Songbooks: the literature of American popular music

Setting the Scene

The Jazz Age

Midcentury Icons

Vernacular Counterculture

After the Revolution

New Voices, New Methods

Topics in Progress.

Part I: Setting the scene. First writer, of music and 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 ; Notating spirituals: William Francis Allen, Charles 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, 1882-1898 ; Women not inventing ethnomusicology: Alice C. Fletcher, A Study of Omaha Indian Music, 1893 ; First hist 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 Boar, 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 Neal 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 Horse ; 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, Man 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 Gelart, 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: Americo 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, 1979 ; 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, limiited 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: Alex 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 ' 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 negate 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 chonicler: 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: Gerry 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 Hagedon, 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 Buttermile: 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: 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 Felk, 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 ; 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 ; 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, 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 ; Novelists collegial with indie music: Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad, 2010 ; YouTube, streaming, and the popular music performance archive: Will Friedwalk, 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.