Robert Pruter
Robert Douglas Pruter is an American writer, mainly on soul and rhythm and blues music, and on sports. He was the rhythm and blues editor of Goldmine magazine from 1985 to 2006.
Career
In 1969, he was hired as an assistant editor on the New Standard Encyclopedia, published by the Standard Educational Corporation. He became associate editor, social sciences, in 1974, and senior editor in 1979. He started writing separately-published articles on soul music in 1976, in outlets including the Chicago Sun-Times and Record Exchanger. He became rhythm and blues editor for Goldmine in 1985, and in all has contributed over 500 articles to journals including the Illinois Entertainer, The Reader, Juke Blues, and Living Blues. He has written liner notes on many soul and R&B musicians, including Jackie Wilson, Gene Chandler, Curtis Mayfield, and Dinah Washington, as well as biographies and overview chapters in reference works including The Marshall Cavendish Illustrated History of Popular Music, The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Encyclopædia Britannica, and American National Biography.Starting in the early 1990s he wrote in journals and in encyclopedias on the development of sport in the United States, especially on the history of high school sports.
Professionally, he left Standard Educational Corp. in 1996, and worked for Planning/Communications and Charles D. Spencer & Associates before becoming reference librarian at Lewis University, Romeoville, Illinois, from 2001 - 2016. His published books include:Chicago Soul, University of Illinois Press, 1991 Blackwell Guide To Soul Recordings, Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1993Doowop: The Chicago Scene, University of Illinois Press, 1996The Rise of American High School Sports and the Search for Control, 1880-1930, Syracuse University Press, 2013 DuPage Roots: Then and Now,, DuPage County Historical Society, 2022 Modern Women and Sports in Interwar Chicago, 1918-1941, Syracuse University Press, 2025