Just Around Midnight

Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination

By: Jack Hamilton

Narrated by: Ron Butler

Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

Rooted in rhythm-and-blues pioneered by black musicians, 1950s rock and roll was racially inclusive and attracted listeners and performers across the color line. In the 1960s, however, rock and roll gave way to rock: a new musical ideal regarded as more serious, more artistic-and the province of white musicians. Decoding the racial discourses that have distorted standard histories of rock music, Jack Hamilton underscores how ideas of "authenticity" have blinded us to rock's inextricably interracial artistic enterprise.

According to the standard storyline, the authentic white musician was guided by an individual creative vision, whereas black musicians were deemed authentic only when they stayed true to black tradition. Serious rock became white because only white musicians could be original without being accused of betraying their race. Juxtaposing Sam Cooke and Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, and many others, Hamilton challenges the racial categories that oversimplified the sixties revolution and provides a deeper appreciation of the twists and turns that kept the music alive.

©2016 The President and Fellows of Harvard College (P)2017 Tantor

Fabulous

If you like history music rock’n’roll Americana hippies race issues or just a great read/listen, you’ll love this. If you don’t, I fell bad for you.

not worth the read

N overly wordy re write of a doctorial dissertation that was itself verbose and long winded masking the true nature of the material it covered