The B-Side - The Death of Tin Pan Alley and the Rebirth of the Great American Song
Author(s): Ben Yagoda
From an acclaimed cultural critic, a narrative and social history of the Great American Songwriting era. Everybody knows and loves the American Songbook. But it's a bit less widely understood that in about 1950, this stream of great songs more or less dried up. All of a sudden, what came over the radio wasn't Gershwin, Porter, and Berlin, but "Come on-a My House" and "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?" Elvis and rock and roll arrived a few years later, and at that point the game was truly up. What happened, and why? In "The B Side," acclaimed cultural historian Ben Yagoda answers those questions in a fascinating piece of detective work. Drawing on previously untapped archival sources and on scores of interviews--the voices include Randy Newman, Jimmy Webb, Linda Ronstadt, and Herb Alpert--the book illuminates broad musical trends through a series of intertwined stories. Among them are the battle between ASCAP and Broadcast Music, Inc.; the revolution in jazz after World War II; the impact of radio and then television; and the bitter, decades-long feud between Mitch Miller and Frank Sinatra. "The B Side" is about taste, and the particular economics and culture of songwriting, and the potential of popular art for greatness and beauty. It's destined to become a classic of American musical history.
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Praise for "The B Side" "Wow, what a piece of work! I love it. "The B Side" is A PLUS." -- Dave Frishberg "A provocative, consistently engaging counternarrative to the conventional wisdom that rock 'n' roll killed Tin Pan Alley." -- "Kirkus Reviews" "A great many books celebrate the pre-rock Great American Songbook. Ben Yagoda's highly original and shrewdly argued The B-Sideisn't one of them. It tells how the Songbook emerged, but is more intent on dissecting its meretricious demise, and the way a new songbook emerged from the rubble. It is anecdotal, illuminating, and persuasive." -- Gary Giddins, author of "Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams and Visions of Jazz" "[""The B Side""is] an entertaining and thoroughly researched exploration of America's songwriting history. With deftness of pen and skill, Yagoda has produced a work that will appeal to both musicologists and fans." "-- "Library Journal"" "Essayist Yagoda energetically conducts a journey through the development of popular music in this vibrant piece of cultural history" -- ""Publishers Weekly"" Praise for Ben Yagoda: "All hail to Ben Yagoda!" - Cynthia Ozick "[He] is his own walking billboard for the joys of imaginative, precise, and fresh language usage."--Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "Fresh Air" "He's witty and erudite and unafraid to read between the lines of his interviewees' pronouncements."--Ron Rosenbaum "Yagoda . . . is blessed with a genius for apt quotation."--John Leonard "Ben Yagoda is always fine company, with just the right word, kindly good judgment, and another great story coming up on the next page." --Richard Ben Cramer
Ben Yagoda is a journalism professor at the University of Delaware. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of twelve books, including "About Town: " The New Yorker "and the World It Made"; "How to Not Write Bad"; "Memoir: A History"; and "Will Rogers: A Biography." He contributes to "The Chronicle of Higher Education"'s "Lingua Franca" blog and has written for "Slate," "The New York Times Magazine," "Esquire," and "The American Scholar," among other publications. Yagoda lives in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, with his wife.
General Fields
- :
- : Riverhead Books
- : Riverhead Books
- : 0.454
- : 01 February 2015
- : 229mm X 152mm
- : United States
- : 01 February 2015
- : books
Special Fields
- : Ben Yagoda
- : Hardback with dustjacket
- : very good
- : 304