its pages are bursting with vivid, compelling, up-front and personal profiles and encounters with a host of important figures: Pops and Mavis Staples, George Clinton, Allen Toussaint, Betty Wright, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Don Covay, and many more. Alongside these portraits are heartfelt musings spanning the 1960s through the ’80s, illuminating the creative processes behind the songs that defined a generation. Interwoven throughout are reflections on basketball, memory, and movement—parallel sources of rhythm, improvisation, and joy. The book culminates in an extended 2024 conversation with esteemed music author and longtime confidant Peter Guralnick (Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke), a fitting finale to a collection that captures the soul of a lifetime in music.