1840s
1920s
1950s
A01=Michael Broyles
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Author_Michael Broyles
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car radio
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=AVG
Category=AVL
COP=United States
cultural history
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doo wop
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eq_music
eq_nobargain
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jazz
Language_English
minstrel show
music history
PA=Available
pop culture
popular music
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
radio
railroads
rock and roll
softlaunch
technology
telegraph
vinyl
Product details
- ISBN 9780393634204
- Weight: 723g
- Dimensions: 160 x 239mm
- Publication Date: 20 Feb 2024
- Publisher: WW Norton & Co
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Michael Broyles shows how three key decades—the 1840s, the 1920s and the 1950s—shaped America’s musical future. In each, new styles of music combined with emerging technologies, from the locomotive to the transistor radio, to have lasting impact on our cultural landscape. All too often, these new developments revealed racial fault lines running through the business of music in an echo of American society as a whole. Through the music of each decade we see the social, cultural and political fabric of the time. A variety of characters serve as focal points for each chapter, including the original Jim Crow, a colourful Hungarian dancing master named Gabriel De Korponay, “Empress of the Blues” Bessie Smith, and the singer Johnnie Ray, whom Tony Bennett called “the father of rock ‘n’ roll.” Their stories, and many others, animate this fascinating look at how American music became what it is today.
Michael Broyles holds a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin and is professor of musicology at Florida State University. He was formerly the music critic for the Baltimore Sun and is a past president of the Society for American Music. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida.
