Jonas Bernholm Soul Music Odyssey

SOUL MUSIC AND RHYTHM & BLUES had a big attraction on Jonas Bernholm.During the summer of 1968, he visited a large number of clubs, theatres, record companies, recording studios, radiostations and musicians in the United States. He flew and hitchhiked and came to - New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Memphis, Miami, New Orleans, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Detroit. Bernholm saw and interviewed many of the biggest American artists such as Ike & Tina Turner, McKinley Mitchell, William Bell, Allen Toussaint, Billy Preston, Art and Aaron Neville, Isaac Hayes, Bobby Womack, Irma Thomas, Huey ”Piano” Smith, Dan Penn, Steve Cropper, Roy Hamilton, Lee Dorsey, Magic Sam and Pigmeat Markham to name a few. He saw, perhaps as the first European, the Jackson Five (with a young Michael Jackson) perform before they had released their firstrecord. Bernholm’s journey took 81 days and is the most ambitious soul music journey made by any Non-American during the entire 1960s.

About the author
Jonas Bernholm is a Swedish researcher, writer, and record label owner (also known as "Mr. R&B") who made it his life's ambition to document the rhythm and blues scene in the United States during the 1960s. He has been instrumental in sharing blues music via a number of record labels he has started since 1976, including Route 66, Mr. R&B, Stock-holm, Bluesboy, Crown Prince, Saxophonograph, Jukebox Lil, Gospel Jubilee, and Earth Angel, among others. The distributor for these labels is City Hall Records. An avid record collector, Bernholm's 26,000 LPs, 45s and 78s and artist correspondence have been on display at The Smithsonian Institute since 1996. In 2013 a documentary on his career was featured for four months at The Stax Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, and a 360-page book was written about Bernholm in 2016 by Jan Kotschack titled Resan Mot Rockens Rotten This book is the result of a soul music pilgrimage to the United States in 1968, visiting studios, clubs, and other sites related to American R&B and soul music. Much of the supporting material for this book can be found in the Jonas Bernholm Rhythm and Blues Collection, 1976-1991, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Washington DC.