Songbooks: The Literature of American Popular Music

Contents

• 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: Americo 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
• Derriere 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: Jose Esteban Munoz, 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