Just around Midnight

By Jack Hamilton,

Book cover of Just around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination

Book description

By the time Jimi Hendrix died in 1970, the idea of a black man playing lead guitar in a rock band seemed exotic. Yet a mere ten years earlier, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley had stood among the most influential rock and roll performers. Why did rock and roll become…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked Just around Midnight as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Some time in the 1960s, rock ’n’ roll became rock, and rock became white. That moment forms the core of Jack Hamilton’s exploration of the fraught racial politics of this music in the United States.

Putting different artists into dialogue – such as Dylan and Cooke, or Janis and Aretha – allows Hamilton to excavate the original complexity of genre labels that, over the fifty years since, have too often effaced the original, more complicated story about race, music, and American society. 

If you love Just around Midnight...

Ad

Book cover of We Had Fun and Nobody Died: Adventures of a Milwaukee Music Promoter

We Had Fun and Nobody Died By Amy T. Waldman, Peter Jest,

This irreverent biography provides a rare window into the music industry from a promoter’s perspective. From a young age, Peter Jest was determined to make a career in live music, and despite naysayers and obstacles, he did just that, bringing national acts to his college campus atUW-Milwaukee, booking thousands of…

Want books like Just around Midnight?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Just around Midnight.

Browse books like Just around Midnight

Book cover of How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music
Book cover of Music in America's Cold War Diplomacy
Book cover of Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,585

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

📚 If you like Just around Midnight, you might also like...

Book cover of The Deviant Prison: Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary and the Origins of America's Modern Penal System, 1829-1913

The Deviant Prison By Ashley Rubin,

What were America's first prisons like? How did penal reformers, prison administrators, and politicians deal with the challenges of confining human beings in long-term captivity as punishment--what they saw as a humane intervention?

The Deviant Prison centers on one early prison: Eastern State Penitentiary. Built in Philadelphia, one of the…

Book cover of The Lion and the Fox: Two Rival Spies and the Secret Plot to Build a Confederate Navy

The Lion and the Fox By Alexander Rose,

From the author of Washington’s Spies, the thrilling story of two rival secret agents — one Confederate, the other Union — sent to Britain during the Civil War.

The South’s James Bulloch, charming and devious, was ordered to acquire a clandestine fleet intended to break Lincoln’s blockade, sink Northern…

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in rock music, race, and rock and roll?

Rock Music 247 books
Race 26 books
Rock And Roll 79 books