Aristotle Jones releases latest album — with a new novel
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MORGANTOWN - The Appalachian Soul Man just wrote a book.
Aristotle Jones, the singer, songwriter and community organizer who gigs around the region using the above moniker, just released his latest album, "Appalachian Soul Power" - and this one has a first-ever companion piece.
It's a short novel, "Mountain Alchemy," which provides a literary narrative to the tunes.
"Narrative" is the word, said Jones, who has long drawn on sources from the Piedmont blues to Motown in the crafting of his songs.
"Mountain Alchemy" features illustrations by Morgantown artist Alexandria Gaujot and has a selection of the Appalachian Soul Man's favorite coal camp recipes at the end.
Among his West Virginia sources of inspiration, meanwhile, are three performers, he said, each with a deep wellspring of creativity.
There's Al Anderson, the doo-wop singer who performed on stages from Hollywood, Calif., to Hollywood, Fla., before coming home to Osage to care for his ailing father in the 1970s.
And Bill Withers, the soul-pop Everyman from Slab Fork, Raleigh County, who spun AM radio gold also in that decade with "Ain't No Sunshine," "Grandma's Hands" and other musical tales of his life in a coal camp company house.
Don't forget Johnnie Johnson, he said.
Johnson is the boogie-woogie piano player who grew up on Pennsylvania Avenue in Fairmont and gave Chuck Berry his first gig in St. Louis on New Year's Eve 1952.
The sideman's contributions to Berry's songs over the next two decades would earn him a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Longtime fan Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones did the induction speech.
"'Appalachian Soul Power' is about where I come from, but it's also about what I've carried with me from that place," Jones said.
"I grew up hearing all of these different sounds and I never thought about where one ended and the other began."
What originated as lyrics on a notepad for "Appalachian Soul Power" ended up as crackling dialogue in the pages of "Mountain Alchemy," Jones said.
Visit www.aristotlejones.com for ordering information on both.
Running through both the album and book are echoes of the rich baritone of his grandfather Robert, a coal miner and traveling gospel singer whose life and times would have made a dozen novels, Jones said.
Robert taught his grandson about how it is to have grit - and grace - at the same time, as Jones told The Dominion Post previously.
"Granddad used to always say, 'You know what you're doing. So go out there and get it done.'"