Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Book Review: Swing Shift: "All-Girl" Bands of the 1940s




LINK TO: Swing Shift: "All-Girl" Bands of the 1940s By Sherrie Tucker

The history of “all girl” bands of the 1940s highlights the issue of the relationship between art and commerce, or what you might call “the artist’s dilemma” (i.e. I can pursue my artistic vision or I can pursue commercial success). There were substantial financial rewards to be had by musicians. Elsie Blye, for example, found that the wartime demand for musicians made switching from Oklahoma schoolteacher to Hollywood pianist a lucrative option as her salary shot up three hundred percent. Many black women found music paid better than domestic work or sharecropping (Tucker, 55). While artists could make money doing what they loved, they did so at the price of giving up control over the “rules” of work. Then and now, it seems that managers and music entrepreneurs, rather than artists, control what is played, how it is played and under what circumstances it is played in order to maximize profits. Maximizing profits depends on catering to audience expectations and pre-dispositions not only about the music but about the performers. Musical marketing appears to be a “total package” concept, involving the music, the performer, and the values/dreams the music and performance embody for the audience (i.e. does the music allow the audience to vicariously “live the life they have imagined”).

The American public embraced “all girl” bands during the World War II era as a novelty, a temporary expedient in time of war. This is not how the women, many of whom were professional musicians before the swing band shortage of the war years, saw themselves, “We put in the time. We put in the hours. We didn’t consider ourselves a novelty”. Creative artists are generally in the vanguard of social movements, anticipating the changes in society which are about to emerge. White women were joining “all girl” black bands in order to become better musicians and to find a more appreciative audience for the type of music they wanted to play. They were being accepted at considerable risk to the black members of the band out of what you might term artistic solidarity. The artists were anticipating the social changes that were about to come, but as a practical matter had to conform to social conventions. Thus white performers had to be hidden and disguised in order to play with black bands. Similarly, women musicians had to conform to conventional expectations of femininity, often being dressed in elaborately feminine frocks that made playing their instruments more difficult. As a practical matter, individual artists could not do just as they pleased, they had to operate between the freedom of art and the constraints of commerce. Although artists constantly struggle for autonomy, and frequently violate norms and conventions, they can only go so far before risking commercial failure. As has been said of one of the “all girl” bands, the Darlings of Rhythm, “Women who broke too many rules wound up on the cutting-room floor of earthly history”(Tucker, 224).

My titles on Amazon

My titles at Barnes & Noble



The best reading experience on your Android phone or tablet, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows 8 PC or tablet, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe: First Lady of Rock



LINK TO: Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe


The career of “Sister” Rosetta Tharpe embodies many of the themes endemic to American popular music, authenticity, gender mediation, the impact of technology on the creation and distribution of music, and race mediation.

Rosetta Tharpe was raised within the Pentecostal tradition which regarded music as a way of achieving religious ecstasy. Gospel music audiences expected their singers to be “clean and untarnished by the world” (Wald, 139). Songs were expected to be spiritual and spirit filled, a gospel song was to be, “a sermon set to music”. Rosetta Tharpe could perform within this milieu, but like many other gospel performers faced the dilemma of limiting her options (and income) or crossing over to perform secular music as well. Performers such as Tharpe, and Sam Cooke “crossed over”, while others such as Mahalia Jackson and Dorothy Love Coates, “could not relate to (secular) music”. Mahalia Jackson was embraced as the preeminent Gospel singer because of her authenticity. Gospel audiences were skeptical about Rosetta Tharpe’s sincerity as a spiritual entertainer because she also performed secular music.

There was room for skepticism. Rosetta’s personal life suggests that while she may have been willing to placate audiences and offer up a public persona somewhat matching their expectations, in private she was a woman with the type of “will to power” associated only with men during that period. Rosetta was a hard living woman with a string of husbands and some say at least one woman lover (the later being an unforgivable sin to conservative Christian audiences). In her professional career she was a domineering force (to the chagrin of men), outplaying men on the guitar ( the “man’s instrument”) and issuing orders authoritatively to subordinate males (reversing the “natural order” of things).

Rosetta pragmatically adapted her career to meet changing circumstances. Starting in gospel music, she crossed over to secular blues music as the size of radio and television audiences eclipsed the size of gospel audiences. In the early 1950s she was not afraid to record with country music idol Red Foley. In 1958, as Britain and Europe embraced American black musicians, Rosetta quickly discovered the value of “folk credentials” (bestowed on her a decade earlier by Alan Lomax). “If ‘folk’ was the rage among a record buying public of earnest young people, then ‘folk’ she would be” (Wald, 175).Sister Rosetta Tharpe played the game, and played to win.

The unintended consequences of Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s larger than life career are musically telling. She had a tremendous influence on young British musicians who, in turn, would re-interpret American black music and re-introduce it to mainstream American audiences. The British invasion together with the heavily Gospel/Blues influenced music of Elvis Presley put black music and style at the center of American popular music, “but the conduit(s) of these new sounds and styles did not have to be black” (Wald, 145).

My titles on Amazon

My titles at Barnes & Noble



The best reading experience on your Android phone or tablet, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows 8 PC or tablet, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Book Review of: Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience



Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience
by Steve Waksman

Did rock ‘n roll represent the “pent up anger of the age, and loud rock ‘n roll thus became an acting out of that anger?” Music historians would have you believe that it was music that brought down racial barriers and changed American society. This may be a romanticized myth.

Rock, like other cultural forms, represented the fears and aspirations of its time. It did not cause them, it reflected them. It was two world wars and the advent of nuclear weapons which threatened life on earth that caused great numbers of people to question the old racial, gender and religious myths and mores of failed elites who had produced such devastating consequences in the lives of the people of the world. If rock ‘n roll had never emerged, some other cultural device would have been used to manifest the aspirations of the people.

Interestingly, it was that most conservative of all institutions, the military, that proved to be the exemplar for promoting social and racial equality in America. In 1948, President Truman signed an Executive Order integrating the military and mandating equality of treatment and opportunity. It became illegal, per military law, for a soldier to make a racist remark. Truman's Order extended to schools and neighborhoods as well as military units. In 1963, the Department of Defense made it the responsibility of every military commander to oppose discriminatory practices affecting his men and their dependents and to foster equal opportunity for them. The military needed black manpower during the Korean War and the Vietnam War, racial liberalization in the military followed. Similar troop level requirements led to the integration of women and gays into the military on terms of equality.

Which force was more powerful in acting as a catalyst for racial and gender change in American society, the amorphous message of rock (“turn on, tune in, drop out”) or the directed mandate of the military? A difficult question, but what is clear is that whatever the personal motivations of individual musicians, the music business itself, is just that, a business. Not a cause, but a business. Musicians like Muddy Waters were more interested in commercial success than some notion of racial “authenticity”. Chuck Berry pursued financial success by appealing to what white teenagers were focused on at the time, “school, love, and cars”. Col. Parker and RCA made Elvis “tone down” his act to reach wider cross-over audiences. Jimi Hendrix’s decided to play rock music as oppossed to a “blacker” style such as jazz, soul, or even straight electric blues.(Waksman,177) What music gets made and promoted for mass consumption is done for purley business reasons. Popular music and musicians are, first and foremost, the saleable commodity of the music industry.

My titles on Amazon

My titles at Barnes & Noble



The best reading experience on your Android phone or tablet, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows 8 PC or tablet, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone.

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Civilian Life in the Civil War

CIVIL WAR CIVILIAN LIFE: MANASSAS, VIRGINIA 


Alexandria and Northern Virginia were the first areas to feel the fury of the Civil War. The New York Herald war correspondent observed, “Many hamlets and towns have been destroyed during the war, Alexandria has most suffered. It has been in the uninterrupted possession of the Federals. . . . Alexandria is filled with ruined people; they walk as strangers through their ancient streets, and their property is no longer theirs to possess. . . . these things ensued, as the natural results of civil war; and one’s sympathies were everywhere enlisted for the poor, the exiled, and the bereaved.”

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3



My titles on Amazon

My titles at Barnes & Noble



The best reading experience on your Android phone or tablet, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows 8 PC or tablet, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone.