Rate this book

The Chitlin' Circuit: And The Road To Rock 'n' Roll (2011)

by Preston Lauterbach(Favorite Author)

3.88 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0393076520 (ISBN13: 9780393076523)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

review 1: Covers the period from the 1920s to the 1950s when new forms of music were innovated in the cauldrons of "bronzevilles" in cities like Indianapolis, Houston, Memphis and Macon. Lauterbach argues that this was where rock 'n' roll originated, that country's contribution to rock has been exaggerated, and that the first rock song was not "Rock Around the Clock" but "Good Rockin' Tonight," recorded six years earlier by Roy Brown.
review 2: Frustrated by musicians' unions dominated by white club owners and shut out of mainstream marketing, black musicians and promoters parlayed prohibition networks of bootlegging and numbers running to build a lucrative circuit of clubs "on the stroll" of towns like Macon, Anniston and Beale Street in Memphis. This was a brutal labo... moreratory for music, as WWII made it impossible (by gas rationing and shortage of men) to field big orchestras and the clubs still had to draw paying audiences. The resulting small groups shaped traditional blues into louder, sexier, even more subversive rhythms eventually picked up and smoothed out by mainstream producers and white artists--with a few circuit performers like B.B. King and Little Richard pulled into the mainstream as well (and Tutti-Fruity remains one of the biggest signs of oblivious white listeners in music history). Although the circuit collapsed with the retreat of segregation and the advance of urban renewal, an underground music scene continues, aided by the internet and easier digital distribution and promotion. less

Download links for: The Chitlin' Circuit: And the Road to Rock 'n' Roll

Advertising