Black Music Month 07: The Redemptive Soul of Linda Jones & Keyshia Cole

The Redemptive Soul of
Linda Jones and Keyshia Cole
by Mark Anthony Neal

Linda Jones’s music demanded an emotional investment—specifically, in the lives of Black women—that mainstream audiences, I’d like to argue, were likely incapable of making at the time. While Aretha Franklin is a seemingly clear example of a Black woman who attracted a broad mainstream audience in the late 1960s, I would argue that Jones’s performances were inspired by a depth of pain that Franklin’s music more actively attempted to transcend. While Jones had peers in this regard—the tragic career and life of Esther Phillips being a prime example—few could match her vocal calisthenics. As Rolling Stone critic Russell Gersten once commented, Jones sounded like “someone down on her knees, pounding the floor, suddenly jumping up to screech something, struggling to make sense of a desperately unhappy life.”

Read the Full Essay @ SeeingBlack.com