The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, the Music, the Seventies in San Francisco (Hardcover)

by Joshua Gamson (Author) "Back in the 1960s, when Tiki Lofton was a boy, she used to wait until the eleven o'clock flight took off from LAX, right over..." (more)
Key Phrases: San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Hot on the heels of Pam Tent's book on the Cockettes, Midnight at the Palace [BKL N 15 04], Gamson limns another gender-bending San Francisco entertainment phenomenon, whose career arced high without quite denting general national consciousness. Sylvester James Jr. came from nearly all-black South Central L.A. As a teen, he started cross-dressing and sneaking out to glitzy parties. Possessed of a remarkable singing voice, he advanced from the antics of his cross-dressing street-gang-cum-sorority the Disquotays to become immortalized onscreen when a scene in the Bette Midler vehicle The Rose called for a drag Diana Ross. "The producers thought it would be hilarious to have a Diana who tipped the scales at around two-fifty, so Sylvester was hired." The seventies were a cornucopia of glitz and success for Sylvester. When he died of AIDS in 1988, even his funeral was a show full of singing, sermonizing, and an audiotape of the deceased cutting loose--in falsetto, of course--on Christmas carols. "Most people in the church were overcome"; Sylvester would've wanted them to be. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (February 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805072500
• ISBN-13: 978-0805072501
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #114,728 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #25 in	Books > Gay & Lesbian > Biographies & Memoirs > Gay
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous Indeed , March 19, 2005

By	disco75 "disco75" (State College, PA United States) - See all my reviews

Sylvester was a beloved figure inside his circle of admirers; he received cautious regard at best from outside that circle. Now, along comes a long overdue biography, and what a volume. The timing couldn't be more right, as the US has finally put to rest most of the putrid disco backlash. In the stores are not only decent compilations of the disco music but also books like this one that reflect the reality of the subculture. Not the bandwagon that pop radio jumped on, not the Arthur-Murray style competitions, not the faux-glamour suburban nightclubs, but the real deal. Sylvester was both artist and participant in the disco culture-- singer, performance artist, club dancer. The author of this book captures Sylvester in all his complexity and drives home the important part he played in the subculture that was disco.

Gamson is an academic, which means that he has been thorough in locating good sources of information. He seemed to have access to so many of the important persons and institutions that played a part in Sylvester's life. He is able to provide a well-rounded depiction of the man's personality, warts and all. He does a good job laying out the formative experiences in this colorful life, be it a mother who role-modeled an imperious love of fashion but later derided a child who followed her example, or a church community that would exploit Sylvester's temperament but denounce him for acts its other members could get away with if they kept hypocritically silent. Sylvester's complicated relationship to the gay community of 70s San Francisco is fascinating. The author does a great job bringing all the early elements around in the end of the book, showing how lasting the formative events are and how much a person can fill in the voids during adulthood.

Gamson is more than an academic, however. He is also an entertaining writer and he takes in this book a great tone that fits his subject. He doesn't shy away from any aspects of the life he is depicting. The sex, the slang, the drugs, the erratic behavior, the fun, the bonds, and the subculture's differing values all sparkle like one of Sylvester's jackets. There is no stuffy ivory-tower writing here. Gamson can be as breezy in tone as Sylvester, but he doesn't pander. In fact, among the disco-oriented books that have come out over the last six years, this volume is as well-produced as that other benchmark of writing, *Last Night A DJ Saved My Life*.

The 60s teen drag scene, the 1970-era Cockettes, the rock-and-blues recording phase, the disco about which Sylvester had conflicted feelings; then the Hi NRG and activism phases-- all of these are given sharp observation and each makes for vibrant reading material. Gamson covers nearly all the bases, including the way the drag-loving Sylvester was an open mark for a defrauding imposter. It was great to learn how the disco albums came about, and what the exact roles of the band, producers, and record-label suits were. The only omission I found was Sylvester's collaboration with jazzist Herbie Hancock in the 1981 album Magic Windows. Otherwise, Gamson covered all the personal, community, and musical bases.

This was great reading for someone like me, familiar with both Sylvester and the 70s; I think the book would appeal to anyone with an open mind who is interested in a character who will swim against the current if he is so created.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous , February 24, 2005

By	John A. Hedges (SF ,CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A great fast read. I loved the book. It's a good look at the San Francisco Music BIZ. And what was going on in San Francisco at the time when DISCO hit big. I lived it and almost all of it is true. Joshua Gamson did a wonderful job. Buy this book! John Hedges

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars BEING ROYAL, August 16, 2005

By	Thomas Adrahtas "vee goalie" (Niles, IL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

When I read author Joshua Gamson's bio blurb, I feared that THE FABULOUS SYLVESTER was going to be a mundane recounting of an outsized life. I had no reason to worry, as Gamson's writing is easily as rollicking as Sylvester's life. Ultimately the author pays the greatest tribute to his subject by not only capturing the man and his incarnations, but by doing so in a way that is as entertaining as a Sylvester concert must have been.

Gamson is able to put Sylvester's life into the context of the times, (and while doing so, we see a vivid portrait of Los Angeles and San Francisco, the rise of gay culture and the shattering reality of AIDS) and that life was a breathing metaphor for the real heartbeat of San Francisco and the gay dance culture that would be coopted by middle American pop. He is able to convey the drug-affected recollections of some of his interviewees by subtly warning the reader of the time and chemical infected haze through which their recollections were culled without insulting his subjects, he is able to recreate scenes with color and humor, and achieves something nearly impossible in biography...his work is more cinema than written word.

The bottom line of this read is that Sylvester is given the historical credit he is due. He was androgynous before Bowie, and out-discoed Donna Summer. He had the courage to be true to himself in a culture that wasn't ready for him, he understood some audiences who didn't understand him in return. His life force was enormous, he was greatly flawed, but as with all true divas, being fabulous trumps everything else.

Sylvester, and this book, are indeed, fabulous.