Feel My Big Guitar: Prince and the Sound He Helped Create

A COLLECTION OF DYNAMIC PERSPECTIVES ON A
COMPELLING MUSICAL GENIUS AND ENIGMA

With his signature blend of genres and lyrics that touch on myriad societal issues, the artist Prince (1958–2016) has challenged and captivated the minds and hearts of countless listeners. Feel My Big Guitar: Prince and the Sound He Helped Create is a wide-ranging collection that seeks to place Prince at the center of contemporary musical scholarship, putting him in proper cultural and political context. This edited volume includes a mix of essays and reflections by scholars and fans, as well as interviews with people who worked with and knew Prince personally. Employing a blend of methodologies, contributors offer a body of fresh, intriguing, thought-provoking, and mind-bending work about Prince—an artist whose music exemplified those very characteristics.

The volume examines Prince’s musical influences, his rivalries (both real and imagined), and instrumental eroticism. It includes enlightening interviews with early mentor Pépe Willie and Gayle Chapman, Prince’s first female bandmate. These personal reflections and interviews grant readers a unique lens through which to view Prince, enriching our overall understanding of the man. Ultimately, Feel My Big Guitar serves as a space for sharing musicological analysis and memories about an artist whose work has touched and inspired so many. Years in the making, this is the first book in an ongoing scholarly project, PrincEnlighteNmenT: A Study of Society through Music, intended to investigate and reveal the full spectrum of Prince’s life and work.

JUDSON L. JEFFRIES is professor of African American and African studies at The Ohio State University Columbus. He is editor or author of numerous books, including Huey P. Newton: The Radical Theorist and On the Ground: The Black Panther Party in Communities across America, both published by University Press of Mississippi. SHANNON M. COCHRAN is professor in the Department of English and the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies and director of the African American Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies programs at Clayton State University. MOLLY REINHOUDT is managing editor of Research in African Literatures and Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men in the Department of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University.

University Press of Mississippi