Jennifer C. Lena
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691150765
- eISBN:
- 9781400840458
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691150765.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
Why do some music styles gain mass popularity while others thrive in small niches? This book explores this question and reveals the attributes that together explain the growth of twentieth-century ...
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Why do some music styles gain mass popularity while others thrive in small niches? This book explores this question and reveals the attributes that together explain the growth of twentieth-century American popular music. Drawing on a vast array of examples from sixty musical styles—ranging from rap and bluegrass to death metal and South Texas polka, and including several created outside the United States—the book uncovers the shared grammar that allows us to understand the cultural language and evolution of popular music. The book discovers four dominant forms—avant-garde, scene-based, industry-based, and traditionalist—and two dominant trajectories that describe how American pop music genres develop. Outside the United States there exists a fifth form: the government-purposed genre, which the book examines in the music of China, Serbia, Nigeria, and Chile. Offering a rare analysis of how music communities operate, the book looks at the shared obstacles and opportunities creative people face and reveals the ways in which people collaborate around ideas, artworks, individuals, and organizations that support their work.Less
Why do some music styles gain mass popularity while others thrive in small niches? This book explores this question and reveals the attributes that together explain the growth of twentieth-century American popular music. Drawing on a vast array of examples from sixty musical styles—ranging from rap and bluegrass to death metal and South Texas polka, and including several created outside the United States—the book uncovers the shared grammar that allows us to understand the cultural language and evolution of popular music. The book discovers four dominant forms—avant-garde, scene-based, industry-based, and traditionalist—and two dominant trajectories that describe how American pop music genres develop. Outside the United States there exists a fifth form: the government-purposed genre, which the book examines in the music of China, Serbia, Nigeria, and Chile. Offering a rare analysis of how music communities operate, the book looks at the shared obstacles and opportunities creative people face and reveals the ways in which people collaborate around ideas, artworks, individuals, and organizations that support their work.
Jeffrey Magee
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195398267
- eISBN:
- 9780199933358
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195398267.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American, Popular
“The mob is always right” was the idea that charged Irving Berlin’s career in American popular music. Taking off from that claim, this book represents a wide-ranging exploration of America’s greatest ...
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“The mob is always right” was the idea that charged Irving Berlin’s career in American popular music. Taking off from that claim, this book represents a wide-ranging exploration of America’s greatest songwriter and his role in creating twentieth-century musical theater. Drawing on past scholarly efforts and a vast store of recently released archival material, the book strives to break new ground in focusing on Irving Berlin’s half-century of work for the Broadway stage—a career that tracks the development of American musical theater itself. The book traces a fundamental paradigm shift from early twentieth-century values of variety entertainment, manifested in Berlin’s revues and revue-like comedies, to an increasing emphasis on coherent, well-crafted scripts for musical comedy, in which songs were more thoroughly integrated into the plot. Throughout, Berlin maintained a unique balance by fitting musical numbers tightly to their show contexts, and addressing their historical moment, while preserving their integrity as individual songs that could have their own lives in the musical marketplace as jazz and cabaret standards, and as popular classics whose sheet music enjoyed pride of place in the piano benches of American homes. Like Berlin’s songs and shows, the book is designed for a wide readership of musical theater aficionados as well as serious students of music, drama, and popular culture—and anyone interested in the story of a poor immigrant boy whose life and work expressed so well the American dream.Less
“The mob is always right” was the idea that charged Irving Berlin’s career in American popular music. Taking off from that claim, this book represents a wide-ranging exploration of America’s greatest songwriter and his role in creating twentieth-century musical theater. Drawing on past scholarly efforts and a vast store of recently released archival material, the book strives to break new ground in focusing on Irving Berlin’s half-century of work for the Broadway stage—a career that tracks the development of American musical theater itself. The book traces a fundamental paradigm shift from early twentieth-century values of variety entertainment, manifested in Berlin’s revues and revue-like comedies, to an increasing emphasis on coherent, well-crafted scripts for musical comedy, in which songs were more thoroughly integrated into the plot. Throughout, Berlin maintained a unique balance by fitting musical numbers tightly to their show contexts, and addressing their historical moment, while preserving their integrity as individual songs that could have their own lives in the musical marketplace as jazz and cabaret standards, and as popular classics whose sheet music enjoyed pride of place in the piano benches of American homes. Like Berlin’s songs and shows, the book is designed for a wide readership of musical theater aficionados as well as serious students of music, drama, and popular culture—and anyone interested in the story of a poor immigrant boy whose life and work expressed so well the American dream.
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226350370
- eISBN:
- 9780226350400
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226350400.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
This book is about the work of genre categories in American popular music. It investigates the diversity of musics subsumed under the category of popular music and deals with its boundary areas with ...
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This book is about the work of genre categories in American popular music. It investigates the diversity of musics subsumed under the category of popular music and deals with its boundary areas with folk music, art jazz, and world music. Genre is a fundamental structuring force in musical life. Discourse plays a major role in genre making. This chapter presents a discussion of terminological issues and outlines a general framework for understanding genre formation in popular music. The framework is an account of important mechanisms in a number of existing popular music genres in the United States. This introductory chapter is followed by a series of case studies that investigate a range of popular musics and share a commitment to understanding musical genre differences in relation to cultural difference and cultural diversity. Finally, an overview of the chapters included in this book is given.Less
This book is about the work of genre categories in American popular music. It investigates the diversity of musics subsumed under the category of popular music and deals with its boundary areas with folk music, art jazz, and world music. Genre is a fundamental structuring force in musical life. Discourse plays a major role in genre making. This chapter presents a discussion of terminological issues and outlines a general framework for understanding genre formation in popular music. The framework is an account of important mechanisms in a number of existing popular music genres in the United States. This introductory chapter is followed by a series of case studies that investigate a range of popular musics and share a commitment to understanding musical genre differences in relation to cultural difference and cultural diversity. Finally, an overview of the chapters included in this book is given.
Evan Rapport
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781496831217
- eISBN:
- 9781496831262
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496831217.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
This chapter reconsiders the role of American rock experimentalists such as Captain Beefheart, DEVO, and the Residents in the formation of punk’s musical style. Although these musicians are often ...
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This chapter reconsiders the role of American rock experimentalists such as Captain Beefheart, DEVO, and the Residents in the formation of punk’s musical style. Although these musicians are often referenced in punk histories, their contributions are typically misunderstood because of an anachronistic focus on the British punk scene of 1977 as punk’s starting point. These musicians used avant-garde approaches to American popular music and vernacular culture in order to tackle American music’s unacknowledged and whitewashed history, including such controversial practices as blackface minstrelsy, as well as the problems of white suburbia, the war in Vietnam, the failures of hippie idealism, and a frustration with both mainstream American culture and the counterculture.Less
This chapter reconsiders the role of American rock experimentalists such as Captain Beefheart, DEVO, and the Residents in the formation of punk’s musical style. Although these musicians are often referenced in punk histories, their contributions are typically misunderstood because of an anachronistic focus on the British punk scene of 1977 as punk’s starting point. These musicians used avant-garde approaches to American popular music and vernacular culture in order to tackle American music’s unacknowledged and whitewashed history, including such controversial practices as blackface minstrelsy, as well as the problems of white suburbia, the war in Vietnam, the failures of hippie idealism, and a frustration with both mainstream American culture and the counterculture.
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226350370
- eISBN:
- 9780226350400
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226350400.003.0008
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
This chapter evaluates the work of genre in canons of “American music” and their discursive contexts. The notion of roots enjoyed a revival in the culture of American roots music in the 1990s, which ...
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This chapter evaluates the work of genre in canons of “American music” and their discursive contexts. The notion of roots enjoyed a revival in the culture of American roots music in the 1990s, which illustrates the lasting effect of the folk song collectors. Then, it uses genre as a tool for understanding aspects of the problem of music and national identity in American cultural history. It demonstrates how poetics can be utilized to design a type of anthology that is more sensitive to diversity than anthologies that follow the big canons. The big ethnic markets eventually had a major effect on defining American popular music in black and white. Flaco Jiménez's rendition of “Inditamia” is in some ways typical of the classic late 1950s conjunto style. Jiménez shows that the relation between ethnic and mainstream American musics is not always one between folk and popular music.Less
This chapter evaluates the work of genre in canons of “American music” and their discursive contexts. The notion of roots enjoyed a revival in the culture of American roots music in the 1990s, which illustrates the lasting effect of the folk song collectors. Then, it uses genre as a tool for understanding aspects of the problem of music and national identity in American cultural history. It demonstrates how poetics can be utilized to design a type of anthology that is more sensitive to diversity than anthologies that follow the big canons. The big ethnic markets eventually had a major effect on defining American popular music in black and white. Flaco Jiménez's rendition of “Inditamia” is in some ways typical of the classic late 1950s conjunto style. Jiménez shows that the relation between ethnic and mainstream American musics is not always one between folk and popular music.
James Revell Carr
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038600
- eISBN:
- 9780252096525
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038600.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This book explores the performance, reception, transmission, and adaptation of Hawaiian music on board ships and in the islands, revealing the ways both maritime commerce and imperial confrontation ...
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This book explores the performance, reception, transmission, and adaptation of Hawaiian music on board ships and in the islands, revealing the ways both maritime commerce and imperial confrontation facilitated the circulation of popular music in the nineteenth century. The book shows how Hawaiians initially used music and dance to ease tensions with, and spread information about, potentially dangerous foreigners, and then traces the circulation of Hawaiian song and dance worldwide as Hawaiians served aboard American and European ships. Drawing on journals and ships' logs, the book highlights the profound contrasts between Hawaiians' treatment by fellow sailors who appreciated their seamanship and music, versus antagonistic American missionaries determined to keep Hawaiians on local sugar plantations, and looks at how Hawaiians achieved their own ends by capitalizing on Americans' conflicting expectations and fraught discourse around hula and other musical practices. It also examines American minstrelsy in Hawaii, including professional touring minstrel troupes from the mainland, amateur troupes consisting of crew members of visiting ships, and local indigenous troupes of Hawaiian minstrels. In the process he illuminates how a merging of indigenous and foreign elements became the new sound of native Hawaiian culture at the turn of the twentieth century—and made loping rhythms, falsetto yodels, and driving ukuleles indelible parts of American popular music.Less
This book explores the performance, reception, transmission, and adaptation of Hawaiian music on board ships and in the islands, revealing the ways both maritime commerce and imperial confrontation facilitated the circulation of popular music in the nineteenth century. The book shows how Hawaiians initially used music and dance to ease tensions with, and spread information about, potentially dangerous foreigners, and then traces the circulation of Hawaiian song and dance worldwide as Hawaiians served aboard American and European ships. Drawing on journals and ships' logs, the book highlights the profound contrasts between Hawaiians' treatment by fellow sailors who appreciated their seamanship and music, versus antagonistic American missionaries determined to keep Hawaiians on local sugar plantations, and looks at how Hawaiians achieved their own ends by capitalizing on Americans' conflicting expectations and fraught discourse around hula and other musical practices. It also examines American minstrelsy in Hawaii, including professional touring minstrel troupes from the mainland, amateur troupes consisting of crew members of visiting ships, and local indigenous troupes of Hawaiian minstrels. In the process he illuminates how a merging of indigenous and foreign elements became the new sound of native Hawaiian culture at the turn of the twentieth century—and made loping rhythms, falsetto yodels, and driving ukuleles indelible parts of American popular music.
James Wierzbicki
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040078
- eISBN:
- 9780252098277
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040078.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This chapter discusses the romantic genealogy of rock 'n' roll and how its style resulted from the happy integration of white hillbilly music with black “race music” or, as it came to be known in the ...
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This chapter discusses the romantic genealogy of rock 'n' roll and how its style resulted from the happy integration of white hillbilly music with black “race music” or, as it came to be known in the 1950s, “rhythm and blues.” Supported by recent scholarship that has delved into the files of record companies, analyses affirm that rock 'n' roll represents a blatant appropriation of black music by white entrepreneurs. A postmodern view might regard rock 'n' roll not even as music, but as simply “a marketing concept that evolved into a lifestyle.” The chapter also analyzes how Bill Haley's recording of “Rock Around the Clock” turned the tide of American popular music in late 1955.Less
This chapter discusses the romantic genealogy of rock 'n' roll and how its style resulted from the happy integration of white hillbilly music with black “race music” or, as it came to be known in the 1950s, “rhythm and blues.” Supported by recent scholarship that has delved into the files of record companies, analyses affirm that rock 'n' roll represents a blatant appropriation of black music by white entrepreneurs. A postmodern view might regard rock 'n' roll not even as music, but as simply “a marketing concept that evolved into a lifestyle.” The chapter also analyzes how Bill Haley's recording of “Rock Around the Clock” turned the tide of American popular music in late 1955.
Miles White
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036620
- eISBN:
- 9780252093678
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036620.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter examines minstrel performance as the first construction of an absent black presence in American popular music, signified by the minstrel mask, and as the first sustained project ...
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This chapter examines minstrel performance as the first construction of an absent black presence in American popular music, signified by the minstrel mask, and as the first sustained project involving the fetishization and commodification of black male subjectivity. Minstrelsy practice required a body at the level of performance, but not a black one; rather, it called for the representation of blackness constructed in the white American racial imagination of the time. After the Civil War, black male performers who began to access the entertainment industry in minstrel troupes, and they did so in large numbers, were required to do so in blackface since the black mask conformed to deeply embedded social stereotypes of black masculine subjectivity.Less
This chapter examines minstrel performance as the first construction of an absent black presence in American popular music, signified by the minstrel mask, and as the first sustained project involving the fetishization and commodification of black male subjectivity. Minstrelsy practice required a body at the level of performance, but not a black one; rather, it called for the representation of blackness constructed in the white American racial imagination of the time. After the Civil War, black male performers who began to access the entertainment industry in minstrel troupes, and they did so in large numbers, were required to do so in blackface since the black mask conformed to deeply embedded social stereotypes of black masculine subjectivity.
Floyd Levin
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520213609
- eISBN:
- 9780520928985
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520213609.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
The author of this book, an award-winning jazz writer, has personally known many of the jazz greats who contributed to the music's colorful history. This book, which contains works published mostly ...
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The author of this book, an award-winning jazz writer, has personally known many of the jazz greats who contributed to the music's colorful history. This book, which contains works published mostly in jazz magazines over a fifty-year period, takes us into the nightclubs, the recording studios, the record companies, and, most compellingly, into the lives of the musicians who made the great moments of the traditional jazz and swing eras. Weaving anecdotal material, primary research, and music analysis into every chapter, the book is a mine of information on a rich segment of American popular music. This collection begins with the author's first published piece and includes several new chapters that contain material inspired by his work on this compilation. The chapters are organized thematically, beginning with a piece on Kid Ory's early recordings and ending with a newly written chapter about the campaign to put up a monument to Louis Armstrong in New Orleans. Along the way, the book gives in-depth profiles of many well-known jazz legends, such as Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong, and many lesser-known figures who contributed greatly to the development of jazz.Less
The author of this book, an award-winning jazz writer, has personally known many of the jazz greats who contributed to the music's colorful history. This book, which contains works published mostly in jazz magazines over a fifty-year period, takes us into the nightclubs, the recording studios, the record companies, and, most compellingly, into the lives of the musicians who made the great moments of the traditional jazz and swing eras. Weaving anecdotal material, primary research, and music analysis into every chapter, the book is a mine of information on a rich segment of American popular music. This collection begins with the author's first published piece and includes several new chapters that contain material inspired by his work on this compilation. The chapters are organized thematically, beginning with a piece on Kid Ory's early recordings and ending with a newly written chapter about the campaign to put up a monument to Louis Armstrong in New Orleans. Along the way, the book gives in-depth profiles of many well-known jazz legends, such as Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong, and many lesser-known figures who contributed greatly to the development of jazz.
John Wriggle
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040405
- eISBN:
- 9780252098826
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040405.003.0011
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This concluding chapter reflects on the artistic merits of jazz and popular music throughout American music history, and how Swing Era arrangers like Chappie Willet have been regarded by historians. ...
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This concluding chapter reflects on the artistic merits of jazz and popular music throughout American music history, and how Swing Era arrangers like Chappie Willet have been regarded by historians. Despite Willet's esteemed position in the music community and unusually prominent media presence, his subsequently low profile in most (or any) histories still begs some explanation; the chapter posits some theories as to this obscurity at the same time that it argues that Willet's story—and that of many others—need not compete against the subsequent political rhetoric of the civil rights era. Finally, the chapter also considers the persistence of jazz in American popular music as the Swing Era comes to a close.Less
This concluding chapter reflects on the artistic merits of jazz and popular music throughout American music history, and how Swing Era arrangers like Chappie Willet have been regarded by historians. Despite Willet's esteemed position in the music community and unusually prominent media presence, his subsequently low profile in most (or any) histories still begs some explanation; the chapter posits some theories as to this obscurity at the same time that it argues that Willet's story—and that of many others—need not compete against the subsequent political rhetoric of the civil rights era. Finally, the chapter also considers the persistence of jazz in American popular music as the Swing Era comes to a close.
Alex W. Rodriguez
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780199685851
- eISBN:
- 9780191806049
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199685851.003.0031
- Subject:
- Psychology, Music Psychology, Developmental Psychology
This chapter examines the early life and musical development of Weldon Leo “Jack” Teagarden (1905–1964), a trombone virtuoso whose unique style set an important precedent for early jazz practice. ...
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This chapter examines the early life and musical development of Weldon Leo “Jack” Teagarden (1905–1964), a trombone virtuoso whose unique style set an important precedent for early jazz practice. Through a close examination of his pre-professional development as a musical prodigy in rural Texas and Oklahoma, this chapter aims to show how some unique aspects of musical prodigies’ early lives can have huge effects on their later professional personas. This analysis includes detailed discussion of his innovative approach to the instrument, consideration of his marginal social position as a child in this society, and an exploration of how this peculiar positionality allowed him to develop dispositions that served him well upon his arrival in New York as a young adult professional at age 22.Less
This chapter examines the early life and musical development of Weldon Leo “Jack” Teagarden (1905–1964), a trombone virtuoso whose unique style set an important precedent for early jazz practice. Through a close examination of his pre-professional development as a musical prodigy in rural Texas and Oklahoma, this chapter aims to show how some unique aspects of musical prodigies’ early lives can have huge effects on their later professional personas. This analysis includes detailed discussion of his innovative approach to the instrument, consideration of his marginal social position as a child in this society, and an exploration of how this peculiar positionality allowed him to develop dispositions that served him well upon his arrival in New York as a young adult professional at age 22.
Gary Rosen
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199733484
- eISBN:
- 9780190259891
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199733484.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Intellectual Property, IT, and Media Law
The long and tortured career of Ira B. Arnstein, “the unrivaled king of copyright infringement plaintiffs,” opens a curious window into the evolution of copyright law in the United States. As the ...
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The long and tortured career of Ira B. Arnstein, “the unrivaled king of copyright infringement plaintiffs,” opens a curious window into the evolution of copyright law in the United States. As the book shows in this history, the litigious Arnstein was a trenchant observer and most improbable participant in the transformation of not just copyright, but of American popular music itself. A musical prodigy in the late nineteenth century, Arnstein performed as a boy soprano at the famous 1893 “White City” exhibition in Chicago. He grew up to be a composer of moderate accomplishment, but by the mid-1920s his fortunes had reversed in the face of changing tastes and times. Embittered and confused, he became convinced that he was the victim of a conspiracy to steal his music and set out on a three-decade-long campaign to prove it, suing most of the major players in the popular music industry of his day. Although Arnstein never won a case, the book shows that the decisions rendered ultimately defined some of the basic parameters of copyright law. His most consequential case, against a dumbfounded Cole Porter, established precedents that have provided the foundation for successful suits against George Harrison, Michael Bolton, and many others. This book alternates the stories of Arnstein and a colorful cast of supporting characters with a fascinating account of the economic, technological, and legal forces of the first half of the twentieth century that shifted the balance of power from the mercenary music publishers of Tin Pan Alley to the composers and lyricists who wrote the Great American Songbook.Less
The long and tortured career of Ira B. Arnstein, “the unrivaled king of copyright infringement plaintiffs,” opens a curious window into the evolution of copyright law in the United States. As the book shows in this history, the litigious Arnstein was a trenchant observer and most improbable participant in the transformation of not just copyright, but of American popular music itself. A musical prodigy in the late nineteenth century, Arnstein performed as a boy soprano at the famous 1893 “White City” exhibition in Chicago. He grew up to be a composer of moderate accomplishment, but by the mid-1920s his fortunes had reversed in the face of changing tastes and times. Embittered and confused, he became convinced that he was the victim of a conspiracy to steal his music and set out on a three-decade-long campaign to prove it, suing most of the major players in the popular music industry of his day. Although Arnstein never won a case, the book shows that the decisions rendered ultimately defined some of the basic parameters of copyright law. His most consequential case, against a dumbfounded Cole Porter, established precedents that have provided the foundation for successful suits against George Harrison, Michael Bolton, and many others. This book alternates the stories of Arnstein and a colorful cast of supporting characters with a fascinating account of the economic, technological, and legal forces of the first half of the twentieth century that shifted the balance of power from the mercenary music publishers of Tin Pan Alley to the composers and lyricists who wrote the Great American Songbook.
Thomas J. Ferraro
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- December 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198863052
- eISBN:
- 9780191895586
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198863052.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
The coda to Transgression & Redemption considers how the knowledges, methods, and values of the book might contribute to further considerations of the American novel, with immediate emphasis on ...
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The coda to Transgression & Redemption considers how the knowledges, methods, and values of the book might contribute to further considerations of the American novel, with immediate emphasis on several canonical masterpieces of the 1930s, including William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust (1939); how, alternatively, the critical repertoire of this book might contribute to Hollywood scholarship beyond poststructuralist feminist critique, with emphasis split between the erotic-spiritual edginess of individual Criterion-canonized masterpieces (the not happily-ever-after: Casablanca, All About Eve, Blue Velvet) and the luminous achievement of “sexually ever after” in serial Hollywood films, featuring Bogey and Bacall, Katherine Hepburn and one of her men, or Myrna Loy and William Powell; and how, finally, the book’s critical reorientation can reveal the mythopoetic force of American popular music, beginning for illustration’s sake with the two greatest vocalists in that history, Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra, whose vocalized radiance, entailing bent notes and captured lyric, express obsessively the twin dimensions of incarnate passion, sex and sentiment. Or, as the two of them (sort of Catholics, Marian both) liked to put it, body and soul.Less
The coda to Transgression & Redemption considers how the knowledges, methods, and values of the book might contribute to further considerations of the American novel, with immediate emphasis on several canonical masterpieces of the 1930s, including William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust (1939); how, alternatively, the critical repertoire of this book might contribute to Hollywood scholarship beyond poststructuralist feminist critique, with emphasis split between the erotic-spiritual edginess of individual Criterion-canonized masterpieces (the not happily-ever-after: Casablanca, All About Eve, Blue Velvet) and the luminous achievement of “sexually ever after” in serial Hollywood films, featuring Bogey and Bacall, Katherine Hepburn and one of her men, or Myrna Loy and William Powell; and how, finally, the book’s critical reorientation can reveal the mythopoetic force of American popular music, beginning for illustration’s sake with the two greatest vocalists in that history, Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra, whose vocalized radiance, entailing bent notes and captured lyric, express obsessively the twin dimensions of incarnate passion, sex and sentiment. Or, as the two of them (sort of Catholics, Marian both) liked to put it, body and soul.
