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Title:
Recorded music in American life : the phonograph and popular memory, 1890-1945 / William Howland Kenney.
Author:
Kenney, William Howland.
Publication Information:
New York : Oxford University Press, 1999.
Call Number:
ML3477 .K46 1999
Abstract:
Now comes an in-depth cultural history of the phonograph in the United States from 1890 to 1945. William Howland Kenney offers a full account of what he calls "the 78 r.p.m. era"--The formative early decades in which the giants of the record industry reigned supreme in the absence of radio, to the postwar proliferation of independent labels, disk jockeys, and changes in popular taste and opinion.

By examining the interplay between recorded music and the key social, political, and economic forces in America during the phonograph's rise and fall as the dominant medium of popular recorded sound, he addresses such vital issues as the place of multiculturalism in the phonograph's history, the roles of women as record-player listeners and performers, the belated commercial legitimacy of rhythm-and-blues recordings, the "hit record" phenomenon in the wake of the Great Depression, the origins of the rock-and-roll revolution, and the shifting place of popular recorded music in America's personal and cultural memories.

Students and scholars of American music, culture, commerce, and history - as well as fans and collectors interested in this phase of our nation's rich artistic past - will find a great deal of thorough research and fresh scholarship to enjoy in these pages.
ISBN:
9780195100464

9780195171778
Physical Description:
xix, 258 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Contents:
Two "circles of resonance": audience uses of recorded music -- "The Coney Island crowd": the phonograph and popular recordings before World War I -- "His master's voice": the Victor Talking Machine Company and the social reconstruction of the phonograph -- The phonograph and the evolution of "foreign" and "ethnic" records -- The gendered phonograph: women and recorded sound, 1890-1930 -- African American blues and the phonograph: from race records to rhythm and blues -- Economics and the invention of hillbilly records in the south -- A renewed flow of memories: the Depression and the struggle over "hit records" -- Popular recorded music within the context of national life.
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