The Rockin' 50s: The Decade That Transformed the Pop Music Scene

By Arnold Shaw

Book Overview

The decade that transformed the pop scene, the 1950s, are here recreated in an authoritative history. From the death of Tin Pan Alley to the birth of rock and roll, Arnold Shaw has captured a wide range of characters - Col Tom Parker, Sam Phillips, Perry Como, Mitch Miller, Dick Clark, Hank Williams, Fats Domino, Little Richard, James Brown, Fabian and dozens of others all set against a background of hula hoops, singing chipmunks, teen-age love and a young singer named Elvis Presley. Written with wit, this history of a contradictory decade - repressed and oversexed - will correct anyone who thinks this was an age of conformity.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0306803011
• ISBN13: 9780306803017
• Release Date: January 1987
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.

Customer Reviews

the Best book Written on the 50's Music

At the risk of sounding like a broken record (repeating a phrase that has been said so many times), this book by the late Arnold Shaw is a gold mine. Besides covering, in detail, the people and the music of that era, Shaw absolutely tells it like it was: The music that has become known as "Rock 'N Roll" was borne out of the musical creativity of African Americans, then called "Rhythm & Blues." I read this book during the late 70's and found it refreshing -- to say the least -- to read a respected white American musicologist simply giving credit where it's due. Unfortunately, for that reason, very few white Americans will read -- or perhaps even believe -- this book, for the now white-dominated field of "Rock 'N Roll," with it's blind insistance that Elvis is "the King," gives too many white Americans what they need: their own music, and a king. So this book belongs to the future, when a more honest, less self-diluted, generation of Americans search for the truth. Till then I reccomend this book be purchased and put on your shelf. Your decedents will love you for doing so.

an insiders view with broad scope

Shaw's insider status in the music industry, and his openness to all kinds of music from all eras, puts the fifties in perspective to the decades before it, and sets the stage for what's come since.