Book reviews

John A. Jackson. American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock ‘N'Roll Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Illustrated. 336 pp. Hardback. $27.50. Jay Warner. Billboard's American Rock ‘n’ Roll in Review. New York: Schirmer Books, 1997. Frank Hoffmann, Dick Carty, and Quentin Riggs. Billy Murray: The Phonograph Industry's First Great Recording Artist. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1997. Tim Neely. Goldmine Christmas Record Price Guide. Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 1997. Tim Neely, ed. Goldmine Price Guide to 45 R.P.M. Records. lola, WI: Krause Publications, 1996. Reebee Garofalo. Rockin’ Out: Popular Music in the U.SA. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997. Richard Kostelanetz, comp. The B. B. King Companion: Five Decades of Commentary. New York: Schirmer Books, 1997. Gary M. Krebs. The Rock and Roll Reader's Guide: A Comprehensive Guide to Books by and about Musicians and Their Music. New York: Billboard Books, 1997. Nathan Pearson. Goin'to Kansas City. Junior Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994. Guido Van Rijn. Roosevelt's Blues. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997. Reebee Garofalo. Rockin'Out: Popular Music in the USA. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1997. B. Lee Cooper and Wayne S. Haney. Rock Music in American Popular Culture II: More Rock n’ Roll Resources. Binghamton: Harrington Park Press, 1997. Studwell, William E., and Bruce Schueneman. State Songs of the United States: An Annotated Anthology. Binghamton, NY: Ha worth Press, 1997. 225 pp. $39.95. Bradley Smith. The Billboard Guide to Progressive Music. New York: Billboard Books, 1997.288 pp. $18.95. Sebastian Danchin. “Blues Boy”;: The Life and Music of B. B. King. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998. Illustrated. 156 pp. Hardback. $28.00. Steve Otfinoski. The Golden Age of Rock Instrumentals. New York: Billboard Books/Watson‐Guptill Publications, 1997. Illustrated. 213 pp. Softcover. $19.95. Charles Szabla. The Goldmine 45 RPM Picture Sleeve Price Guide. Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 1998. Illustrated. 301 pp. Softcover. $19.95. Kevin Hillstrom and Laurie Collier Hillstrom. The Vietnam Experience: A Concise Encyclopedia of American Literature, Songs, and Films. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998.322 pp. Hardcover. $65.00. Deborah Pacini Hernandez. Bachata: A Social History of a Dominican Popular Music. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1995. 267 pp. Paper $18.95. Cloth $49.95. Roy Shuker, Understanding Popular Music. London and New York: Routledge, 1994, $19.95.

become the key reference source for disc collectors, music historians, radio play list compilers, and pop music fans. The most comprehensive effort to reproduce the rich mix of Billboard advertisements, commentaries, and publicity shorts of '50s artists has been artfully compiled in First Pressings: The History of Rhythm and Blues (9 volumes, 1950-58) by Galen Gart's Big Nickel Publications. It is too bad that Warner's newest work exposes only the blatant hucksterism of uninformed reviews rather than the rich historical perspective available in Billboard's extensive overview of week-by-week disc surveys.
Billboard's American Rock 'n'Roll in Review is a lightweight compilation lacking discographie thoroughness and bibliographic support. It might make interesting bathroom reading for a dyspeptic baby boomer. Still it is disturbing that a writer as knowledgeable as Warner has sacrificed his talent and time on this peripheral project. University librarian and popular culture scholar Frank W. Hoffmann has joined forces with acoustic area record collectors Dick Carty and Quentin Riggs to produce this superb study on song stylist Billy Murray . While the biography alone is rich in detail and historical perspective on Murray's spectacular singing career, with particular attention to his 1903-27 reign of peak popularity, the second half of the volume is an academic model for detailed discographie historiography. It is delightful to note the blending of Hoffmann's balanced prose with the rigorous research data provided by the two antique phonograph record aficionados. No other study rivals this extensive exploration of a pre-1930s audio figure. To stimulate future research on acoustic age artists, the text concludes with a 40-page segment of "Biographical Sketches of the Leading Recording Artists from Billy Murray's Era." One can only hope that other academicians and vintage music collectors will unite to produce similarly thorough biographies/discographies on Henry Burr, Arthur Collings, George J. Gaskin, Byron G. Harlan, Harry MacDonough, Dan Quinn, Len Spencer, Frank C. Stanley, Cal Stewart, Walter Van Brunt, Bert Williams, and Margaret Young. This study is a masterpiece. It not only highlights the life and career of a mysteriously unheralded yet immensely popular singer, but it also illuminates an American musical culture that used sheet music, audience singing participation, and nonamplified vocalization to dazzle and entertain. It was truly .. .American music unplugged. Chicago attorney David A. Milbcrg is the station manager and program director at WDAM Radio, the Windy City's most prominent imaginary airwave proponent of yuletide tunes. This lawyer, scholar, and disc collector has shared his boundless knowledge of Christmas songs via a chapter in Michael Erlcwinc and Scott Bultman's All Music Guide (1992), through his annual compilations of "Radio/TV Dave's Rock 'N' Roll Christmas: The Ultimate Collection of Christmas Hits and Novelty Tunes," in articles for Discoveries ("Christmas Collectibles on Disc in a CD World"-1993), and via holiday tapes shared with cassette-loving cronies. The Goldmine Christmas Record Price Guide makes a perfect holiday gift for Milberg. The fantastic detail arrayed among the 6,000 listings of 45 rpm discs, 7-inch extended play singles, 12-inch singles, and 33-1/3 rpm albums offers terrific tinsel-time perusing for Christmas tune mavens.
Tim Neely, author of several discographie price guides for Krause Publications, presents an alphabetized extravaganza of artists (from the A-Strings, Philip Aaberg, Charlie Aaron, and ABBA to the Zircons, Zolt's Second Foundation, Donna Zuker, and ZZ Top) and an astounding repetition of tunes (from "White Christmas" and "Away in the Manger" to "Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto" and "Step into Christmas"). The distinctive contributions of this price guide are the song-by-song listings drawn from yuletide anthology albums, plus the identification of individual singers' contributions to anthologies provided under each performer's name entry. Many varieties of music-vocal and instrumental, religious and rock, classical and contemporary, individual and chorusare represented. So are most musical styles, including big band, jazz, reggae, novelty, R&B, punk, and children's pop. From expected artists like Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, and Mahalia Jackson to bizarre performers such as Ebeneezer Moog, the Happy Joe Tortilla Band, and Mucus and the Bloody Phlegm, Neely's text is a bulging bag of Santainspired audio surprises.
The major shortcoming in this well-organized, clearly-printed compilation of Christmas recordings is the total omission of compact discs. Admittedly, vinyl junkies are still numerous. But most collectors of yuletide sounds are just as interested in new CD releases as they are in more dated yet still wonderful album cuts or 45 singles. If Neely were truly dedicated to all collectors of antique holiday hits, he would have expanded his research to include 78 rpm singles and even more arcane early wax recordings. The absence of CD singles and CD albums renders this price guide mute for many popular culture scholars, contemporary radio and television broadcasters, and the entire population of Christmas music fans who have elected to abandon the record needle. Vinyl stalwarts may rejoice. But those of digitized tastes and those who enjoy pristine CD reissues rather than scratchy original releases will not benefit from Neely's efforts.
The Goldmine Christmas Record Price Guide is a worthy addition to David Milberg's library of yuletide discs. But other volumes are required as supplements to Neely. These include Merry Christmas, Baby: Holiday Music from Bing to Sting by Dave Marsh and Steve Propes (Little, Brown, and Company, 1993); MusicMaster: The 45 RJ '.M. Christmas Singles Directory-46 Years of Recorded Music, 1948to 1994by Paul C. Mawhinney (Record-Rama Sound Archives, 1993; Christmas on Record: Best Selling Christmas Singles and Albums of the Past 40 Years by Craig W. Pattillo (Braemer Books, 1983); and the "Christmas Singles/Christmas Albums" sections from Joel Whitburn's various Billboard-based volumes (Record Research, Inc., 1996). This volume updates and expands the 1992 Goldmine guide developed by Neal Umphred. While the number of 45 rpm discs listed in the new compilation has increased from 25,000 to 30,000 and the valuations have been expanded from two grades ("Very Good" and "Near Mint") to three ("Very Good," "Very Good Plus," and "Near Mint"), there is no stated rationale for the greater-than-inflationary jumps in individual values or for the absence of various older discs from several artist listings. The benefit of the Neely volume is more informational than financial. Each Artist listing provides an alphabetized record company profile of discs (A-sides/B-sides) and the date of each release. For scholars and collectors seeking titles of rare tunes or chronologies of artist releases this volume is invaluable. As a price guide, however, it's a crapshoot. Reebee Garofalo is a perceptive, articulate social critic. He is also a popular music maven. In Rock 'N' Roll is Here to Pay: The History and Politics of the Music Industry (Nelson-Hall, 1977) and Rockin' the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements (South End Press, 1992) he attempted to unravel the complex tapestry of racism and sexism that has been the frayed fabric of corporate recording and the hairshirt of American society. It is rare to encounter an analyst so committed to a popular art and to the political struggles of minorities and women in contemporary life. Garofalo's credibility rests in the power of his logic. Rather than drowning readers in either ideological or fashionable (read "politically correct") pools of rhetoric, the author invites novice swimmers to ride the waves and observe the swift currents in the seas of mass media music. Cogent discussions, ample illustrations, and rich citations make Rockin' Out: Popular Music in the U.SA. the most compelling survey of 20th century music currently in print.
Garofalo teaches as well as he preaches. He examines the role of audio technology in enhancing the quality of recorded sound from turnof-the-century cylinders to contemporary compact discs. He assesses the development of major record companies and pop songwriting from the Tin Pan Alley songsmiths to rap, reggae, and rock composers and noisemakers. He uses practical, technical, legal, aesthetic, and economic circumstances to examine the expansion of the modern music industry from local vinyl distributors to worldwide multi-media conglomerates. Yet it is free speech, economic opportunity, social justice, racial and gender equity, and artistic creativity that reverberate as key cultural priorities throughout this text. Garofalo envisions music as both corporate capital and citizen criticism. He views performers as vultures and virgins, sinners and saints, manipulators and the manipulated, and all points in between. In short, the current crisis of American identity is splashed across the audio canvass of American musical art.
While each chapter of Rockin' Out features a novel insight or a new twis.t to a traditional interpretation, Garofalo is especially informative regarding post-1980 musical trends. He commentaries on the rise of music videos, charity rock (Band Aid, Live Aid, and "We Are the World"), and other mega-music events (Lollapalooza) are intriguing; his linkages of rap, heavy metal, and youth culture with major censorship drives are fascinating; and his read on alternative rock as the ultimate disintegration of the barriers between cult and mass, margin and mainstream, underground and commercial, and serious art and popular culture is distinctive. Garofalo blends scholarly research, interview commentary, and a marvelous feel for popular music throughout this study. Both the chapter citations and "Bibliography" (pp. 467-74) are extremely strong and the "Index" is thorough and helpful. The absence of a "Discography" is the only flaw in an otherwise model study. Don't miss this masterpiece. This 18-essay anthology is a loving, uncritical tribute to America's most successful blues icon. Over the past quarter century, B. B. King has become the contemporary equivalent of Louis Armstrong as an international musical ambassador. The essayists included in the Kostelanetz companion volume are gifted critics, shrewd analysts, and astute musical historians. No one could ask for more qualified commentators than Colin Escott, Richard Middleton, Stanley Dance, Michael Lydon, Jas Obrecht, or Tom Wheeler. Yet the entire literary project flounders because of excessive adoration. This might be expected from Charles Sawyer, Barry Hansen, Scott Jordan, and a few of the other journalists recruited for this reader. But The B. B. King Companion shipwrecks on the rocks of reverence.
What could be expected from a longitudinal career study of a premier blues guitarist? Interviews drawn from five different decades should yield musical growth insights, should identify varying performing influences, should note changing audiences, should indicate both successes and failures in recording strategies and artistic experimentations, and should reveal personal insights into changing national musical patterns. Similarly, essays by biographers, journalists, and record reviewers should challenge the artist to grow, should note his (or her) aesthetic development in comparison with veteran, contemporary, and new performers, and should delineate high points and low points in recent record releases and concert appearances. In addition, a singleartist survey should feature exemplary song listings, discographies, and bibliographies. The B. B. King Companion is remarkably uneven in all of these categories. The most serious shortcoming in this anthology, though, is the total omission of critical perspective. Although a truly magnificent artist, B. B. King is ... mortal. AH the contributors treat him like a ... "Sweet Little Angel" who has never been caught "Sneaking Around," "Goin' Down Slow," or experiencing "Troubles, Troubles, Troubles." The best segments of this volume are the extended "Discography" (pp. 253-85) assembled by Jim Kerekes and Dennis O'Neill, the 1994 overview essay (pp. 3-15) by Colin Escott, and the 1972 analysis of urban blues and soul music (pp. 16-32) by Richard Middleton. The worst are the weak "Bibliography" (pp. 287-88), the abysmally uninformative interviews by several journalists, and the absence of any serious analysis of blues development-regional, national, and international-from 1950 to the present. The latter issue is crucial. The blues revival that fueled the rise of such diverse talents as Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Gary Moore, Roberty Cray, U2, Fleetwood Mac, and hundreds of others should have been examined in respect to B. B. King's soaring career. The brilliant Mississippi bluesmen is a central figure, but not just a solo act. This study fails to communicate this key point. It also permits the large, lovable musician to be a lazy interviewee and an unreflective musical historian. Too bad. Searching for information about a particular pop singer or a specific rock group can be frustrating. While thumbnail sketches are available in several reputable biographical dictionaries (Donald Clarke, The Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music, 1989;Phil Hardy and Dave Laing, The Faber Companion to 20th-century Popular Music, 1990;and Irwin Stambler, The Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock, and Soul, 1989), locating more detailed studies is often difficult. Gary Krebs strives to alleviate this problem. The Rock and Roll Reader's Guide features more than 300 pages devoted specifically to biographical and autobiographical resources. This bibliographic guide is organized alphabetically by artist, beginning with ABBA, Paula Abdul, AC/DC, and Roy Acuff and ending with Neil Young, Paul Young, Frank Zappa, and ZZ Top. Each entry provides full text citations, plus a one-paragraph annotation on each volume. The sections are clear, concise, and representative of the best writing on rock era singers, songwriters, and instrumentalists.

University of Great
Krebs goes astray, however, when he ventures into non-biographical literature. One senses that the author is unfamiliar with the broad scope of rock research and writing and unable to provide any reasonable perspective concerning the valuable works of R. Serge Denisoff, Simon Frith, Reebee Garofalo, and many, many others. This imbalance is humorously exacerbated by his slavish attention to studies by Mark Bego, David Dalton, Jimmy Guterman, Dave Marsh, Greil Marcus, and Timothy White. Omissions abound in the sections on "Chart Data," "Critical/Analytical Commentary," "Dictionaries and Encyclopedias," "Pictorials," and "Record Guides." The section on "Film" is particularly thin, failing to cite R. Pearson is an ethnomusicologist who did an oral history on Texas bluesman Manee Lipscomb for his M.A. thesis. His work on early Kansas City jazz is organized like an oral history.
The use of transcribed interviews is effective up to a point. Many of the musicians interviewed appear barely able to hold up a conversation, and repetition is a problem. As this work began as a museum exhibit, there are good thumbnail sketches of important aspects of popular music history. Minstrel shows, blues, the black vaudeville circuit, T.O.B.A. (Kansas City was the "westernmost stop on the circuit") are all mentioned.
The author agrees with the notion that New Orleans was the "birthplace of jazz." He cites the influence of ragtime, which originated in Missouri, on Kansas City jazz. This is a theme that could have been developed, enhancing the worth of the study. The oral history format allows so many different speakers that often it is difficult to recall the place the musician in the scheme of things. The seems to be a good bit of extraneous knowledge imparted.
The touring that took place in the Territories makes interesting reading. The chapters devoted to the Twelve Clouds of Joy and the Blue Devils give a glimpse into what it took to perform for the assembled rustics, including a square-dance set.
For those serious students of Kansas City jazz, this book would probably be a worthwhile purchase. But for those who simply want to learn more about early jazz, a more analytical work might be a better choice. This book is a title in the worthy American Made Music Series from University Press of Mississippi. The author is from the Netherlands, and this brings a necessary global perspective to American art. Van Rijn did a content analysis of 128 blues and gospel numbers from 1901 through 1945 to determine Franklin Roosevelt's effect on black America as acknowledged in song. From the Foreword by blues scholar Paul Oliver to the meticulous historical research, this work is an erudite entry in blues study.
Primary sources are consulted throughout, and Roosevelt's Blues carries on the spirit of Oliver's Blues Fell This Morning, specifically the discovery of meaning in the blues-the poetry of lyrics and emotional release of the primitive arrangements of blues. During the period studied, African Americans switched their allegiance from the Republican Party to the Democrats, so this study is of political as well as sociological importance. A sense of the time surrounding the music is provided, and those searching for a voice of protest in the blues (rather than the alltoo-obvious self-serving plaint) will be rewarded.
Van Rijn states that "the blues ... is a social ritual that creates a sense of order in life" (xv). This is a refreshing display of dispassionate exposition, and the author's orderly treatment of questions and answers lends itself to a more complete understanding of the blues. Some of the areas scrutinized are: what the lyrics said about Franklin Roosevelt; demographics and migration influences on the performers that determined their attitudes toward the President; the lack of African American viewpoints in the dissemination of national and local news; thematic treatments of Roosevelt's projects like the WPA; and the slow politicization of the black populace that was demonstrated in the largely personal blues lyrics in the period studied.
Van Rijn points out that only 1.4 percent of the total recorded blues and gospel records he examined had a bearing on his study. This result should not discourage readers from attributing importance to his analysis. The socially limiting factors of life in early 20th-century racist America worked to prevent more social protest songs in the blues. Why try to change the system through blues lyrics when you were broke, hungry, homeless, and unhappy in love? Fill the immediate needs before the universal.
Students of blues and social history will be well-served to read the book. It is of limited scope, of course, but that has the advantage of seriously advancing knowledge in the field of blues scholarship through an exacting look at this small segment of recorded blues. This same blues scholarship has seen any number of less-than-serious entries in recent years, due to the increased popularity of the blues. Many writers have left their regular fields of rock, R&B, or jazz, to knock off a book on the blues, looking at it as a building block or stepping stone to more "advanced" forms of popular music. Serious study of the blues is a lifelong pursuit, and it is obvious that Van Rijn is a true scholar with a love of this American music.

Wichita State University Patrick Joseph O'Connor
Reebee Garofalo has produced a comprehensive volume of popular music in the USA. Throughout the narrative, Garofalo considers popular music from the varying dimensions of race, class, age, gender, ethnicity, and politics, but he never loses sight of the music itself.
The text offers a useful overview of the significance and social context of popular music in America. The text's eleven chapters span from 1877 to the 1994; from Thomas Edison to Lollapalooza. It is encyclopedic, carefully crafted, and well-researched.
The text seems ideally suited for scholars and courses focusing on the social, cultural, and political impact of popular music. Garofalo reveals that censorship was a theme in popular music as early as 1913. He offers the contextual issues of the 1950s and 1960s-race, sexuality, poverty, education-as fertile soil in which popular music flourished and transformed culture. And he argues that "the sytematic avoidance of disco by the rock critical establishment can only be construed as racist" (p. 305). Insightful and provocative analyses such as these fill Garofalo's text. Rockin' Out may deservedly become a standard text in popular music courses, to be supplemented by other more world-focused popular music texts, such as Peter Manuel's Popular Musics of the Non-Western World: An Introductory Survey (1988).
Garofalo's drive for comprehensiveness occasionally reduces the depth of his coverage of particular issues and influences (e.g., the popular bands of Def Leppard and Pearl Jam received a scant five sentences each). This is unfortunate, but the reader is offered sufficient notes and bibliographic references to delve deeper into particular interest areas.
Overall, Garofalo successfully achieves his stated purpose: to balance culture theory with an appreciation of "the body of music which underpins" (vii) it. Garofalo follows popular music through its origins in folk and high culture, to its growth as part of popular culture, and to its complex connections to the dual streams of mass culture: the "privatized, passive consumption by an alienated, undifferentiated mass" (3) on the one hand; while on the other hand, "mass culture came to be seen as 'contested terrain,' an ideological cauldron in which new values could be forged" (381). Taken as a whole, Rockin' Out receives my highest praises, for it truly reflects the spirit of music as a cultural mirror which musical artists hold up so that we might glimpse our own reflection. In Rock Music in American Popular Culture II, Cooper and Haney deliver the goods in what appears to be an ongoing series documenting the role of rock music in American culture. The authors begin by admonishing librarians to take an active role in promoting special collections devoted to rock music and its various hybrids. The authors are quick to point out the lack of training among librarians in the understanding of popular culture resources. Rock Music in American Popular Culture II attempts to fill some of those gaps. The authors suggest thirteen ways librarians can take active roles in the promotion and preservation of popular culture materials. Cooper and Haney point out that fanciness devoted to specific artists (e.g., the Beatles, Kiss, Michael Jackson) are in dire need of preservation and collection.
The bulk of this extensive reference book contains reprints of Cooper's essays and his book and album reviews published over the last twenty years. Each chapter is related to a specific theme such as Cars, Cigarettes, City Life, Humor, Marriage, Railroads, Sex, and War, among many others. Each chapter contains an extensive bibliography and, where appropriate, a discography for further research.
One of the most unique and interesting chapters deals with Horror Film songs, where Cooper looks at the "roots of rock n' horror recordings." He provides a historic chronology of film, radio programs, and songs relating to the popular horror genre. For films and radio he traces the years 1931-91, and, for songs, 1956-91. He brings to light such song rarities as the "Werewolf (1960/74) by the Frantics/Five Man Electrical Band, Redbone's excellent "Witch Queen of New Orleans" (1971), and Screamin' Jay Hawkins' whimsical tune "I Put a Spell on You" (1956). His chapter on Halloween songs is equally useful in providing a thorough discography of songs, albums, and compact discs with "Halloween Themes." The book also contains a reprint of a funny science fiction short story, "Roll Over Beethoven," written by Cooper and Larry S. Haverkos. Like Cooper and Haney's first volume, Rock Music in American Culture II covers nearly every possible genre of popular music from Doo Wop to Heavy Metal and shows that the authors are keen observers of trends in popular music. Their enthusiasm for the subject shines through in every line. Cooper indicates when a resource is less than useful, such as Jimmy Guterman's Worst Rock n' Roll Records of All Time and Best Rock n'Roll Records of All Time.
Although Rock Music in American Culture II is aimed at librarians, it is an essential resource for rock music scholars, who will find endless hours of delightful insights and references throughout its pages. Public school teachers and university professors can use this volume to "spice" up their lessons and lectures by using songs which comment on various aspects of American culture and history. Even museum curators can use this volume to set up displays illustrating how rock music fits into our lives as Americans. The reprints tell scholars a great deal about who we are as Americans, but they also document the evolutionary thought process of B. Lee Cooper, one of the most prolific and finest popular music scholars of our time. Studwell and Schueneman's State Songs of the United States lists and annotates both official and unofficial state songs of all 50 states. This book is the first of a trilogy; the forthcoming second and third volumes are to compile, respectively, college fight songs and circus/carnival songs. A total of 69 songs are listed, 48 of which have the complete text printed as well as annotated historical notes; many of the songs are not well known outside of the states they describe and have seldom been published. State Songs of the United States is a landmark publication, as this is the first time all of these songs have been collected in one book. One can learn a great deal about the history of America by studying these songs. As the authors express, these songs "mirror American attitudes" about the various places we have chosen to live (xvi).
The most prevalent theme is the description of nature and the environment in many of the songs presented in this collection. Several examples include the "Arizona March Song," which describes Arizona as a "land full of sunshine" where one could stand "in the presence of God" where "the giant mountains stand" (21). Maine's "State of Maine" describes the "glories of the land" and the "scent of fragrant pines" (40). Montana's "Montana Melody" describes the state as having "mountains of sunset fire" where the "skies are always blue" (50).
Other songs have become part of the popular musical canon and are well known throughout the world. Two good examples of this are "Yankee Doodle," which became Connecticut's state song in 1978 (26), and Kansas's "Home on the Range" (also known as the cowboy's national anthem) (36). Other songs, such as "Maryland, My Maryland," written at the beginning of the Civil War, illustrate the character of the time as well as the sentiments of the state's inhabitants.
The authors include a short essay, "A Tribute to American Song," which lists 221 songs which have played an important role in the history of Americana in the years 1760-1971. The wide variety of songs they consider to be a part of our American heritage include nearly every musical genre, from classical to jazz and rock. (Examples include George Gershwin's "Embraceable You," Fats Waller's "Ain't Misbehavin'," Cole Porter's "Night and Day," Bill Haley's "Shake, Rattle, and Roll," and the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" [1-14].) As an added bonus, Studwell and Schueneman include sheet music for many of the songs in the second half of the book, which would allow anyone able to read music to play them. It is clear that the authors went to great lengths to make this volume useful to a wide variety of people. State Songs of the United States is an essential guide for those wanting to understand the history, music, and culture of state songs. It is a useful tool for librarians for helping patrons with research, and belongs in both public and academic libraries as well as in departmental music libraries and reference collections. Educators can use this volume to teach both history and music for all grade levels, from elementary to graduate school. , little has been published in terms of discographies and guides to the progressive music genre. The Billboard Guide to Progressive Music, by Bradley Smith, attempts to rectify that situation. Progressive music is usually associated with some of the superstar bands of the 1970s, many of whom are still active today, such as Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, Can, Yes, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, and Gentle Giant. Most progressive music groups attempted to blend classical music with rock and the avant-garde and produced music that strayed from the usual three-minute pop formula; their songs could last 20 minutes or longer. While the art form has never been a favorite of critics, there have always been thousands of fans who digest and collect the music with fanatical fervor and dedication.
Smith's guide starts out with an overview and history of progressive music in which he admits that defining "progressive" is difficult. He argues that '"progressive music' has its roots in the late 1960s, the era of psychedelia" (2). Progressive music was almost certainly greatly influenced by psychedelic rock; in many cases, a progressive artist's first album was psychedelic rock, e.g., Pink Floyd's Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and Gong's Majick Brother. However, Smith fails to include any discussion of how composers like Stockhausen, Várese, and Sun Ra, as well as avant-garde jazz artists like John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Omette Coleman, and Miles Davis helped influence and foreshadow the innovations upon which many later musicians, including rock musicians, built. For example, the members of Can were actually students of Stockhausen. Smith goes on to talk about the parallels between progressive music and speculative fiction (15-18) and describes how various fiction genres both in print and on screen have influenced progressive artists. By far, the most influential genre (inspiring both the album-cover artwork and lyrical themes) is science fiction/fantasy; looking at and listening to early albums by Yes, Tangerine Dream, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Bo Hannson, and Gong indeed verify this comparison. Gong's Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy, to choose but one example, has a whimsical, Tolkienesque style.
The bulk of Smith's book consists of his guide to what he considers the "Key Recordings in Progressive Rock." Some of the artists one would expect to find listed are Pink Floyd, ELP, Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Tangerine Dream, and more experimental artists like Mike Oldfield, David Torn, Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Henry Cow. To the author's credit, he also includes albums by newer progressive acts like Anekdoten, Anglagard, Ozric Tentacles, and Melting Euphoria. However, The Billboard Guide to Progressive Music could better be distinguished by what is left out rather than what was included; it is actually quite far from being the authoritative guide it claims to be, and seems more like a guide to the key albums in Smith's record collection. Smith completely leaves out classic progressive albums such as Kansas's Lefloverture and UK's first album UK. He also almost completely ignores artists from the German progressive rock scene such as Can, Faust, Amon Diiiil, and Kluster, many of whom directly influenced the artists Smith does list. Progressive music heavyweights Gentle Giant and John Zorn are disregarded, and Frank Zappa, Marillon, and IQ are all but disregarded. Smith inaccurately does not view many of the neo-prog acts of the early 1980s as valid progressive acts. Smith does include industrial avant-garde band Throbbing Gristle, known for making "anti-music," or music which is not supposed to be musical, and its offshoots. Smith makes a good case for Throbbing Gristle's inclusion as progressive artists, citing their tremendous musical sophistication. However, Smith fails even to men-tion similar artists who were no less influential, interesting, and important, such as Nurse with Wound, as well as Gothic progressives Death in June and Devil Doll. The author ends up seeming to be rather pompous in his determination of what is and is not progressive music.
The book has six appendices and a helpful index. The appendices include Smith's "canon" of the top 100 classic progressive recordings, the five progressive music styles, the top 30 space music recordings, the 30 best-sounding recordings, and additional recommended titles. The listing of the top 30 space music recordings is further indication of the author's self-indulgent tendency to include his favorites over truly pioneering work such as Hawkwind's In Search of Space, Doremi Fasol Latido, Hall of the Mountain Grill, and Warrior at the Edge of Time. The last appendix will probably prove the most helpful to readers, as it lists addresses and phone numbers of mail order distributors from whom interested readers can obtain much of the music reviewed in the book; it also tells which artists can be found at each particular mail order house. Smith also includes a section on record labels and artist contact addresses.
It is easy to tell which artists are Smith's favorites; throughout the book, nearly the full collections of artists like Tangerine Dream, Throbbing Gristle, King Crimson, Mike Oldfield, Kate Bush, and Pink Floyd are extensively reviewed and discussed, once again at the expense of other artists who perhaps deserved at least a mention. Despite the pompous tone of the text, Smith actually writes well and informatively about the artists included, and, to his credit, discusses many artists outside of the mainstream to whom readers might want to lend an open ear. Smith writes very persuasively for those albums he likes, and it is easy at times to get caught up in his enthusiasm for those recordings.
For the novice, The Billboard Guide to Progressive Music does provide an introduction (albeit an incomplete one) to the genre and, for the knowledgeable fan, Smith has provided an enjoyable yet frustrating read. However, since this is one of the only books of its kind, it is worth purchasing for academic and public libraries with music collections. Another book about . . . The King? It details his humble roots in Mississippi; it covers his early Memphis years as an unknown performer -and later as an emerging superstar; it traces the glory years of signa-ture songs and mass adoration by young and old fans; and it even delves into problems of poor professional management and personal weight gain. Yet this volume is not about... Elvis Presley. French radio personality and blues music historian Sebastian Danchin has crafted an informative, balanced, thoughtful biography of B. B. King. This wellresearched chronological examination of the life and music of the most popular blues guitarist in America is appropriately documented with both print resources and 50 years of sound recordings.
While the King of Rock 'N' Roll and the King of the Blues occasionally crossed paths in Memphis during the early '50s, their careers were as different as night and day. Elvis, under the strict managerial control of Col. Tom Parker and RCA Records moguls, moved immediately to superstardom and mainstream celebrity through vocal distinctiveness, motion picture exposure, and musical eclecticism. B. B. King, on the other hand, lingered in the limbo of chitlin circuit success for many years and was ultimately "discovered" as a national treasure more by British artists than by American audiences. Danchin skillfully explicates the Blues Boy's long and winding road from the cotton fields of Indianolà, Mississippi, to the glittering stages of Los Angeles, London, and Paris. The author touches on those performers who influenced B.B. King's music (Charlie Christian, T-Bone Walker, Peetie Wheatstraw, Wynonie Harris, and Percy May field) and those who later regarded B.B. as their mentor (Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Little Joe Blue, Eddie C. Campbell, and Robert Cray). Danchin is especially insightful in analyzing song selections, touring strategies, management arrangements (guided by the gifted Sidney A. Seidenberg), and record company affiliations that either advanced or retarded King's emergence as a world-class blues artist.  (Schirmer, 1997). These latter volumes flesh out many historical details, but lack the critical balance provided in Danchin's fine work. For an artist as prolific as B.B. King, there is no print substitute for the audio genius that he manifests. Fortunately; the compact disc mania of the '90s has rescued many of King's '50s, '60s, '70s, and '80s vinyl gems from technological oblivion. Among the best compilations of King's brilliant live and studio records are King of the Blues (MCA, 1992); The Collection (Castle Communications, 1995);and How Blue Can You Get? Classic Live Performances, 1964to 1994(MCA, 1996. When ethnomusicologists and popular culture historians assess the impacts of individual performing artists on 20th century American music, they will list many names. Somewhere among Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley, the name of the owner of Lucille, the former radio broadcaster for WDIA in Memphis, and the prime interpreter of "Three O'clock Blues," "Sweet Sixteen," and "The Thrill is Gone" will appear in bold print. . They argued that most music historians had overlooked group harmony recordings in favor of rhythm 'n' blues tunes and rockabilly songs in the pre-Beatles rock era. Steve Otfinoski seeks yet another adjustment in music history reporting. He notes that 1956-1966 was the golden age of instrumental recordings. Nearly 250 non vocal releases were charted on Billboard's "Top 40" during that decade. Hundreds of other instrumental tunes were arrayed among the "Hot 100" listings. Otfinoski also notes, "In reality, instrumentais were the most diverse and eclectic genre in the age of pop diversity. There were rhythm and blues instrumentais, big band instrumentais, easy listening instrumentais, jazz instrumentais, soul instrumentais, surf instrumentais, and even country and western instrumentais" (vi). The author also lauds the success of motion picture and television series theme songs. Despite the prominence of instrumentais on the early rock charts, though, anonymity and neglect has resulted. Why? Otfinoski speculates that lack of celebrity group identity, absence of catchy lyrics, singularity of success (one-hit wonders), and the failure of recording companies, disc jockeys, and performers themselves to promote classic instrumentais led to the demise and current invisibility of this pop form.
The Golden Age of Rock Instrumentals is encyclopedic, well-illustrated, factually accurate, and gleefully candid. Masters of musical hokum (Bert Kaempfert, Bent Fabric, Lawrence Welk, and Roger Williams) are explored along with performing geniuses (King Curtis, Ray Charles, Les Paul, and Booker T. and the MG's). The text is arranged by musical style, with healthy sections devoted to R&B (Big Jay McNeely, Bill Doggett, and Lee Allen), rock (Link Wray, Duane Eddy, and Bill Justis), jazz (Cannonball Adderley, Dave Brubeck, and Stan Getz), surf (Dick Dale, the Surfaris, and the Chantays), soul (the Mar-Keys, Junior Walker, and the Bar-Kays), and country (Chet Atkins, Floyd Cramer, and Boots Randolph). From Henry Mancini to Johnny and the Hurricanes, Otfinoski uncritically lists and lauds all nonvocal performers, band leaders, and musical directors.
Finally, one always enjoys watching an author get out on a limb. Otfinoski's appendix lists "Seventy of the Best Rock and Pop Instrumentals" (209-10). He's right on target with Ray Anthony's "Peter Gunn," Vince Guaraldi's "Cast Your Fate to the Wind," Lonnie Mack's "Memphis," Jimmy Smith's "Walk on the Wild Side," Santo and Johnny's "Sleep Walk," the Viscounts' "Harlem Nocturne," and the Wailers' "Tall Cool One." But where are the Piltdown Men's "Brontosaurus Stomp," Booker T. and the MGV "Chinese Checkers," Johnny Gibson's "Beachcomber," the Kingsmen's "Bent Scepter," and Robert Maxwell's "Peg o' My Heart"?
The Golden Age of Rock Instrumentals provides a terrific literary journey into an era of inventiveness, innocence, and ingenuity. But writing about music isn't the same as hearing the music. The following anthologies are necessary to bring Otfinoski's text to life: Although ostensibly designed to inform picture sleeve collectors about commercial values of individual covers, this lavishly illustrated guide is a treasure for art enthusiasts and popular music fans as well. The author references more than 10,000 picture sleeves. These items include nearly 50 years of cover art drawn from all genres of music-rock, pop, country, R&B, jazz, and alternative, plus comedy and soundtrack discs. More than 1,400 B&W photographs are provided, along with 96 color reproductions. The guide is arranged alphabetically by performer, extending from ABBA, Gregory Abbott, ABC, and Paula Abdul to the Zombies, John Zov, Zwol, and ZZ Top. Song titles, recording numbers, years of release, and suggested prices for "very good" (VG) and "near mint" (NM) sleeves are listed below each artist's name. Eartha Kitt's "Santa Baby" (1954) is delightfully suggestive; Ice-T's "I'm Your Pusher" (1988) is poster art for rap misogyny; Alice Cooper's "He's Back" (1986) is typically Jasonesque; and Carly Simon's "Coming Around Again" is ... luscious. However, most of the sleeves are simply studio portraits of attractive performers in standard singing or strumming poses.
This volume is much larger, more statistically consistent, and more well-illustrated than any of its predecessors. It is an invaluable guide for collectors and a key resource for sound recording archivists. It is also highly recommended to students of album art and commercial design. . Each entry focuses on particular Vietnam-related experiences that motivated a work, the specific circumstances surrounding the creation of the project, a plot summary or theme review, both public and critical reaction to the work, and a list of research sources for further reading. A supplementary appendix (304-12) lists 257 additional fictional and documentary films, songs, fictional books and essays, poems, historical studies, oral narratives, and plays that explore the lengthy Asian war.
The Hillstroms are masterful in respect to aesthetic critique and historical setting. They avoid ideological landmines through skillful narrative balance. However, the work is far from bland. Major controversies surrounding the policies, practices, paranoia, and politics of the Indochina assault years spill forth through the multiple works being examined. Names, dates, and events are resurrected with accuracy and plumbed with reasoned perspective. Black U.S. soldiers and Kent State students are present; so are Pentagon strategists and North Vietnamese propagandists. The bravery and treachery of Vietnam War participants offer a sobering image of the human condition. The authors are especially adept at demonstrating the plurality of popular culture's imagery in respect to a world stage event. Neither mass media reporting nor patriotic Pentagon poppycock could defuse the wildly segmented viewpoints that made the Vietnam War so controversial.
This volume magnifies the ideas expressed by Robert B. LeLieuvre in a recent article titled '"Goodnight Saigon ': Music, Fiction, Poetry, and Film in Readjustment Group Counseling" {Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 39.1 [1998]: 74-78). While Professor LeLieuvre addresses the issue of utilizing popular arts to reduce symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, the Hillstroms write to overcome more widespread problems: historical ignorance, emotional neutrality, and public amnesia concerning the brutality, banality, and governmental chicanery related to Southeast Asia from 1954 to the present. The Vietnam Experience is a triumph of qualitative, artistic, cultural reflection. In an age of materialism, quantification, and technological sameness, this study should be a reminder that previous attempts to impose power through money, military body counts, and superior air strength failed. The earlier works of LeLieuvre and David Pichaske (A Generation in Motion: Popular Music and Culture in the Sixties, 1979) lend credence to the excellent anthology of literary, musical, and film resources assembled by the Hillstroms. No student or historian of American popular culture should skip this terrific volume. While cultural anthropologists are becoming increasingly comfortable with music, dance, television, and other popular cultural forms, attention to these topics is still relatively recent compared to the accumulated attention awarded more traditional themes. It is, therefore, refreshing to see a full-length ethnographic work devoted to understanding a popular musical form, especially one that claims its roots and popularity among alargely impoverished male audience in crowded shantytownsspecifically in the colmados (grocery stores), brothels, and bars-of Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic. This ethnography introduces the reader to the beloved musical form known as bachata, a genre developed in the midst of massive rural-urban migration during the 1960s and 1970s and derived from a collective experience of economic, social, and cultural dislocation. Pacini Hernandez's engaging ethnography provides a framework for understanding the evolution of musical genres in the context of dictatorship and shifting class/culture formations. It also provides insights into the development of a familiar, humorous, romantic, and macho form of male sentimentality.
The bachata, a guitar-based trio (guitar-bongo-maraca), shares with its audience a raunchy barrio sentimentality marked by bawdy humor that connects eating with sexuality, an aesthetic form celebrating heavy drinking, easily-obtained sex, and a macho delight in elaborating upon gendered "inversions" of sexuality, where powerful men are made weak by the sexual prowess of women. It emerged mostly in male public spaces (colmados, bars, and brothels) rather than family spaces, thus perhaps explaining the apparent gender distinctiveness of this musical for-mÑmostly male performers singing about women who cause them pain, often because of unrequited or relinquished love.
Pacini Hernandez provides an interesting and provocative account of why, until 1990, the bachata was the black sheep of the country's music business. In the process, she also provides an original case that perfectly illustrates-though without explicit reference- Bourdieu's (1984) analysis of the development of taste and distinction and their relation to class formation and maintenance. Here "taste" not only seems to be gendered, but is classed as well. This ethnography traces the musical aesthetic tastes developed within the context of a 30-year-long Latin American/Caribbean dictatorship. The Trujillo dictatorship (1930-61) not only structured political and economic possibilities, but also exercised control over everyday life right down to the minutiae of popular musical tastes.
Pacini Hernandez's study explains how a relatively homogeneous set of musical tastes developed and why bachata was only able to fully emerge in the post-Trujillo era. She convincingly demonstrates how Trujillo's preference for a particular form of rural merengue (the accordionbased style from the Cib<o region) was transformed-through his personal interest and investment-into an orquesta style music danced to by the country's elite in ostentatious hotels. The poor participated only by listening to the broadcasts of these same events by radio. Through the combination of a tightly controlled mass media and a series of dictatorial rituals, merengue came to signify the only true national music and, accordingly, won exclusive preference throughout the class structure.
Indeed, during Pacini Hernandez's time in the field (1986), bachata was still regarded by the middle and upper classes as a delegitimized art form-an indigenous form of "low-brow." Those who listened to bachata were la gente baja. One record store owner explained to Pacini Hernandez that they didn't sell bachata because they didn't want to attract the clientele who listened to it. In 1990, however, the status of bachata began to change with the release of Bachata Rosa, a record album by Juan Luis Guerra, the well-respected merengue musician.
Pacini Hernandez offers a unique approach to the analysis of the .production and distribution of taste. She incorporates the music business, radio, and mass media into her analysis, examining the roles played by recording studios, record producers, vendors, radio disc jockeys, and others involved in the production and distribution of bachata. Her analysis is deepened further through interviews with key musicians and their fans. She also observed musical performances in colmados and bars in slums and poor barrios (working-class neighborhoods) in Santo Domingo. While bachata has been a popular musical form, the public spaces in which it was heard were generally not considered appropriate for "decent" women, and her presence as a woman in such spaces was continually questioned and challenged. By eliciting the support of male friends in accompanying her, and by managing to look convincing as an observer, wielding the baggage of her trade-cameras, recorders, and notebooks, Pacini Hernandez succeeded in carrying out this difficult component of her field work. Her ethnography takes us through the evolution of bachata as it was "transformed from musical pariah to radical chic" (227), and analyzes the unique mix of forces that enabled it to become more acceptable.
One of the most entertaining chapters of the book has to do with the transitions that she traces as having occurred within the bachata genre itself. In the 1960s, the music resembled the slow romantic Cuban bolero and the lyrics of the songs were poetic statements about the pains and pleasures of love. During the 1970s, a wider range of problems associated with love, sex, and gender emerged and were expressed in the context of a deepening economic crisis. In the 1980s, many bachata musicians who were attempting to shed the negative connotations of the music began to call their style música de amargue (music of bitterness) rather than bachata in the attempt to win wider acceptability.
One aspect of this study that is interesting to consider further is the fact that most bachateros have been men and that the lyrics have often represented the male voice of romantic machismo. She notes an interesting transition from the bachatas composed in the 1960s to those composed in the 1980s. The 1960s bachatas refer tó women subjects in the second person familiar tú form, whereas in the 1980s women are referred to indirectly, in the third person ella. It is in this not-so-subtle erasure of the subject that Pacini Hernandez traces the effects of the loss of authority and control experienced by men in the unstable economic situation they faced in the urban shantytowns. In these songs, women are frequently portrayed as aggressors and men as victims: "Bachateros complained about betrayal, alienation, and hopelessness, yet they did not blame these problems on the economic and political elite who had indeed betrayed and abandoned the poor as a class, but on women" (184). Pacini Hernandez is clear that "these lyrics were the symptoms, not the causes, of social disintegration, which demanded conscientious analysis and fundamental structural changes, not facile moral condemnation" (228).
This analysis suggests a way to analyze macho romanticism as a sentiment produced and reproduced in the context of savage capitalism and of social dislocation. But it would also be helpful to know how women from the poorest classes react to these songs. Is this an aspect of "the popular" that women share in to some extent? Do women secretly love these songs and take some sort of identity cue from the women making men suffer in the particular ways outlined in the lyrics and style of the songs?
In her concluding chapter, Pacini Hernandez explains why bachata emerged as a distinct style-it captured in its form the mood and tenor of disruption experienced by migrants who moved to urban shantytowns and lost subsequently romanticized aspects of rural life. It is less clear, however, why so many of the lyrics are focused on the transience of romantic relationships between men and women. Why, indeed, did pain and suffering with regard to love and lust become the vehicle for transmitting the sad and nostalgic aspects of this population's discontent? It is also interesting to ponder how bachata might develop in the future-for instance, whether women will become bachateras in greater numbers and whether the spaces where it can be listened and danced to will become more appropriate spaces for a wider range of women. AH in all, the book is quite captivating and draws the reader into full emotional contact with a popular, sad, and humorous musical form that might otherwise be inaccessible. Roy Shuker's Understanding Popular Music presents an overview of popular music as a site of cultural studies and music journalism, industrial production and policy, performance texts and genres, symbolic struggle and consumption. Ten chapters, each laid out under the rubric of a song title, map out some of the main concerns of popular music studies in a textbook format which is increasingly becoming Routledge's identity marker for academic books. Shuker describes the book (p. 290) as "at heart an attempt to update" Simon Frith's 1983 bench-mark Sound Effects, but it tends to lack Frith's capacity to theorize popular music tendencies in an original and incisive way, instead relying heavily on interpreting and paraphrasing the work of other writers from the past two decades. But Shuker does this extremely well; his summary of arguments for and against the cultural imperialism thesis, for example, is deft, clear and concise, and he engages critically with "vulgar Marxist" arguments about the political identity of music. But at times he is rather too ready to accept the word of others, as in hs apparent endorsement of John Fiske's fatuous arguments about the "empowernment" of Madonna fans, or Graeme Turner's insistence on the difficulty of identifying national features in non-Anglo-American rock music. There is also a tendency over-quote when paraphrase would suffice. The bibliography alone runs to 16 pages, which indicates the depth and range of Shuker's compendium-like scope, although as he acknowledges (p. 284), Understanding Popular Music, like most other academic studies of rock music, concentrates almost exclusively on "the Anglo-American nexus of rock." The growing tendency for Maori and Pacific Islander groups and performers to use their native languages is of course another distinctive linguistic feature. But even considering Kiwi rock groups like the Clean, the Chills, the Bats, Straitjacket Fits, the JPSE and the many others who emerged on the Flying Nun label in the 1980s, and who share a range of identifiable musical and extra-musical features (melodic guitar "jangle," often "low fi" production, lack of concern with image, lack of political or social comment in lyrics, pop inflections, etc.) it could be argued that they are recognizably "New Zealand" bands. The identity of much locally-produced music in New Zealand is often located only obliquely through rhetorical and extramusical associations which operate in the interstices between lyrics, music, production, and reception. This identity is also formed by the particularly idiosyncratic and ahistorical way in which a range of New Zealand musicians have appropriated and adopted a range of Anglo-American models, styles and influences.
In his conclusion, Shuker situates himself as a "40-something postwar baby-boomer" in an acknowledgement of the emotive and personal bias that inevitably creeps into supposedly objective analytical overviews of this nature. But given his acknowledgement of "young people('s) . . . substantial and sophisticated body of knowledge about popular music" (p. 230) one sometimes wonders who exactly he is addressing-his academic peers and sociology students with a limited knowledge of the history and concerns of "rock," or those who simply want a useful reference book of the theories and concerns of popular music studies? This doubt is endemic to the generic, text book orientation of Understanding Popular Music. That said, Shuker's book is an important contribution to popular music studies, and a useful summary of the main arguments about its production, reception, and interpretation that have been put forward over the past three decades. It is one of the few recent course books on the subject that can be recommended without qualification.

University of Technology, Sydney
Tony Mitchell