Remembering Rock and Roll with P. P. Arnold

This chapter asks how American singer P. P. Arnold’s vocal performances in the 1960s shaped British popular music production and how she renarrates rock history today. The story of Arnold’s music career reveals how the Black feminine vocality exemplified by Arnold’s style of singing shaped 1960s rock, and how Black women singers navigate experiences of marginalization and narratives of authenticity. Arnold’s recordings for Immediate Records and her work with the Small Faces on songs like “Tin Soldier” reveal how this dynamic manifests musically, while the story of her “lost” album The Turning Tide illustrates the effect that it had on her career. The chapter closes with a section on Arnold’s recent live performances, using Black feminist thought to understand the implications of Arnold’s engagement with 1960s stereotypes of rock authenticity and sexual expressivity in her new work.