Anyone who has read George Pelecanos's novels knows that each one is accompanied by its own imagined soundtrack. Often the music may be obscure, but you want to hear it anyway, because the book supplies its own rhythm and feel.

This is the first time, though, that the book has actually come equipped with the music itself-and it couldn't be more appropriate. Hard soul to accompany Hard Revolution-the same kind of gritty combination of political realism, social idealism, romantic dreams, and doomed love that every George Pelecanos novel provides. In this case the backdrop to the book is the pitiless confluence of events leading up to the death of Martin Luther King. And the backdrop to that is the gospel-based soul music that echoed so much of the hope provided by the movement-and so much of the pain felt at the assassination of Dr. King.

The music offers a kind of progression of its own, from Wilson Pickett's light-hearted tribute to dance music in the hard-edged style of the Sensational Nightingales to Otis Redding's almost heartbreaking "I've Been Loving You Too Long," replete with all of his most fully developed imploring vocal effects.

There's more to it than that, of course. There's a world in these songs, a world that is both reflective and independent of the lyrics, as anyone who has ever listened to Aretha Franklin's "Natural Woman" or "Respect" could attest. In Solomon Burke's "Tonight's the Night," the ultimate seduction song, you get the Sam Cooke approach to soul with just a hint of Brother Joe May, another of Solomon's gospel mentors, in the roughened preaching style of the bridge-like verses. Albert King's "Born Under a Bad Sign" blends the blunt truth of the blues ("If it wasn't for bad luck/I wouldn't have no luck at all") with the ironic modernity of the Stax sound and the striking delicacy of King's own voice and stabbing guitar. In a similar way "A Fool For You" sets Curtis Mayfield's sinuous falsetto against a thunderous concatenation of drums and horns to create a counter (and larger) text for this not-uncommon tale of doomed romance, while Percy Sledge's "It Tears Me Up," one of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham's greatest songwriting collaborations, offers yet another tribute to lost love, with a vocal that lifts it to a level of naked desperation. "You Don't Miss Your Water," by William Bell, strikes an almost classical, elegiac note, playing off the familiar folk saying with a dignity that suggest both broader contexts and hard-earned truths. And "I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down," by Sam and Dave interprets a song written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter with such a subtle shifting of voices and emotions that it hints at redemption even while screaming of pain.

This would be a great collection of deep soul in and of itself. You could certainly enjoy it independently, without even picking up the book. But like the words and music of the songs themselves, the message is broadened and enhanced by a text, which in this case it accompanies. So experience them both, if not together (I'm no good at that myself) at least in separate but inseparable support of each other.

The only question I had was: where's James Brown? But then that just may be another book.

--Peter Guralnick

Ed. Note: Peter Guralnick is widely regarded as the nation's preeminent writer on twentieth-century American popular music. His books include Feel Like Going Home, Lost Highway, Sweet Soul Music, Searching for Robert Johnson, the novel Nighthawk Blues, and a highly acclaimed two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love. Visit Hachettebookgroupusa.com for more information.