In Songbooks, critic and scholar Eric Weisbard offers a critical guide to books on American popular music from William Billings's 1770 New-England Psalm-Singer to Jay-Z's 2010 memoir Decoded. Drawing on his background editing the Village Voice music section, coediting the Journal of Popular Music Studies, and organizing the Pop Conference, Weisbard connects American music writing from memoirs, biographies, and song compilations to blues novels, magazine essays, and academic studies. The authors of these works are as diverse as the music itself: women, people of color, queer writers, self-educated scholars, poets, musicians, and elites discarding their social norms. Whether analyzing books on Louis Armstrong, the Beatles, and Madonna; the novels of Theodore Dreiser, Gayl Jones, and Jennifer Egan; or varying takes on blackface minstrelsy, Weisbard charts an alternative history of American music as told through its writing. As Weisbard demonstrates, the most enduring work pursues questions that linger across time period and genre—cultural studies in the form of notes on the fly, on sounds that never cease to change meaning.
- Cover
- Contents
- Introduction
- Part I. Setting the Scene
- First Writer, of Music and on Music: William Billings, The New-England Psalm-Singer, 1770
- Blackface Minstrelsy Extends Its Twisted Roots: T. D. Rice, “Jim Crow,” c.1832
- Shape-Note Singing and Early Country: B. F. White and E. J. King, The Sacred Harp, 1844
- Music in Captivity: Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, 1853
- Champion of the White Male Vernacular: Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855
- Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison, eds., Slave Songs of the United States, 1867
- First Black Music Historian: James Trotter, Music and Some Highly Musical People: The Lives of Remarkable Musicians of the Colored Race, 1878
- Child Ballads and Folklore: Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 5 vols., 1882–1898
- Women Not Inventing Ethnomusicology: Alice C. Fletcher, A Study of Omaha Indian Music, 1893
- First Hit Songwriter, from Pop to Folk and Back Again: Morrison Foster, Biography, Songs and Musical Compositions of Stephen C. Foster, 1896
- Novelist of Urban Pop Longings: Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie, 1900
- Americana Emerges: Emma Bell Miles, The Spirit of the Mountains, 1905
- Documenting the Story: O. G. Sonneck, Bibliography of Early Secular American Music, 1905
- Tin Pan Alley’s Sheet Music Biz: Charles K. Harris, How to Write a Popular Song, 1906
- First Family of Folk Collecting: John A. Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, 1910
- Proclaiming Black Modernity: James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, 1912
- Songcatching in the Mountains: Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil J. Sharp, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, 1917
- Part II. The Jazz Age
- Stories for the Slicks: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers, 1920
- Remembering the First Black Star: Mabel Rowland, ed., Bert Williams, Son of Laughter, 1923
- Magazine Criticism across Popular Genres: Gilbert Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts, 1924
- Harlem Renaissance: Alain Locke, ed., The New Negro: An Interpretation, 1925
- Tin Pan Alley’s Standards Setter: Alexander Woollcott, The Story of Irving Berlin, 1925
- Broadway Musical as Supertext: Edna Ferber, Show Boat, 1926
- Father of the Blues in Print: W. C. Handy, ed., Blues: An Anthology, 1926
- Poet of the Blare and Racial Mountain: Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues, 1926
- Blessed Immortal, Forgotten Songwriter: Carrie Jacobs-Bond, The Roads of Melody, 1927
- Tune Detective and Expert Explainer: Sigmund Spaeth, Read ’Em and Weep: The Songs You Forgot to Remember, 1927
- Pop’s First History Lesson: Isaac Goldberg, Tin Pan Alley: A Chronicle of the American Popular Music Racket, 1930
- Roots Intellectual: Constance Rourke, American Humor: A Study of the National Character, 1931
- Jook Ethnography, Inventing Black Music Studies: Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men, 1935
- What He Played Came First: Louis Armstrong, Swing That Music, 1936
- Jazz’s Original Novel: Dorothy Baker, Young Man with a Horn, 1938
- Introducing Jazz Critics: Frederic Ramsey Jr. and Charles Edward Smith, eds., Jazzmen, 1939
- Part III. Midcentury Icons
- Folk Embodiment: Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory, 1943
- A Hack Story Soldiers Took to War: David Ewen, Men of Popular Music, 1944
- From Immigrant Jew to Red Hot Mama: Sophie Tucker, Some of These Days, 1945
- White Negro Drug Dealer: Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe, Really the Blues, 1946
- Composer of Tone Parallels: Barry Ulanov, Duke Ellington, 1946
- Jazz’s Precursor as Pop and Art: Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, They All Played Ragtime: The True Story of an American Music, 1950
- 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
- Dramatizing Blackness from a Distance: Ethel Waters with Charles Samuels, His Eye Is on the Sparrow, 1951
- Centering Vernacular Song: Gilbert Chase, America’s Music, 1955
- Writing about Records: Roland Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph: From Tin Foil to High Fidelity, 1955
- Collective Oral History to 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
- The Greatest Jazz Singer’s Star Text: Billie Holiday with William Dufty, Lady Sings the Blues, 1956
- Beat Generation: Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957
- Borderlands Folklore and Transnational Imaginaries: Américo Paredes, “With His Pistol in His Hands”: A Border Ballad and Its Hero, 1958
- New Yorker Critic of a Genre Becoming Middlebrow: Whitney Balliett, The Sound of Surprise: 46 Pieces on Jazz, 1959
- Part IV. Vernacular Counterculture
- Blues Revivalists: Samuel Charters, The Country Blues, 1959; Paul Oliver, Blues Fell This Morning: The Meaning of the Blues, 1960
- Britpop in Fiction: Colin MacInnes, Absolute Beginners, 1959
- Form-Exploding Indeterminacy: John Cage, Silence, 1961
- Science Fiction Writer Pens First Rock and Roll Novel: Harlan Ellison, Rockabilly [Spider Kiss], 1961
- Pro–Jazz Scene Sociology: Howard S. Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, 1963
- Reclaiming Black Music: LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Blues People: Negro Music in White America, 1963
- An Endless Lit, Limited Only in Scope: Michael Braun, “Love Me Do!”: The Beatles’ Progress, 1964
- Music as a Prose Master’s Jagged Grain: Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act, 1964
- How to Succeed in . . . : M. William Krasilovsky and Sidney Schemel, This Business of Music, 1964
- Schmaltz and Adversity: Sammy Davis Jr. and Jane and Burt Boyar, Yes I Can, 1965
- New Journalism and Electrified Syntax: Tom Wolfe, Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, 1965
- Defining a Genre: Bill C. Malone, Country Music, U.S.A.: A Fifty-Year History, 1968
- Swing’s Movers as an Alternate History of American Pop: Marshall and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance, 1968
- Rock and Roll’s Greatest Hyper: Nik Cohn, Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom, 1969/1970
- Ebony’s Pioneering Critic of Black Pop as Black Power: Phyl Garland, The Sound of Soul: The Story of Black Music, 1969
- Entertainment Journalism and the Power of Knowing: Lillian Roxon, Rock Encyclopedia, 1969
- An Over-the-Top Genre’s First Reliable History: Charlie Gillett, The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1970
- Rock Critic of the Trivially Awesome: Richard Meltzer, The Aesthetics of Rock, 1970
- Black Religious Fervor as the Core of Rock and Soul: Anthony Heilbut, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times, 1971
- Jazz Memoir of “Rotary Perception” Multiplicity: Charles Mingus, Beneath the Underdog, 1971
- Composing a Formal History: Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans, 1971
- Krazy Kat Fiction of Viral Vernaculars: Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo, 1972
- Derrière Garde Prose and Residual Pop Styles: Alec Wilder, American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950, 1972
- Charts as a New Literature: Joel Whitburn, Top Pop Records, 1955–1972, 1973
- Selling Platinum across Formats: Clive Davis with James Willwerth, Clive: Inside the Record Business, 1975
- Blues Relationships and Black Women’s Deep Songs: Gayl Jones, Corregidora, 1975
- “Look at 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
- Cultural Studies Brings Pop from the Hallway to the Classroom: Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, eds., Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, 1976
- A Life in Country for an Era of Feminism and Counterculture: Loretta Lynn with George Vecsey, Coal Miner’s Daughter, 1976
- Introducing Rock Critics: Jim Miller, ed., The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, 1976
- Patriarchal Exegete of Black Vernacular as “Equipment for Living”: Albert Murray, Stomping the Blues, 1976
- Reading Pop Culture as Intellectual Obligation: Roland Barthes, Image—Music—Text, 1977
- Paging through Books to Make History: Dena Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War, 1977
- Historians Begin to Study Popular Music: Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom, 1977
- Musicking to Overturn Hierarchy: Christopher Small, Music, Society, Education, 1977
- Drool Data and Stained Panties from a Critical Noise Boy: Nick Tosches, Country: The Biggest Music in America, 1977
- 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
- The Ghostwriter behind the Music Books: Ray Charles and David Ritz, Brother Ray: Ray Charles’ Own Story, 1978
- Disco Negates Rock: Andrew Holleran, Dancer from the Dance, 1978
- Industry Schmoozer and Black Music Advocate Fills Public Libraries with Okay Overviews: Arnold Shaw, Honkers and Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues, 1978
- Musicology’s Greatest Tune Chronicler: Charles Hamm, Yesterdays: Popular Song in America, 1979
- Criticism’s Greatest Album Chronicler: Robert Christgau, Christgau’s Record Guide: Rock Albums of the ’70s, 1981
- Rock’s Frank Capra: Cameron Crowe, Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story, 1981
- Culture Studies/Rock Critic Twofer!: Simon Frith, Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock’n’Roll, 1981
- A Magical Explainer of Impure Sounds: Robert Palmer, Deep Blues, 1981
- Feminist Rock Critic, Pop-Savvy Social Critic: Ellen Willis, Beginning to See the Light: Pieces of a Decade, 1981
- New Deal Swing Believer Revived: Otis Ferguson, In the Spirit of Jazz: The Otis Ferguson Reader, 1982
- Ethnomusicology and Pop, Forever Fraught: Bruno Nettl, The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-Nine Issues and Concepts, 1983
- Autodidact Deviance, Modeling the Rock Generation to Come: V. Vale and Andrea Juno, eds., RE/Search #6/7: Industrial Culture Handbook, 1983
- The Rolling Stones of Rolling Stones Books: Stanley Booth, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones, 1984
- Finding the Blackface in Bluegrass: Robert Cantwell, Bluegrass Breakdown: The Making of the Old Southern Sound, 1984
- Cyberpunk Novels and Cultural Studies Futurism: William Gibson, Neuromancer, 1984
- Glossy Magazine Features Writer Gets History’s Second Draft: Gerri Hirshey, Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music, 1984
- Theorizing Sound as Dress Rehearsal for the Future: Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, 1977; Translation, 1985
- Classic Rock, Mass Market Paperback Style: Stephen Davis, Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga, 1985
- Love and Rockets, Signature Comic of Punk Los Angeles as Borderland Imaginary: Los Bros Hernandez, Music for Mechanics, 1985
- Plays about Black American Culture Surviving the Loss of Political Will: August Wilson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, 1985
- Putting Pop in the Big Books of Music: H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie, eds., The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, 1986
- Popular Music’s Defining Singer and Swinger: Kitty Kelley, His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra, 1986
- Anti-Epic Lyricizing of Black Music after Black Power: Nathaniel Mackey, Bedouin Hornbook, 1986
- Lost Icon of Rock Criticism: Lester Bangs, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, 1987
- Veiled Glimpses of the Songwriter Who Invented Rock and Roll as Literature: Chuck Berry, Chuck Berry: The Autobiography, 1987
- Making “Wild-Eyed Girls” a More Complex Narrative: Pamela Des Barres, I’m with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie, 1987
- Reporting Black Music as Art Mixed with Business: Nelson George, The Death of Rhythm & Blues, 1988
- Sessions with the Evil Genius of Jazz: Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography, 1989
- Part VI. New Voices, New Methods
- Literature of New World Order Americanization: Jessica Hagedorn, Dogeaters, 1990
- Ethnic Studies of Blended Musical Identities: George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture, 1990
- Ballad Novels for a Baby Boomer Appalachia: Sharyn McCrumb, If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O, 1990
- 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
- How Musicology Met Cultural Studies: Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality, 1991
- Idol for Academic Analysis and a Changing Public Sphere: Madonna, Sex, 1992
- Black Bohemian Cultural Nationalism: Greg Tate, Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America, 1992
- From Indie to Alternative Rock: Gina Arnold, Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana, 1993
- Musicology on Popular Music—In Pragmatic Context: Richard Crawford, The American Musical Landscape, 1993
- Listening, Queerly: Wayne Koestenbaum, The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality and the Mystery of Desire, 1993
- Blackface as Stolen Vernacular: Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, 1993
- Media Studies of Girls Listening to Top 40: Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media, 1994
- Ironies of a Contested Identity: Peter Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, 1994
- Two Generations of Leading Ethnomusicologists Debate the Popular: Charles Keil and Steven Feld, Music Grooves: Essays and Dialogues, 1994
- Defining Hip-Hop as Flow, Layering, Rupture, and Postindustrial Resistance: Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, 1994
- 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
- Soundscaping References, Immersing Trauma: David Toop, Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds, 1995
- Sociologist Gives Country Studies a Soft-Shell Contrast to the Honky-Tonk: Richard Peterson, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity, 1997
- All That Not-Quite Jazz: Gary Giddins, Visions of Jazz: The First Century, 1998
- Jazz Studies Conquers the Academy: Robert G. O’Meally, ed., The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, 1998
- 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
- Performance Studies, Minoritarian Identity, and Academic Wildness: José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, 1999
- Left of Black: Networking a New Discourse: Mark Anthony Neal, What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture, 1999
- Aerobics as Genre, Managing Emotions: Tia DeNora, Music in Everyday Life, 2000
- Confronting Globalization: Thomas Turino, Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music in Zimbabwe, 2000
- Evocations of Cultural Migration Centered on Race, Rhythm, and Eventually Sexuality: Alejo Carpentier, Music in Cuba, 2001 (1946)
- 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
- When Faith in Popular Sound Wavers, He’s Waiting: Theodor Adorno, Essays on Music, ed. Richard Leppert, 2002
- Codifying a Precarious but Global Academic Field: David Hesmondhalgh and Keith Negus, eds., Popular Music Studies, 2002
- Salsa and the Mixings of Global Culture: Lise Waxer, City of Musical Memory: Salsa, Record Grooves, and Popular Culture in Cali, Colombia, 2002
- Musicals as Pop, Nationalism, and Changing Identity: Stacy Wolf, A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical, 2002
- Musical Fiction and Criticism by the Greatest Used Bookstore Clerk of All Time: Jonathan Lethem, Fortress of Solitude, 2003
- Poetic Ontologies of Black Musical Style: Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, 2003
- Rescuing the Afromodern Vernacular: Guthrie Ramsey Jr., Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop, 2003
- Sound Studies and the Songs Question: Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction, 2003
- Dylanologist Conventions: Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One, 2004
- 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
- Revisionist Bluesology and Tangled Intellectual History: Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, 2004
- 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
- Refiguring American Music—And Its Institutionalization: Josh Kun, Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America, 2005
- Country Music Scholars Pioneer Gender and Industry Analysis: Diane Pecknold, The Selling Sound: The Rise of the Country Music Industry, 2007
- Where Does Classical Music Fit In?: Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, 2007
- Poptimism, 33⅓ Books, and the Struggles of Music Critics: Carl Wilson, Let’s Talk about Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, 2007
- Novelists Collegial with Indie Music: Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad, 2010
- YouTube, Streaming, and the Popular Music Performance Archive: Will Friedwald, A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers, 2010
- Idiosyncratic Musician Memoirs—Performer as Writer in the Era of the Artist as Brand: Jay-Z, Decoded, 2010
- Acknowledgments
- Works Cited
- Index
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