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The birth of rock 'n roll ignited a firestorm of controversy--one critic called it "musical riots put to a switchblade beat"--but if it generated much sound and fury, what, if anything, did it signify? As Glenn Altschuler reveals in All Shook Up, the rise of rock 'n roll--and the outraged ...

The birth of rock 'n roll ignited a firestorm of controversy--one critic called it "musical riots put to a switchblade beat"--but if it generated much sound and fury, what, if anything, did it signify? As Glenn Altschuler reveals in All Shook Up, the rise of rock 'n roll--and the outraged reception to it--in fact can tell us a lot about the values of the United States in the 1950s, a decade that saw a great struggle for the control of popular culture. Altschuler shows, in particular, how rock's "switchblade beat" opened up wide fissures in American society along the fault-lines of family, sexuality, and race. For instance, the birth of rock coincided with the Civil Rights movement and brought "race music" into many white homes for the first time. Elvis freely credited blacks with originating the music he sang and some of the great early rockers were African American, most notably, Little Richard and Chuck Berry. In addition, rock celebrated romance and sex, rattled the reticent by pushing sexuality into the public arena, and mocked deferred gratification and the obsession with work of men in gray flannel suits. And it delighted in the separate world of the teenager and deepened the divide between the generations, helping teenagers differentiate themselves from others. Altschuler includes vivid biographical sketches of the great rock 'n rollers, including Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly--plus their white-bread doppelgangers such as Pat Boone. Rock 'n roll seemed to be everywhere during the decade, exhilarating, influential, and an outrage to those Americans intent on wishing away all forms of dissent and conflict. As vibrant as the music itself, All Shook Up reveals how rock 'n roll challenged and changed American culture and laid the foundation for the social upheaval of the sixties.

What is rock and roll and where does it come from? In this new study of music, literature, and culture, Perry Meisel shows how rock and roll joins both Romanticism and the blues tradition by testing the boundaries they share: boundaries between freedom and irony, between country and city, between ...

What is rock and roll and where does it come from? In this new study of music, literature, and culture, Perry Meisel shows how rock and roll joins both Romanticism and the blues tradition by testing the boundaries they share: boundaries between freedom and irony, between country and city, between the iconic figures of cowboy (e.g. John Wayne) and dandy (e.g. Oscar Wilde). In a series of startling juxtapositions, Meisel looks at rhythm and blues, Emerson and the cowboy, urban blues, the dandy and 60's psychedelia, Willa Cather, Miles Davis, and Virginia Woolf. In the process, Meisel shows how "popular" and "high" culture are hardly fixed categories, and in fact share deep roots each vainly affects to disdain.