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 Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

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.

1,888

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

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

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,

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…

Book cover of Grand Old Unraveling: The Republican Party, Donald Trump, and the Rise of Authoritarianism

Grand Old Unraveling by John Kenneth White,

It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.

Long…

5 book lists we think you will like!

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

Rock Music 248 books
Race 26 books
Rock And Roll 80 books