THE READING ROOM: Joe McEwen’s ‘Tastykakes, Soul Songs and Shining Stars: Affections and Reflections, 1973-2025’
Music journalist, DJ, and record executive Joe McEwen grew up in Philadelphia in the 1960s without the sound of music. Although his mother sometimes listened to Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis, and Tony Bennett on the car radio, McEwen often tuned out as the music floated through the speakers. In 1966,
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Music journalist, DJ, and record executive Joe McEwen grew up in Philadelphia in the 1960s without the sound of music. Although his mother sometimes listened to Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis, and Tony Bennett on the car radio, McEwen often tuned out as the music floated through the speakers. In 1966, though, McEwen experienced a musical epiphany while listening to Martha and the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Streets”: “the urgency of the voice, the descriptive words she sang, just the SOUND of this record painted a magnetic aural landscape for me. I loved everything about it. I felt at home. I wanted more.” In the following years, music became his obsession, displacing basketball. Around the same time he started reading about music in publications such as Crawdaddy, Jazz and Pop, Soul, and a then-new publication, Rolling Stone.
After graduating from college, McEwen started contributing profiles about music and musicians to the Boston Phoenix. Now, in his entertaining Tastykakes, Soul Songs and Shining Stars: Affections and Reflections, 1973-2025 (ZE Books, April 28, 2026), Joe McEwen collects many of those profiles, various short reviews, as well as short remembrances of basketball players including Philadelphia 76ers Caldwell Jones and Moses Malone.
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