A Review of Zach Schonfeld’s “Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth”
A Wealth of Information (On a Very Obscure Band)
The 33 1/3 series of books about albums that was founded in 2003 can be a varied beast. You’re apt to get a book that breaks down a record track-by-track as much as you’re likely to get a fictional novel inspired by the album in question. That quality of “you don’t know what you’re going to get” has sort of turned me off the series, but when a former colleague of mine, Zach Schonfeld, penned a book in the cycle (№ 152 for those of you counting), I felt compelled to read and review the book after he approached me. (Full disclosure: Schonfeld and I worked together as music editors at PopMatters, a pop culture webzine that, at the time, was getting more than one million unique visitors a month.) The book is about an album by a soul-funk band that you have probably never heard of, but, if you listen to rap music or hip-hop, have definitely heard. The story behind the group’s birth and re-birth is so surreal that — I’m being completely honest here — I had to wonder at points in reading this book if Schonfeld had invented a very elaborate hoax. (A search of Snopes.com turned up nothing.)
I hope this synopsis does the book justice, but the strange but true story depicted in this book centers on a band named 24-Carat Black (sometimes stylized as The 24-Carat Black) who, in 1973, dropped an album called Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth on a subsidiary of Stax Records. The album — conceived by an alcoholic Svengali figure named Dale Warren, an ex-Motown music arranger — flopped. There were a few reasons for this. One, the record was dark and weird, and many of the songs exceeded the five-minute mark. Two, Stax Records was in its dying days before declaring bankruptcy and didn’t promote the album to radio, and that’s when it somehow managed to get it shipped to stores. In any event, the record would have died on the vine if it weren’t for hip-hop. Starting in the early ’90s, rap groups started finding the record in thrift stores and started incorporating elements into their work as samples. However, as Schonfeld details, none of the original band members who recorded the album have stood to profit from the use of these samples.
To that end, the book is part biography and part primer on rap music and how samples work. I consider myself to be well versed on most forms of popular music but have to admit that I’ve learned something from Schonfeld, a younger colleague: the book goes into rap culture and particularly how the mixtape evolved to include samples. I did not know what the difference between a mixtape and a studio album was before reading this book. (How embarrassing!) So the great thing about this book in the 33 1/3 series is that your brain is going to expand. It’s a bit of a shame that the original album doesn’t accompany the book to provide context, so all we get is a chapter of Schonfeld describing what the music sounds like, which is the book’s weak link because, while the descriptions are well-written, it does get a bit tedious after a bit.
However, everything that you wanted to know about the history of 24-Carat Black is in this volume. I’m of two minds of this. On one hand, I think it’s great that Schonfeld has been generous with his time in researching and writing the book on a subject — and also a Black subject — that would probably be otherwise ignored. This book will probably be the end-all and be-all of writing on 24-Carat Black. (They have a tiny Wikipedia entry as of this writing, and no entry on Ghetto exists.) The book is a shining example of how good the 33 1/3 series can be when it’s done well. Still, on the other hand, part of me wonders if a book-length discussion on an obscure group was really warranted. (It’s hard for me to say for sure as I haven’t heard this album and cannot ascertain if it is worthy of being canonized myself.) This is a bit of a gruelling read because the band was a collective and, without photographs, it’s really hard to keep track of who the major players were. This makes the contributions of some of the band members seem perfunctory. And the book is really about a lot of things: a history of the band, of sample culture, of musicians generally getting screwed. The problem is not so much lack of focus, but maybe hyper-focus on many different subjects: this is a book that must be a little of everything to everyone because the subject is so obscure, it has to give you a reason to pick it up. There’s a lot of information here, and that causes a bit of an avalanche in terms of memory impact and sensory overload.
But I hope I’m not being churlish. All in all, whatever your feelings about this book may be, there’s one undeniable thing: Schonfeld is a major force in music writing and journalism today. I envy his career, which has ranged from writing for Pitchfork to being an employee of the culture and entertainment section of Newsweek. He is still young but comes across as very seasoned. He clearly had to deal with some heavy shit while writing the book (read it and see what I mean) and yet pulls off an academic writing tome that is more conversational than anything. Reading Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth is a little like pulling up a chair at a bar (I’ll order a Shirley Temple, thanks) and hearing from an old friend.
In the end, it may be a little long, but Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth is a goldmine of a read. It’s an often-fascinating book of a band saved from obscurity of sorts, but who has struggled to pay the rent over the past 50 years. I haven’t spent much time with the 33 1/3 series, but I’m willing to bet that this one is one of the best books within the 150-odd books that spawn it in terms of the breadth that it covers. Zach Schonfeld is a young genius, and I can’t wait for whatever book platform is given to him next. He’s earned a bigger audience with Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth and exciting days are ahead for this talented young voice.
Zach Schonfeld’s Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth was published by Bloomsbury Academic on November 12, 2020.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
