Songbooks

Eric Weisbard is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Alabama and the author of Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mainstreams of American Music.

Introduction  1
Part I: Setting the Scene
First Writer, of Music and on Music: William Billings: The New-England Psalm-Singer, 1770  20
Blackface Minstrelsy Extends Its Twisted Roots: T.D. Rice, "Jim Crow," c. 1832  22
Shape-Note Singing and Early Country: B.F. White and E.J. King, The Sacred Harp, 1944  25
Music in Captivity: Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave: 1853  26
Champion of the White Male Vernacular: Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855  28
Notating Spirituals: William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison, eds., Slave Songs of the United States, 1867  30
First Black Music Historian: James Trotter, Music and Some Highly Musical People: The Lives of Remarkable Musicians of the Colored Race, 1878  32
Child Ballads and Folklore: James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 5 vols., 1882-1898  33
Women Not Inventing Ethnomusicology: Alice Fletcher, A Study of Omaha Indian Music, 1893  35
First Hit Songwriter, from Pop to Folk and Back Again: Morrison Foster, Biography, Songs and Musical Compositions of Stephen C. Foster, 1896  39
Americana Emerges: Emma Bell Miles, The Spirit of the Mountains, 1905  44
Documenting the Story: O.G. Sonneck, Bibliography of Early Secular American Music, 1905  45
Tin Pan Alley's Sheet Music Biz: Charles K. Harris, How to Write a Popular Song, 1906  47
First Family of Folk Collecting: John A. Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, 1910  50
Proclaiming Black Modernity: James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, 1912  52
Songcatching in the Mountains: Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil Sharp, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, 1917  54
Part II: The Jazz Age
Stories for the Slicks: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers, 1920  62
Remembering the First Black Star: Mabel Rowland, ed., Bert Williams, Son of Laughter, 1923  64
Magazine Criticism across Popular Genres: Gilbert Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts, 1924  67
Harlem Renaissance: Alain Locke, ed., The New Negro: An Interpretation, 1925  69
Tin Pan Alley's Standards Setter: Alexander Woollcott, The Story of Irving Berlin, 1925  71
Broadway Musical as Supertext: Edna Ferber, Show Boat, 1926  74
Father of the Blues in Print: W.C. Handy, ed., Blues: An Anthology, 1926  76
Poet of the Blare and Racial Mountain: Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues, 1926  78
Blessed Immortal, Forgotten Songwriter: Carrie Jacobs-Bond, The Roads of Melody, 1927  80
Tune Detective and Expert Explainer: Sigmund Spaeth, Read 'Em and Weep: The Songs Your Forgot to Remember, 1927  82
Pop's First History Lesson: Isaac Goldberg: Tin Pan Alley: A Chronicle of the American Popular Music Racket, 1930  84
Roots Intellectual: Constance Rourke, American Humor: A Study of the National Character, 1931  85
Jook Ethnography, Inventing Black Music Studies: Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men, 1935  87
What He Played Came First: Louis Armstrong, Swing That Music, 1936  90
Jazz's Original Novel: Dorothy Baker, Young Man with a Horn, 1938  94
Introducing Jazz Critics: Frederic Ramsey Jr. and Charles Edward Smith, eds., Jazzmen, 1939  95
Part III: Midcentury Icons
Folk Embodiment: Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory, 1943  104
A Hack Story Soldiers Took to War: David Ewen, Men of Popular Music, 1944  106
From Immigrant Jew to Red Hot Mama: Sophie Tucker, Some of These Days, 1945  108
White Negro Drug Dealer: Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe, Really the Blues, 1946  110
Composer of Tone Parallels: Barry Ulanov, Duke Ellington, 1946  111
Jazz's Precursor as Pop and Art: Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, They All Played Ragtime: The True Story of an American Music, 1950  114
Field Recording in the Library of Congress: Alan Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and "Inventor of Jazz," 1950  118
Dramatizing Blackness from a Distance: Ethel Waters with Charles Samuels, His Eye Is on the Sparrow, 1951  120
Centering Vernacular Song: Gilbert Chase, America's Music, 1955  122
Writing about Records: Roland Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph: From Tin Foil to High Fidelity, 1955  124
Collective Oral History of Document Scenes: Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, eds., Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz as Told by the Men Who Made It, 1955  127
The Greatest Jazz Singer's Star Text: Billie Holiday with William Dufty, Lady Sings the Blues, 1956  129
Beat Generation: Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957  133
Borderlands Folklore and Transnational Imaginaries: Américo Paredes, "With His Pistol in His Hands": A Border Ballad and Its Hero, 1958  136
New Yorker Critic of a Genre Becoming Middlebrow: Whitney Balliett, The Sound of Surprise: 46 Pieces on Jazz, 1959  141
Part IV. Vernacular Counterculture
Blues Revivalists: Samuel Charters, The Country Blues, 1959; Paul Oliver, Blues Fell This Morning: The Meaning of the Blues, 1960  148
Britpop in Fiction: Colin MacInnes, Absolute Beginners, 1959  151
Form-Exploding Indeterminacy: John Cage, Silence, 1961  153
Science Fiction Writer Pens First Rock and Roll Novel: Harlan Ellison, Rockabilly [Spider Kiss], 1961  155
Pro-Jazz Scene Sociology: Howard Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, 1963  159
Reclaiming Black Music: LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Blues People: Negro Music in White America, 1963  159
An Endless Lit, Limited Only in Scope: Michael Braun, "Love Me Do!": The Beatles Progress, 1964  162
Music as a Prose Master's Jagged Grain: Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act, 1964  167
How to Succeed in . . .: M. William Krasilovsky and Sidney Schemel, This Business of Music, 1964  169
Schmaltz and Adversity: Sammy Davis Jr. and Burt Boyar, Yes I Can, 1965  171
New Journalism and Electrified Syntax: Tom Wolfe, Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, 1965  173
Defining a Genre: Bill C. Malone, Country Music, U.S.A.: A Fifty-Year History, 1968  175
Swing's Movers as an Alternate History of American Pop: Marshall and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance, 1968  177
Rock and Roll's Greatest Hyper: Nik Cohn, Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom, 1969/1970  182
Ebony's Pioneering Critic of Black Pop as Black Power: Phyl Garland, The Sound of Soul: The Story of Black Music, 1969  184
Entertainment Journalism and the Power of Knowing: Lillian Roxon, Rock Encyclopedia, 1969  185
An Over-the-Top Genre's First Reliable History: Charlie Gillett, The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1970  187
Rock Critic of the Trivially Awesome: Richard Meltzer, The Aesthetics of Rock, 1970  188
Black Religious Fervor as the Core of Rock and Soul: Anthony Heilbut, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times, 1971  190
Jazz Memoir of "Rotary Perception" Multiplicity: Charles Mingus, Beneath the Underdog, 1971  193
Composing a Formal History: Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans, 1971  194
Krazy Kat Fiction of Viral Vernaculars: Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo, 1972  196
Derrière Garde Prose and Residual Pop Styles: Alec Wilder, American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950, 1972  198
Charts as a New Literature: Joel Whitburn, Top Pop Records, 1955–1972, 1973  201
Selling Platinum across Formats: Clive Davis with James Willwerth, Clive, Inside the Record Business, 1975  203
Blues Relationships and Black Women's Deep Songs: Gayl Jones, Corregidora, 1975  205
"Look a the World in a Rock 'n' Roll Sense . . . What Does That Even Mean?": Greil Marcus, Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music, 1975  207
Cultural Studies Brings Pop from the Hallway to the Classroom: Hall and Tony Jefferson, eds., Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, 1976  211
Life in Country for an Era of Feminism and Counterculture: Loretta Lynn with George Vecsey, Coal Miner's Daughter, 1976  214
Introducing Rock Critics: Jim Miller, ed., The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, 1976  216
Patriarchal Exegete of Black Vernacular as "Equipment for Living": Albert Murray, Stomping the Blues, 1976  219
Reading Pop Culture as Intellectual Obligation: Roland Barthes, Image—Music—Text, 1977  221
Paging through Books to Make History: Dean Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War, 1977  223
Historians Begin to Study Popular Music: Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom, 1977  225
Musicking to Overturn Hierarchy: Christopher Small, Music, Society, Education, 1977  226
Drool Data and Stained Panties from a Critical Noise Boy: Nick Tosches, Country: The Biggest Music in America, 1977  229
Part V: After the Revolution
Punk Negates Rock: Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons, The Boy Looked at Johnny: The Obituary of Rock and Roll, 1978  236
The Ghostwriter behind the Music Books: Ray Charles and David Ritz, Brother Ray: Ray Charles' Own Story, 1978  240
Disco Negates Rock: Andrew Holleran, Dancer from the Dance, 1978  242
Industry Schmoozer and Black Music Advocated Fills Public Libraries with Okay Overviews: Arnold Shaw, Honkers and Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues, 1978  245
Musicology's Greatest Tune Chronicler: Charles Hamm, Yesterdays: Popular Song in America, 1979  247
Criticism's Greatest Album Chronicler: Robert Christgau, Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the '70s, 1981  248
Rock's Frank Capra: Cameron Crowe: Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story, 1981  251
Culture Studies/Rock Critic Twofer!: Simon Frith, Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock'n'Roll, 1981  252
A Magical Explainer of Impure Sounds: Robert Palmer, Deep Blues, 1981  255
Feminist Rock Critic, Pop-Savvy Social Critic: Ellen Willis, Beginning to See the Light: Pieces of a Decade, 1981  257
New Deal Swing Believer Revived: Otis Ferguson, In the Spirit of Jazz: The Otis Ferguson Reader, 1982  259
Ethnomusicology and Pop, Forever Fraught: Bruno Nettl, The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-Nine Issues and Concepts, 1983  260
Autodidact Deviance, Modeling the Rock Generation to Come: V. Vale and Andrea Juno, eds., RE/Search #6/7: Industrial Culture Handbook, 1983  263
The Rolling Stones of Rolling Stones Books: Stanley Booth, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones, 1984  266
Finding the Blackface in Bluegrass: Robert Cantwell, Bluegrass Breakdown: The Making of the Old Southern Sound, 1984  268
Cyberpunk Novels and Cultural Studies Futurism: William Gibson, Neuromancer, 1984  269
Glossary Magazine Features Writer Gets History's Second Draft: Gerri Hirshey, Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music, 1984  272
Theorizing Sound as Dress Rehearsal for the Future: Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, 1977; Translation 1985  274
Classic Rock, Mass Market Paperback Style: Stephen Davis, Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zepplin Saga, 1985  275
Love and Rockets, Signature Comic of Punk Los Angeles as Borderland Imaginary: Los Bros Hernandez, Music for Mechanics, 1985  277
Plays about Black American Culture Surviving the Loss of Political Will: August Wilson, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, 1985  280
Putting Pop in the Big Books of Music: H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie, eds., The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, 1986  282
Popular Music's Defining Singer and Swinger: Kitty Kelley, His Way, The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra, 1986  284
Anti-Epic Lyricizing of Black Music after Black Power: Nathaniel Mackey, Bedouin Hornbook, 1986  288
Lost Icon of Rock Criticism: Lester Bangs, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, 1987  290
Veiled Glimpses of the Songwriter Who Invented Rock and Roll as Literature: Chuck Berry, Chuck Berry: The Autobiography, 1987  292
Making "Wild-Eyed Girls" a More Complex Narrative: Pamela Des Barres, I'm with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie, 1987  294
Reporting Black Music as Art Mixed with Business, Nelson George, The Death of Rhythm & Blues, 1988  295
Sessions with the Evil Genius of Jazz: Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography, 1989  298
Part VI: New Voices, New Method
Literature of New World Order Americanization: Jessica Hagedorn, Dogeaters, 1990  308
Ethnic Studies of Blended Musical Identities: George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture, 1990  310
Ballad Novels for a Baby Boomer Appalachia: Sharyn McCrumb, If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O, 1990  312
Pimply, Prole, and Putrid, but with a Surprisingly Diverse Genre Literature: Chuck Eddy, Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe, 1991  314
How Musicology Met Cultural Studies: Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality, 1991  318
Idol for Academic Analysis and a Changing Public Sphere: Madonna, Sex, 1992  320
Black Bohemian Cultural Nationalism: Greg Tate, Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America, 1992  324
From Indie to Alternative Rock: Gina Arnold, Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana, 1993  326
Musicology on Popular Music—In Pragmatic Context: Richard Crawford, The American Musical Landscape, 1993  330
Listenign, Queerly, Wayne Koestenbaum, The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire, 1993  332
Blackface as Stolen Vernacular: Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, 1993  334
Media Studies of Girls Listening to Top 40: Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media, 1994  338
Ironies of a Contested Identity: Peter Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, 1994  339
Two Generations of Leading Ethnomusicologists Debate the Popular: Charles Keil and Steven Feld: Music Grooves: Essays and Dialogues, 1944  344
Defining Hip-Hop as Flow, Layering, Rupture, and Postindustrial Resistance: Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, 1994  346
Regendering Music Writing, with the Deadly Art of Attitude: Evelyn McDonnell and Ann Powers, eds., Rock She Wrote: Women Write about Rock, Pop, and Rap, 1995  348
Soundscaping References, Immersing Trauma: David Toop, Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds, 1995  348
Sociologist Gives Country Studies a Soft-Shell Contrast to the Honky-Tonk: Richard Peterson, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity, 1997  354
All That Not-Quite Jazz: Gary Giddins, Visions of Jazz: The First Century, 1998  355
Jazz Studies Conquers the Academy: Robert G. O'Meally, ed., The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, 1998  357
Part VII: Topics in Progress
Paradigms of Club Culture, House and Techno to Rave and EDM: Simon Reynolds, Energy Flash: A Journey through Rave Music and Dance Culture, 1998  368
Performance Studies, Minoritarian Identity, and Academic Wildness: José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentification: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, 1999  372
Left of Black: Networking a New Discourse: Mark Anthony Neal, What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture, 1999  375
Aerobics as Genre, Managing Emotions: Tia DeNora, Music in Everyday Life, 2000  377
Confronting Globalization: Thomas Turino, Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music in Zimbabwe, 2000  378
Evocations of Cultural Migration Centered on Race, Rhythm, and Eventually Sexuality: Alejo Carpentier, Music in Cuba, 2001 (1946)  382
Digging Up the Pre-Recordings Creation of a Black Pop Paradigm: Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff, Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889–1895, 2002  386
When Faith in Popular Sound Wavers, He's Waiting: Theodor Adorno, Essays on Music, ed. Richard Leppert, 2002  388
Codifying a Precarious but Global Academic Field: David Hesmondhalgh and Keith Negus, eds., Popular Music Studies, 2002  391
Salsa and the Mixings of Global Culture: Lise Waxer, City of Musical Memory: Salsa, Record Grooves, and Popular Culture in Cali, Colombia, 2002  393
Musicals as Pop, Nationalism, and Changing Identity: Stacy Wolf, A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical, 2002  396
Musical Fiction and Criticism by the Greatest Used Bookstore Clerk of All Time: Jonathan Lethem, Fortress of Solitude, 2003  399
Poetic Ontologies of Black Musical Style: Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, 2003  401
Rescuing the Afromodern Vernacular: Guthrie Ramsey Jr., Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop, 2003  402
Sound Studies and the Songs Question: Jonathan Sterne: The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction, 2003  404
Dylanologist Conventions: Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One, 2004  405
Two Editions of a Field Evolving Faster Than a Collection Could Contain: Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, eds., That's the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, 2004, 2012  410
Revisionist Bluesology and Tangled Intellectual History: Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, 2004  412
Trying to Tell the Story of a Dominant Genre: Jeff Chang, Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, 2005  415
Refiguring American Music—And Its Institutionalizations: Josh Kun, Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America, 2005  419
Country Music Scholars Pioneer Gender and Industry Analysis: Diane Pecknold, The Selling Sound: The Rise of the Country Music Industry, 2007  423
Where Does Classical Music Fit In?: Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, 2007  426
Poptimism, 33 1/3 Books, and the Struggles of Music Critics: Carl Wilson, Let's Talk about Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, 2007  429
Novelists Collegial with Indie Music: Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad, 2010  432
YouTube, Streaming, and the Popular Music Performance Archive: Will Friedwald, A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers, 2010  437
Idiosyncratic Musician Memoirs—Performer as Writer in the Era of the Artist as Brand: Jay-Z, Decoded, 2010  438
Acknowledgments  443
Works Cited  447
Index  513