The Selling Sound
The Rise of the Country Music Industry
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- 28,99 €
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- 28,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
Few expressions of popular culture have been shaped as profoundly by the relationship between commercialism and authenticity as country music has. While its apparent realism, sincerity, and frank depictions of everyday life are country’s most obvious stylistic hallmarks, Diane Pecknold demonstrates that commercialism has been just as powerful a cultural narrative in its development. Listeners have long been deeply invested in the “business side” of country. When fans complained in the mid-1950s about elite control of the mass media, or when they expressed their gratitude that the Country Music Hall of Fame served as a physical symbol of the industry’s power, they engaged directly with the commercial apparatus surrounding country music, not with particular songs or stars. In The Selling Sound, Pecknold explores how country music’s commercialism, widely acknowledged but largely unexamined, has affected the way it is produced, the way it is received by fans and critics, and the way it is valued within the American cultural hierarchy.Pecknold draws on sources as diverse as radio advertising journals, fan magazines, Hollywood films, and interviews with industry insiders. Her sweeping social history encompasses the genre’s early days as an adjunct of radio advertising in the 1920s, the friction between Billboard and more genre-oriented trade papers over generating the rankings that shaped radio play lists, the establishment of the Country Music Association, and the influence of rock ‘n’ roll on the trend toward single-genre radio stations. Tracing the rise of a large and influential network of country fan clubs, Pecknold highlights the significant promotional responsibilities assumed by club organizers until the early 1970s, when many of their tasks were taken over by professional publicists.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Country music scholar Pecknold (co-editor of A Boy Named Sue: Gender and Country Music) delves into the beginnings of the business of the oft-scorned "hillbilly" music as country was called before the early 1950s and studies how it grew into a nationwide moneymaking force by the 1970s. She traces the industry's footing back to radio advertising of the 1920s and the broadcast barn dances of the early '30s, then on to the convergence of the business in its ultimate epicenter, Nashville, in the late '40s and early '50s. Fledgling associations, both of deejays and fan clubs, played a powerful force in driving the music business until the 1958 formation of the Country Music Association (CMA). Pecknold is quite adept when analyzing both novels and films depicting the music business; however, the narrative sometimes lags when she recounts insider details of fan clubs and the formation of the CMA. This is not for the pleasure reader looking for stories of country music personalities; it's a serious academic tome that will be of great interest to the student of the business and cultural context of country music.
