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As its blasphemous title suggests, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll rejects the conventional pieties of mainstream jazz and rock history. Rather than concentrating on those traditionally favored styles, the book traces the evolution of popular music through developing tastes, trends and technologies--including the role of records, radio, jukeboxes and television --to give a fuller, more balanced account of the broad variety of music that captivated listeners over the course of the twentieth century. Wald revisits original sources--recordings, period articles, memoirs, and interviews--to highlight how music was actually heard and experienced over the years. And in a refreshing departure from more typical histories, he focuses on the world of working musicians and ordinary listeners rather than stars and specialists. He looks for example at the evolution of jazz as dance music, and rock 'n' roll through the eyes of the screaming, twisting teenage girls who made up the bulk of its early audience. Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and the Beatles are all here, but Wald also discusses less familiar names like Paul Whiteman, Guy Lombardo, Mitch Miller, Jo Stafford, Frankie Avalon, and the Shirelles, who in some cases were far more popular than those bright stars we all know today, and who more accurately represent the mainstream of their times.
Written with verve and style, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll shakes up our staid notions of music history and helps us hear American popular music with new ears.
Although the provocative title of Wald's latest suggested to this reviewer another "why the Rolling Stones were more important than the Beatles" tome, this, like Wald's Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, is an alternative view of history. Unlike most studies that include Tin Pan Alley, ragtime, jazz, blues, pop, country, rock, R&B, soul, disco, and other genres, Wald's history of American popular music from the late 19th century to the 1970s contains significant discussions of the likes of Paul Whiteman, Mitch Miller, Guy Lombardo, and others who, despite being well known and influential in their times, tend to be ignored today. Wald explains musical and recording techniques and sociological phenomena in an engaging style accessible to a wide range of readers. Throughout, he makes a compelling case for why the figures most historians have disregarded or footnoted need to be considered in order to understand the totality of American popular music. This is an ideal companion to the plethora of standard histories available. Highly recommended.
—James E. Perone
Anonymous
Posted December 31, 2011
I haven't actually read this book - I bought it as a gift for someone. It was highly recommended by a college professor of music.
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Posted February 28, 2010
Always a lover of all musical styles and genres, I had thought that there was one, true history of how American music came to be. With this very entertaining and informing book, I now realize that the lines are not clear and there is so much overlap and mixing between regions, styles and cultures and that our country is very lucky to have had it turn out this way. I especially enjoyed the early sections of the book where musical entertainment was up to players in homes and community gathering places (with sheet music) and how technology and changes in recording impacted the entire industry. I plan on giving this book to my musical friends as gifts throughout this year. Well done Mr. Wald!
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Overview
"There are no definitive histories," writes Elijah Wald, in this provocative reassessment of American popular music, "because the past keeps looking different as the present changes." Earlier musical styles sound different to us today because we hear them through the musical filter of other styles that came after them, all the way through funk and hip hop.
As its blasphemous title suggests, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll rejects the conventional pieties of mainstream jazz and rock history. Rather than ...