As an author and educator, my work centers on the history, business, and art of the music industry and film industry. I don’t think my fellow historians use musical evidence enough as a primary document that reveals much about the society and time period one is writing about—just as much as the usual primary and secondary documents historians use. I try to ensure my books are entertaining as well as rigorously researched. I’m also a songwriter, with many years in the music biz, and have done much work in radio, especially crafting music shows. I’m always discovering amazing stuff from various eras, and it’s not much fun if you don’t share it, which is part of why I’m on Twitter.
One of the many things I appreciate about this book, and why I often assign it to students, is that for long stretches, Chang completely ignores the music, concentrating on the essential and disturbing conditions and history that birthed hip-hop. Its initial development in the South Bronx was no accident, just like the rise of much of jazz in New Orleans. The international dimensions of this genre are studied, as well as its multi-faceted contributions to fashion, art, dance, and more.
Hip-hop also eventually brought innovation and more diversity to the music business and was very affected by national radio ignoring it for years during the 1980s, as well as the 1996 Communications Act that deregulated American radio. Chang wraps up these strands brilliantly. And the music.
A history of hip-hop cites its origins in the post-civil rights Bronx and Jamaica, drawing on interviews with performers, activists, gang members, DJs, and others to document how the movement has influenced politics and culture.
The story of how Warner Bros Records, perhaps the best, most profitable yet artist-friendly record label in the 1970s and 1980s became heavily damaged when it was bought out in the 1990s and put under corporate auspices and expectations. Goodman communicates the financial details in a clear and accessible way, as well as the music executives’ singular personalities. Also offers a close-up view of how the corporate execs, especially with their short-term focus on quarterly results, failed to deal with the challenges of Napster and downloads at the turn of the century. An insightful view of the changing components of the music business in our time.
In 1999, when Napster made music available free online, the music industry found itself in a fight for its life. A decade later, the most important and misunderstood story-and the one with the greatest implications for both music lovers and media companies-is how the music industry has failed to remake itself. In Fortune's Fool, Fred Goodman, the author of The Mansion on the Hill, shows how this happened by presenting the singular history of Edgar M. Bronfman Jr., the controversial heir to Seagram's, who, after dismantling his family's empire and fortune, made a high-stakes gamble to remake both the music…
Lauterbach’s book travels back to the late 1920s up to the 1960s, illustrating the creation of a major strand in the African American music business, and how rock and roll took its first steps into the marketplace. The chitlin circuit was a necessarily segregated touring circuit, giving black performers nationwide a chance to build an audience, innovate with their music, and start a career. This is also a civil rights story, documenting African Americans in a segregated world supporting each other while building independent businesses.
When black musicians started achieving more notoriety and profit in the 1950s and 1960s, and integration was starting to occur, those brave initial black entrepreneurs were mostly wiped out and cast aside, replaced by more corporate often white-owned enterprises.
For generations, "chitlin' circuit" has meant second tier-brash performers in raucous nightspots far from the big-city limelight. Now, music journalist Preston Lauterbach combines terrific firsthand reportage with deep historical research to offer a groundbreaking account of the birth of rock 'n' roll in black America.
The long-overdue story of IMHO, the most important, talented music executive in American history. Ralph Peer was behind the recording of the first blues record, Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues,” in 1920. His 1927 discovery of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family basically brought us country music. In both blues and country, Peer also led the marketing of these genres, realizing that by promoting artists of all races, despite the segregation of the time, he could make a ton of money in the long run, especially since he was also an innovator in publishing, ensuring he secured rights on his artists, and, surprisingly, paying them well.
He was also behind the 1940s Latin music craze and entered the rock and roll world by signing Buddy Holly. Fascinating, well-written and -researched.
This is the first biography of Ralph Peer, the revolutionary A&R man and music publisher who pioneered the recording, marketing, and publishing of blues, jazz, country, gospel, and Latin music, and this book book tracks his role in such breakthrough events as the recording of Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues,” the first country recording sessions with Fiddlin’ John Carson, his discovery of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family, the popularizing of Latin American music during World War II, and the postwar transformation of music on the airwaves that set the stage for the dominance of R&B,…
Going back 125 years in recording history, Milner’s book will make you question what “good recorded sound” is, and how that notion, surprisingly, is a political one that has changed over time. A diversity of genres and artists are brought in to prove his points. He demonstrates why technological innovations such as the cylinder, the 78RPM record, magnetic tape, albums, transistors, the cassette, the CD, ProTools and of course MP3s changed the sound and content of music forever. And also how such changes greatly affected the bottom line of the music business, increasing or decreasing revenue as the case may be. Might change how you view your music collection.
In 1915, Thomas Edison proclaimed that he could record a live performance and reproduce it perfectly, shocking audiences who found themselves unable to tell whether what they were hearing was an Edison Diamond Disc or a flesh-and-blood musician. Today, the equation is reversed. Whereas Edison proposed that a real performance could be rebuilt with absolute perfection, Pro Tools and digital samplers now allow musicians and engineers to create the illusion of performances that never were. In between lies a century of sonic exploration into the balance between the real and the represented.
Tracing the contours of this history, Greg Milner…
The most thorough, nuanced portrait yet of this towering figure, Duke Ellington’s America highlights Ellington’s importance as a historical figure as well as arguably America’s greatest composer. Harvey G. Cohen paints a vivid picture of Ellington’s life and times, taking him from his youth in black Washington, D.C., to the heights of worldwide acclaim. Mining extensive archives, many never before available, plus new interviews with Ellington’s friends, family, band, and business associates, Cohen illuminates his constantly evolving approach to composition, performance, and the music business—as well as issues of race, equality, religion and the Cold War.
Ellington’s own voice animates the book throughout, giving Duke Ellington’s America an intimacy and immediacy unmatched by any previous account. One of the Washington Post’s best books of the year.
I come by my interest in history and the years before, during, and after the Second World War honestly. For one thing, both my father and my father-in-law served as pilots in the war, my father a P-38 pilot in North Africa and my father-in-law a B-17 bomber pilot in England. Their histories connect me with a period I think we can still almost reach with our fingertips and one that has had a momentous impact on our lives today. I have taken that interest and passion to discover and write true life stories of the war—focusing on the untold and unheard stories often of the “Average Joe.”
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.
The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention on ordinary individuals—clerks, radio operators, cooks, sailors, machinist mates, riflemen, and pilots and their air crews. All were men who chose to serve their country and soon found themselves in a terrifying and otherworldly place.
No Average Day reveals the vastness of the war as it reaches past the beaches in…
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or on June 6, 1944, when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, or on any other single day of the war. In its telling of the events of October 24, No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident. The book begins with Army Private First-Class Paul Miller's pre-dawn demise in the Sendai #6B Japanese prisoner of war camp. It concludes with the death…
