University Press of Mississippi Feel My Big Guitar: Prince and the Sound He Helped Create (American Made Music Series)

Contributions by Ignatius Calabria, H. Zahra Caldwell, Brian Jude de Lima, Sabatino DiBernardo, William Fulton, Antonio Garfias, Judson L. Jeffries, Tony Kiene, Molly Reinhoudt, Fred Shaheen, and Karen Turman 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 toplace 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.