Tastykakes, Soul Songs & Shining Stars, a book written by longtime music industry executive Joe McEwen, is set to profile key great soul artists from the 60s to 80s. It will be published April 28, 2026, by ZE Books. It’s available to order in the U.S. here, in Canada here and in the U.K. here (where it arrives on June 11).
According to the press release, the book features what’s “vivid, compelling, up-front and personal profiles (predominantly written by McEwen while working as a music journalist in the 1970s) with a host of indelible figures: Pops and Mavis Staples, George Clinton, Allen Toussaint, Betty Wright, Michael Jackson, Gamble and Huff, Don Covay and many more.”
“A Philadelphia native and an A&R executive for Columbia, Sire/Warner Brothers, Verve and Concord Music Group, McEwen gathers a lifetime’s worth of encounters, essays and reveries into one radiant collection, a love letter to rhythm-and-blues and soul music,” says the announcement.
“Alongside these portraits of legends at the peak of their powers are heartfelt musings spanning the 1960s through the ’80s, illuminating the creative processes behind the songs that defined a generation,” says the press release. “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 music author and longtime confidant Peter Guralnick (who has written books on Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke and others), “a fitting finale to a collection that captures the soul of a lifetime in music.”
