Consider the electric tension of Harlem’s Apollo Theater in 1952: the hum of an expectant crowd and a woman standing nearly six feet tall, possessing a voice so thunderous it supposedly didn't even need a microphone. This was the moment Willie Mae Thornton became Big Mama, a nickname bestowed by the theater’s manager after she blew the roof off the building. Born in 1926 in the small town of Ariton, Alabama, Thornton was the daughter of a Baptist minister and a choir-singing mother. Her musical ...

The gritty, industrial soul of Detroit rarely exports its secrets to the southern tip of Africa, but Sixto Rodriguez was the exception that proved the rule. Born in 1942 as the sixth child of Mexican immigrants, his early life was defined by the clatter of Motor City factories and the crushing alienation often faced by the inner-city poor. He was a man who lived at the intersection of creative hope and physical demolition, literally. After his mother died when he was only three, Rodriguez spent ...