Joshua Gamson: The Fabulous Sylvester

USA 2005, 306 pp., brochure, € 14.79
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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. In his short life, Disco sensation Sylvester led the young people of the nation to San Francisco and on to a liberation that was real, mighty real, where nothing was straitlaced or old-fashioned. Sociologist Joshua Gamson uses Sylvester's story to take us through the 1970s, when a generation took off its shame. He also uses firsthand conversations with virtually everyone who knew or worked with Sylvester, from his youth in L.A. through his successful music career, to his death from AIDS in 1988 at 41