Tell Tchaikovsky the News: Rock 'n' Roll, the Labor Question, and the Musicians' Union, 1942-1968

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Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction. Union Man Blues 1
1. Solidarity Forever? The Musicians' Union Responds to Radio and Records 19
2. Have You Heard the News? There's Good Rockin' Tonight: Hepcats, Wildcats, and the Emergence of Rock 'n 'Roll 41
3. If I Had a Hammer: Union Musicians "Bop" Rock 'n ' Roll 113
4. A Working-Class Hero Is Something to Be: The Musicians' Union Attempt to Block the British Invasion 167
Epilogue. Tuned In, Turned On, and Dropped Out: Rock 'n' Roll Music Production Restructures the Music Industry along Non-Union Lines 201
Notes 209
Bibliography 233
Index 243
Photo gallery follows page 112

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For two decades after rock music emerged in the 1940s, the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), the oldest and largest labor union representing professional musicians in the United States and Canada, refused to recognize rock 'n' roll as legitimate music or its performers as skilled musicians. The AFM never actively organized rock 'n' roll musicians, although recruiting them would have been in the union's economic interest. In Tell Tchaikovsky the News, Michael James Roberts argues that the reasons that the union failed to act in its own interest lay in its culture, in the opinions of its leadership and elite rank-and-file members. Explaining the bias of union members—most of whom were classical or jazz music performers—against rock music and musicians, Roberts addresses issues of race and class, questions of what qualified someone as a skilled or professional musician, and the threat that records, central to rock 'n' roll, posed to AFM members, who had long privileged live performances. Roberts contends that by rejecting rock 'n' rollers for two decades, the once formidable American Federation of Musicians lost their clout within the music industry.

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Both a compelling labor history . . . and a music history . . . Roberts supplies fascinating views into struggles within the AFM over a developing music industry and about a music revolution." -- R.A. Batch

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