Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: African American women have played a pivotal part in rock and roll—from laying its foundations and singing chart-topping hits to influencing some of the genre's most iconic acts. Despite this, black women's importance to the music's history has been diminished by narratives of rock as a mostly white male enterprise.

In Black Diamond Queens, Maureen Mahon draws on recordings, press coverage, archival materials, and interviews to document the history of African American women in rock and roll between the 1950s and the 1980s. Mahon details the musical contributions and cultural impact of Big Mama Thornton, LaVern Baker, Betty Davis, Tina Turner, Merry Clayton, Labelle, the Shirelles, and others, demonstrating how dominant views of gender, race, sexuality, and genre affected their careers.

By uncovering this hidden history of black women in rock and roll, Mahon reveals a powerful sonic legacy that continues to reverberate into the twenty-first century.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Get your pearl-clutching hand limbered up, y’all...white men grabbed a narrative and co-opted it again!

I know, I know...no one saw that coming, did they?

What I did not know about the history of women in rock and roll was a LOT. The underhanded way the gatekeepers would routinely mislabel Black women's music as soul or R&B, making it into an audience-awareness choice, reaching the natural market for these women's work, ie other Black folks. This made sure it all looked okay from the outside and still kept them separate from the white audiences that loved their music. Big Mama Thornton recorded major hits for white artists who got them from discovering her versions, eg Elvis re-recording "Hound Dog" after she did it, then refusing ever to acknowledge her as the source of the style and the rendition he made. She never got her ublic due, her deserved attention, or her merited rewards despite a many-decade career.

There is an entire chapter on the girl groups like the Shirelles and the Supremes, huge cultural forces in their day and now largely ignored or forgotten entirely. Diana Ross might be familiar to some younger folk (likely as a solo act), but neither Florence Ballard nor Mary Wilson are, and that is nigh on criminal neglect! The history of the women who worked behind the stars, and in the session studios, are equally unknown to the broad swath of listeners. Who knows who Merry Clayton is, by name anyway? But listen to the Rolling Stones' absolutely ubiquitous "Gimme Shelter" and they know that voice. An actual human woman, with a career, made those glorious sounds behind Jagger's howl of lust. Women like Claudia Lennear and Minnie Riperton were "muses" for white, famous men, and had tiny fractions of their success.

Of course no one can take a cursory look at this book and fail to see Tina Turner front and center. Rightly so. Her life and career were legendary from the beginning. Every action, every concert, was An Event. A life lived in the glare of publicity, though, is not always a career that works for the aritst. While Tina Turner did find justly given adulation and success for her talents, she worked for everything she ever got *against* the men resisting he input and rejecting her needs and wants. It was not until the 1980s, her fourth decade as a singer, that she finally shed the R&B ghettoization and became a megastar. The fact is that Tina Turner was a musical force of nature, and should have been lionized with the greatest of the British white men who gave the US white audiences covers of the Black women's originals.

I think I leaarned most from Author Mahon's chapter on Betty Davis, one of Miles Davis' wives. Her astonishing music was a YouTube rathole I had not known existed. Listen to "If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked Up" and tell me you don't feel deprived that you are hearing it for the first time in the 21st century. That is my—our—loss, and a bitter privation indeed. It slammed home the grotesque waste of Black women's talents and gifts this book was written to highlight.

For this MLK Day of reviews, this read was both fascinating and infuriating. The misogyny, the racism, the sheer hideous waste of so much life force, all left me more hell bent than ever to seek voices, experiences, and talents in as many corners that are not spotlit than ever. Join me and let's start shoutin’ about it. ( )

Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll by Maureen Mahon is a 2020 Duke University Press publication.

I enjoyed this tribute to the black women who helped to shape rock music. Often times, these women, whose music was often mislabeled as soul or R&B, never got the respect or recognition they deserved- and doubly so for those who made contributions to male dominated rock groups. These women were also influential outside of their work in the studio, as well.

Big Mama Thornton – who recorded ‘Hound Dog’ before Elvis and ‘Ball and Chain’ before Janis Joplin- never got her due, though she worked well into her old age. (Janis gave public credit to Thornton- while Elvis refused.)

Girl groups such as ‘The Shirelles’ have been forgotten over the years. I admit I love the girl groups from this era of time- so I really enjoyed this section- and agree the influence of these groups was huge- but is rarely acknowledged.

The author takes us through the years- with an interesting piece on Betty Davis- not to be confused with the actress- an artist I honestly have no memory of. Some YouTube clips were – shall we say- eye popping! She was ahead of her time and her influence can still be seen today.

It is only fitting that Tina Turner is the headliner here, as her success as a rock artist has been simply phenomenal.

These profiles are interesting and informative- but there weren’t enough of them. The author seemed to have jumped down a rabbit hole when she began to dissect the Rolling Stones song called ‘Brown Sugar’.

Growing up, adults explained to me that ‘brown sugar’ was a drug reference. I never could wrap my brain around that -due to the lyrics- although I didn’t fully understand them until I was older, and really gave them some serious thought.

Although the author makes very valid points, and she does go on to highlight artists such as Merry Clayton, whose incredible vocals on the Stones’ song ‘Gimme Shelter’ is what made that song good, she veered way off course- and seem to lose track of the book’s primary focus, there for a while.

There were also a few behind the scenes influencers- ‘groupies’ and such, that were part of the culture, people long forgotten by now, which was a nice bit of trivia- but I’m not sure their contributions were strong enough to have made it into the pages of this book. Again, something that seemed a bit off-topic to me.

That said, this will give readers a different perspective on black women and their role in rock music. The highlighted artists were influential black women for many- but never got widespread, mainstream credit under the 'rock and roll' category- with the exception of Tina Turner- who insisted on performing rock music-and having her music being labeled as such.

Rock music categories and lines are blurred, more now than ever, and the genre has fallen far from the royalty and power it once boasted of-the women featured in this book are still influencing current day artist in ways I never thought of before.

Overall, the book starts off strong- but the midsection goes off track, and loses momentum, but- it finishes strong, and will give readers a some societal, cultural, and musical history.

3.5 stars ( )